12 Shaft Twills in Rainbow Colours or It Is Dark and Stormy and I Want to See the Sun!

The first project of the New Year is . . . scarves!  I wanted to do something bright and colourful because of the stormy winter weather, although on the West Coast we don't have the polar vortex issue that the East Coast does.

I looked through the 2/8 Tencel colours and found that I could make a rainbow (ROY G. BIV).  I used Scarlet, Orange, Yellow, Mineral Green, Blueberry, Iris and Red Purple which I separated with Black. 

I found a lovely 12 Shaft pattern on Handweaving.net that made little dots, reminiscent of the water droplets that make up a rainbow.  The only problem I had was that on treadle 1 I had to lift 8 shafts and it was really heavy.  So heavy that the loom groaned a little so I had to help lift the harnesses up which is a bit of a no no.  And I rocked a bit on my seat, which hurt my tush.

The fix is really easy, just flip the tie up but I had woven too much to change on this scarf so the weaving was quite slow.  I did change the tie up in the computer draft and put a note in the printed draft because I know that I will weave this pretty little pattern again.

I always put on enough warp for two scarves, it is much more economical.  Since I was going to have to change the tie up anyway to stop the moaning and groaning from both the loom and me, I decided to completely change the pattern. 

I wanted a pattern that I didn't have to change the threading and that looked good in the stripes.  The pattern is another 12 Shaft Twill that I found on Handweaving.net and it is even from the same book, a 1920’s Italian book.

This time I checked the tie up and made sure that the least number of harnesses were being raised.  So I did end up flipping the tie up and it really did make a huge difference on how fast the scarf was woven.  I was able to weave faster and for much longer at a sitting and amazingly I was able to finish the scarf in one sitting.