Monday, March 26, 2012

Stash Busting Cotton Scarves

I’m working diligently on busting my stash which now hides itself in my guest bedroom closet! My sister-in-law will be visiting in the summer and it would probably be a good idea if she had somewhere to hang her hat! So the stash must be diminished!
In the summer of 2010 I was playing around with Procion MX dyes and painted a skein of natural unmercerized 2/8 cotton half turquoise and half navy.  This photo was taken in my old house....and frankly I really miss having a seperate kitchen where I could hide away my dyeing messes!
This is the resulting skein….really beautiful! The plan for this stash buster is for two canvas weave scarves, each about 70 inches long.
After pulling the 5-1/2 yard warp for the two scarves, this is all the yarn I have left! I know, really, really cutting it close!
I was surprised at how variegated the warp turned out; and surprisingly there seems to be quite a bit of purple in it, although I have no idea where that came from!
This is the first of the two scarves, I’ve crossed it with 2/8  mercerized cotton in pale lilac and have woven the blocks just over two inches in length.
Here are both scarves just off the loom before wet finishing, so they really aren't looking their best right now. I crossed the second scarf with 2/8 orlec in pale porcelain blue and wove the blocks about three inches in length.  Both scarves have been hem stitched to fix the hem and I've allowed ten inches unwoven for the twisted fringe.  The scarves were just over eight inches wide on the loom.
I'm quite amazed at the way the stripes have appeared on the blue scarf, but not very much on the lilac scarf.
I really liked this easy six shaft weave so I have decided to change up the pattern blocks and the treadling and weave another batch of scarves using another dye day skein.
I'll post photos of the scarves when I finally get them washed, beaded and pressed.

3 comments:

dorothylochmaben said...

Lovely summer scarves ! Interesting to see how the variegated yarn works, great result.

Linda said...

It's always amazing to see how a skein that looks more or less two main colors can result with such a nicely blended scarf. I like the combination of your basket weave 'blocks' with cotton. These are lovely!

Susan said...

Its interesting to see the original skein, then how the warp looked once beamed, and then the end result once woven with such contrasting colours!

They look lovely and quite different... but both are very summery.

Susan