Piano Scarves

I meant to weave these piano scarves earlier in the year but I've finally got them on the loom now.  In the spring I placed an order with Brassards for some more white chenille, as I didn’t have enough left in the stash do make a piano scarf warp; it really takes a lot of white chenille.

Last week when I pulled all the chenille out of the cupboard, I found that I had a little bit leftover from last time that I wove these scarves which was also from Brassards.  So, I eyeballed the old cone to the new cone and it looked like it matched, you don’t really expect white to be that different.  Well it was really different; the little leftover cone is really creamy next to the new chenille as you can see in the photo below.  Unfortunately I didn’t find out until I had finished pulling my warp, while it wasn’t very many ends it was long, over 7 yards which is long enough for three scarves.

So I pulled everything off the warping board and started again.  Although, I first had to check my math to make sure that I had enough white chenille for all three scarves.  Luckily, I do have enough white chenille.  After all that everything went smoothly and I have just finished my second piano scarf.  Tomorrow I will start the third and final scarf.

I’ll show you the finished scarves next time.  For now I have the creamy white chenille sitting on the mantle in the studio while I am trying to think of a cool project to do with it.  I am hoping that I have enough to do a black piano scarf; I think that it would be cool.

Final Garden Shot is Himalayan honeysuckle (Leycesteria formosa).  The plant is over 6 feet tall and the long burgundy bracts have both white flowers and purple/brown seeds that are edible and taste like treacle.  The honey bees just love this plant; it blooms from late spring until winter.

Piano Scarves . . . yet again

I know that I have said that I probably wouldn’t do the piano scarves again, but what can you do when the yarn literally shows up at your house?!  Thanks Susan!

I have a lot of notes for these scarves, even weights!  I rarely weigh warp or weft but I do find the information really useful and it is something that I should do more often.  So I did some math and figured out that I could do three scarves.  (There was a second white cone).

They actually wove up really fast this time.  I soon had a large roll of keyboards on my cloth beam.  I may actually want to weave some again!

Then they got put into a drawer and forgotten about over the summer.  I have just washed and dried them ready to hem.

Here they are done and ready for sale.

They are up on Etsy but I think that I will be at least one to the guild sale on November 24-25 at the Rotary House in Qualicum Beach.

Final Garden Shot is the damage that the surprise snow fall did to the garden.

Clasped Weft with 8 Shaft Undulating Twill

This is another post of a forgotten project from when I was a part of a study group on Inlay last year. While technically Clasped Weft isn’t Inlay you can use it to get a look very similar to Inlay without all the problems.

The scarf warp is 2/8 Tencel in Straw and I choose a simple undulating twill for the pattern.  Clasped Weft is usually done with plain weave but I wanted a more interesting design; but it had still had to be simple.

I used two end feed shuttles that had 2/8 Tencel in Straw and a small bobbin with thick and thin hand dyed Silk in various shades of oranges and golds.

The centre panel of the scarf is the orange silk that is clasped to each side of the scarf.  I gently pulled the warp threads apart to place the silk bobbin inside of the shed.

I would then pull the bobbin to the right side and then back to the left while unraveling thread to create a loop.  Leaving the bobbin on the left side of the warp.

Then with the shuttle from the right side throw the shuttle to the left side, then clasp the silk and throw the shuttle back to the right side.  Be careful to miss the floating selvedge on the left side but use the one on the right.

With the clasped silk thread you can manipulate it to where you want each particular pick to lay.  Set the pick with a gentle tap of the beater.

That is only half of the pick done, now move silk bobbin back through the shed to the right side creating a second loop.  Use the shuttle from the left hand side and capture the silk loop.  And pull the clasped weft into position on the left side.  Set the pick with a gentle tap of the beater.

    

Last step is to remove the silk bobbin from the web.  Then you can change to the next treadle and start everything again.  If that seems like a lot of steps and time, well it was!  It took me about an hour to do one inch!  Near the end of the scarf I was able to go a bit faster and do two inches per hour. Tedious doesn't even begin to express it!

I didn’t have a plan on where I wanted to have the orange silk, but I did have a couple of rules that I followed.  I didn’t go past one inch from the edges and I used the strong pattern changes to help hide to clasped weft loops.

The twill pattern became a texture because each pick was a double thread pick.  The texture is still part of the scarf even after washing and steam pressing the scarf.

The scarf is incredibly graphic and it really showcases the variegated orange silk beautifully.

But it is a very time consuming scarf so I don’t see doing another one ever again!  For Sale.

Final Garden Shot is the Fothergilla in bloom, it has loads of sweetly scented bottlebrush blooms.

Inspiration from Piano Scarves

Have you got your copy of Handwoven May/June 2016 yet?  In it Peg Cherre from Weaving a Gem of a Life has an article.  She made a spectacular Cityscape scarf with inspiration from my weft clasped chenille piano scarves from all the way back in 2011!  It is super cool that the blog has inspired someone; I know that I get inspired from other blogs.

Here I would show a picture of the Handwoven Magazine but I haven’t received my copy yet!

So I might as well do an update on the latest batch of piano scarves.  I had a problem with the dryer it made some holes in the hem area of one of the piano scarves.  So I had to remove my preferred pointy end and just do a squared off hem.  But they still look great.  You can see an example of pointy end hem on the diversified plain weave polka dot scarf.

I still need to finish hemming one scarf and taking new pictures for Etsy but they will be up for sale soon.

Piano Scarves – Again

When Mum and I cleaned out the stash in January, we found some black and white chenille, which I only use for one thing – Piano Scarves!  There was only a little bit of white left; just enough for two scarves.

The warp is white chenille with a band of black on one side.  The draft is just a four shaft plain weave.  All the patterning comes from the clasped weft technique.

I use a large 15 inch boat shuttle made by Little Man Howell to hold the chenille.  It holds enough chenille on it for more than half of a scarf, about forty inches.  It is just amazing.

The scarves wove up quite fast this time.  But I caught the ‘flu and I have been sick for a couple of weeks.  So the scarves have been sitting in a pile waiting for me to hem them.  I’ll get to them soon, promise!

Whenever I do these scarves I always run out of warp.  I have had to add extenders onto the warp a couple of times.  So this time I added extra warp - just 18 inches - but enough I hoped.  Well somehow I ended up with 53 inches of warp left over!

Not enough to do anything with – or is it ?!  Find out in the next blog post.

Final Garden Shot is the first leaves and catkins on the weeping variegated willow.  So pretty!