Twisting A Fringe ~ Embellishment

Both silk scarves are washed, pressed and put away. I’ve really reached my New Year goal of finishing my projects. You can colour me pleased in purple!

The scarves were each 6.5 inches wide in the reed – and after washing they were both exactly 6 inches wide even though the wefts were very different. I wove each scarf 73-1/2 inches long and after washing the Purple Bombyx Silk is 69-3/4 inches long, plus fringe.

The Magenta Raw Silk is 70 inches long plus fringe.

When I pulled the black Tencel warp for these scarves I replaced the final 6 threads on each selvedge in purple Tencel. My plan was always to use purple silk weft on the scarves and the reason for the purple selvedge threads was to minimize the weft turns. I really think it works, even though the colour difference was too subtle for my poor camera to show in the weaving, it does show in the fringe.

After weaving the scarves I ended up with two purple scarves with black fringes, pretty but; I find the change between fringe and weaving to be abrupt. My solution was to introduce weft threads into the fringe before I twizzled.
I thread a needle with a piece of weft that was twice as long as the fringe. Insert the needle up catching the hem stitching.
Then back down under the hem stitching to lock the thread in.
Pull until the weft thread is even with the bottom of the existing fringe.

Now twizzle as usual; I think that the beaded effect is really lovely and it makes the fringe more united with the scarf as a whole.
I also try and make the fringe a point of interest, so in this case I twizzled the bouts with the introduced weft threads singly, but twizzled the solid black bouts doubled, so now I have a thick and thin fringe on the purple scarf below. The photo below is before I've trimmed the fringe or pressed, so believe me it did improve!
On the raw silk magenta scarf I did groupings of 3 coloured, 5 black repeated along the fringe with no doubling of bouts, so although the scarves are essentially the same, they look very different.

Weaving Words
Greek myth tells of the Moirae or Three Fates, a trinity of weaving sisters who determined the fate of each individual. Clotho – the spinner who spins the tread of life. Lachesis – the measurer who measures out the life span. Atropos – the cutter who brings an end to the thread of life.