Floating Selvedges and Eight Shaft Finnish Lace

I’ve woven Swedish Lace, Huck Lace and Bronson Lace so you can imagine how happy I was to discover a new lace for me – Finnish Lace. See Handwoven Summer 1984 for more information on this weave structure. Originally I wanted to make a summer runner for my dining room table, but when I found these colours in my stash and was so drawn to them I knew it wouldn’t work in my dining room; I have burgundy chairs so you can imagine the horrible clash if I put this red and yellow runner on the table! This is how a shawl was born!

I wanted the lacy runs to appear very lacy, so chose to use a yarn with finer grist than the main warp and weft to enhance the laciness. I love the way the hand painted yellow cotton contrasts with the red. So far I think it looks great, and I hope that with finishing the lace will crinkle up and have lots of texture. The white thread at the right is my measuring thread. I release the tension on my loom and measure my web in 5 inch increments then keep a tally of my woven length.

Finnish lace as I’ve woven it has no lateral floats at all, just vertical floats. This influenced my design in that I left out the optional horizontal blocks and designed progressively wider lace bands separated by plain weave. I can really recommend this weave as it is on 8 shafts, but only uses 4 treadles, treadled in point twill for the pattern, easy peasy!

When I made my warp stripes I miscounted by two threads, so I've had to hang them from the back of the loom right next to my floating selvedge. To stop them from twisting together I've threaded them through some plastic mesh.

Here's a close up - this really works!

Now I have a question – There is Swedish lace, Finnish lace and Danish medallion, where’s Norway’s fancy weave? I know about a lot of tapestry techniques alluded to be Norwegian, but anything else?

Now for a change of topic!

I love to be organized and have clear plastic containers that hold the majority of my yarn stash on wire shelves in my studio. I sort by fibre and I have slapped big words on the front of the containers to minimize my rooting around in every container to find things.

This system worked but was really making me unhappy every time I looked up from the loom and saw it– so I’ve come up with another system. For each yarn type I found a photographic representation and messed with it in PhotoShop. The lambs represent fine wool, the moth for silk, the cotton boll and the linen flower for those fibres and the overall effect really make me happy when I see them. Now I just have to figure out something to represent Orlec and novelty yarns!

Weaving Words
Seersucker got its name from a Persian word shir u sukkar meaning milk and honey, and denoting a puckered or blistered surface.