Monday, September 7, 2009

Digitized Huck Lace ~ or ~ What the Huck?

It’s Duck! What’s Duck you may well ask – well, it’s what happens when you take an eight harness Huck Lace and use the options that come with PCW weaving program. You know, it’s one of those options that you don’t know what they do or when to use them; well here is what could happen. So, if you take Huck and Digitzed it, you get Duck! To continue my weaving education Mum thought that I should do a fundamental weave structure, one that is much loved by weavers, Huck Lace. So I went looking for a pattern and I found one which was networked but it was on 16 shafts and it couldn’t be reduced to the 8 I have. So . . . we found an 8 harness Huck Lace and played with it. What we did with it I can’t really remember as we tried a lot of the options; some worked and some didn’t but what we ended up with is really cool! It has large medallions that are connected by trellis work. This is no longer a true Huck Lace, but it is in the spirit of Huck Lace. Because the pattern had large floats, Mum and I chose to use 2/18 mercerized cotton in a light clear coral colour. The floats are less then ¼ inch long, which make them structurally sound enough for a scarf, this pattern was designed for very fine yarn. Bravely, I think, we chose to use a magenta silk noil as the weft. This scarf is hot, hot, hot! The pattern is the most complicated I have done to date, but it was so rewarding to weave that I had no trouble keeping my interest. The magenta weft really changed the look of the coral warp, it has almost a coppery colour now, and is amazingly iridescent. The fringe was just plain coral and it really didn’t reference the scarf so I added extra magenta silk to the edges of the fringe. Adding the extra threads made a huge difference to the fringe. The photo below shows the front and the back side by side and as you can see, it’s a reversal, with one side slightly more weft faced than the other. It was great fun to experiment with PCW and Huck was a great structure to play with. I love the fact that this scarf is a one of a kind in so many ways.

11 comments:

bspinner said...

All I can say is beautiful!!!!

I love the two colors you chose for this scarf. Duck weave. Interesting and very nice!

Delighted Hands said...

Wow-this is incredible! Congrats.

Life Looms Large said...

Cool - I love the color choice and the design! Great job!!

Thanks for the picture of both sides! I was wondering what the other side looked like!

Congrats on another successful project!

Sue

Geodyne said...

Ngaire, that's absolutely *gorgeous*. And thankyou: you've just given me an idea for how to use all the 10/1 silk noil I have in my stash!

charlotte said...

This is absolutely beautiful! I love the colors and the structure!

India said...

Very nice!It is so fun to do experiment in the loom, but it is not so often I get a god result.

Sunrise Lodge Fiber Studio said...

The colors are fantastic!!! Great scarf!!!;)

Kim said...

Oh, lovely! It is truly beautiful.

Dorothy said...

Hot and tasty!! Love that finishing touch to the fringe, bet it's good to wear?

Sharon said...

It shimmers! Those two colors - um, well, I sewed myself a maternity bathing suit in them because I was living the Philippines. I wanted to swim, couldn't find a suit larger than a Philippina could wear, so went to market, found those colors and stitched away. I even sewed a contrast flower at my navel.

Now women just wear bikinis. In retrospect, that makes so much more sense.

donna said...

What a beautiful scarf! I love the colors & am inspired to use Huck Lace for a scarf also. I enjoy your blog. Thank you!