Rep Weave or Ripsmatta Weave

Rep Weave is a weave structure that was completely new to me a few months ago; so when I was planning for my Guild of Canadian Weavers Intermediate test question on warp faced weaves, I knew that sampling would be in my future.

I pulled my rep weave warp in light blue, purple and navy orlec, set at 45 epi. Yup, 600 threads! I wove my samples, trying different wefts and in the end, I thought the overall effect was bland.
I decided to start again, but to change the selvedge to navy to help hide the navy weft I had decided on. Then, to add a bit more colour I added a pink thread for each of the two blocks. Well it was obvious that I didn’t completely understand the weave structure; my 2 thread pink stripe was not balanced on the sequence changes so it looked a bit dot, dash, dot, not what I had envisioned at all.

I bit the bullet and warped it a third time, a big undertaking, this now was my third 600 thread warp in two weeks! This time I used 4 pink threads, 2 for each block change, making the pink stripe appear solid in each block change; this worked much better. This would be my final test submission warp and finding a soft 6 ply cotton weft made the piece I wanted.

Hindsight tells me that this whole thing was moot - I could have easily submitted the first rep set and it would have done as well for the test as my third effort ! Ahhhhh well....

The upshot of the whole repeating rep weave was that I had a number of pieces that didn’t match. They kind of look the same, but with differing wefts they couldn't be used as placemats, close but no cigar! What the heck was I going to do with all of these bits of fabric? And yes, I had more than just these three samples to deal with - I had done 3 yards each time!!

When life hands you too many rep weave samples - make PURSES....

I tried to make them a tad more interesting by adding some beading to each bag - they are all fully lined and have plastic inserts for structural integrity.