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Saturday, July 04, 2009

Small Wall Hangings

These will be very small, as the warp is only 10 inches wide. I'm weaving 13 inches in length, plus 1 inch at each end for turning back hems to use as hanging pockets. After finishing and hemming, they should be about 9x12 inches overall. I'll ask DH to make some fancy little finials to put on the ends of dowels, and finish them with a dark stain and cloth-safe finish.

So far today, I've woven three of these small hangings. I'll probably make a few more, then start on the scarves.

Here's a look at hanging #3, which has a weft of tramm silk in a sort of greyed blue-green. Because the yarn isn't twisted or plied, it is amazingly glossy compared to the twisted-and-plied silk yarns in the warp, and at some angles it really stands out visually. And as usual, the interleaved threadings generate a lot of iridescence, so the cloth looks quite different from one angle than from another.



Here you can see the design area plus a little of the hem area.



I couldn't convince myself that a threading like this one would weave a nice tidy 2/2 broken twill, but here's the draft for the hem area. The effect of the 3-color warp, which is threaded "odd-even-even" (or even-odd-odd) throughout, is very interesting.



I remember Bonnie Inouye teaching a class on advancing twills, and reminding us that the way to be sure your design line falls correctly on the 4-end-initial network is to make the tie-up all plain weave. You can see right away if there's an error in the design line. Well, the same thing is true for interleaved threadings on a 4-end initial network. There are doubled threads where you'd expect them because of the "odd-odd-even" nature of the threading, but the structure is really a 2/2 broken twill - it just has doubled ends in regularly occurring places.

2 comments:

Bonnie said...

In my classes on advancing and network drafted twills, the tie-up used to check structure is a 1/3 twill, not plain weave. See page 55 in my book. With 2 interleaved or parallel threadings you get doubled warps. Interesting to see 3 threadings this way.
Bonnie Inouye

Unknown said...

Hi Sandra, What IS a cloth safe finish anyway? I've always covered the wooden slats that I hang things from with fabric - but I don't allow them to show and I think having a wood accent would be lovely - and I know a woodworker too!