Autumn Leaves Silk Scarf

In the last post I mentioned that the hand painted 2/22 silk warp that I had picked for my latest project looked like autumn leaves with its splashes of red, orange, plum, brown and moss.  So I went with a tried and true pattern, a 10 shaft network twill that I think looks like leaves.  It can be difficult to pick a weft colour, I like to try a lot before deciding.  First lot of weft choices are 2/8 Tencel, in scarlet, moss and spice.  I wanted to pick colours in the warp so I could highlight the colours of the warp but, nope, nothing worked, it all kind of blended into the warp.

Next weft choices are purple Tencel in amethyst, blue/purple and eggplant.  The eggplant is a possibility as it tones down the orange but the other colours in the warp can be seen.

The last weft choices are gold Tencel in straw, Havana (bronze), gold, taupe and old gold.  I like the two gold colours.  But I’m finding the sett of the warp to be too far apart at 24 epi, especially since the warp has been washed once already in the dyeing process.

I changed the reed to a 14 dent so now the epi is 28 and I’m much happier.  I also retested the short list of weft colours, gold, eggplant and straw.

The winner is eggplant!  And now you can see the leaf pattern in the network twill.

After three repeats of the pattern I’m getting some strange looping with the weft on the left hand side on the scarf.

I think that the looping is caused by one of the shafts, in the photo you can see that one of the shafts is rising higher than the others.

I lowered the tie on texsolv loops on the treadles that corresponded with the shaft that was too high.  I also added four threads of eggplant Tencel to each edge of the scarf to make a border to also help with the looping.

The loops have disappeared and I think that the eggplant makes for a nice frame for the scarf.

Final Garden Photo this week I thought it was going to be daffodils blooming but we got one last snow storm.

10 Shaft Crackle Silk Scarf for Autumn

  My autumn crackle scarf is off the loom today, and I’m totally chuffed!

This scarf has been a joy to weave right from the beginning.  The colours of the silk were so inspiring and I loved seeing the foreshadowing of the pattern from the back of the loom.

Notice the floating selvedges?  On my last few projects I have doubled the floating selvedges on each side to give added presence to the edges and to help negate fraying.  It seems to have worked and I will continue to use a doubled floating selvedges when using silk and tencel.

The gold weft really is working well with all of the different colours in the warp, it contrasts beautifully with the burgundy and the olive and when it hits the brown portion, it just gleams like silk should.

The crackle trellis pattern was a really lovely weave, it is treadled as an advancing twill with fairly short runs that are woven from 1 – 10 and then reversed from 10 – 1.

I wove right up to the end of the warp and frankly couldn’t get any shed at all by the end of it.  I just managed to get 70 inches with the tension off.  I expect that I will end up with a scarf between 67 and 69 inches.

Here is the scarf right off the loom in our very weak November sunshine.

Same scarf and hour later in much stronger sun.  

The last two silk scarves have had their final photos taken and now are up on the store, WovenBeauty, on Etsy.  The first is the yellow and blue scarf, For Sale.

The second is the blue polka dots with the centre panel of pink and orange silk, For Sale.

The Difference is in the Sett

 I have just put the third of my hand painted silk warps on the loom.  This time I’ve chosen to weave a 30/2 tussah silk warp painted in olive, plum and bronze, very autumnal.

When I am planning a project there are a few things that I need to know up front: the number of warp ends that I have to work with, and how close to sley the reed being the two most important.

When I first started weaving I bought Mary E Black’s The Key to Weaving which I swear contains everything you need to know about weaving within its 698 pages.  At the very end of the book in the appendix lies a sleying table with some common setts.  This is a good, but dated chart of what was commonly used in the 1950’s.

Mary Black’s table contains the grist, the fibre and setts for loose plain weave, firm plain weave and twill.  For example 8/2 cotton is sett at 20 epi for loose plain weave, 24 for firm plain weave and 28 for twill.  Years ago I put all of this information onto an Excel spreadsheet and I have been updating it with new information ever since including yards per pound and the sett for lace if I can find it.  My chart states that 30/2 should be sett at 26 epi for loose plain weave, 32 epi for firm plain weave and 40 epi for twill. I looked at my reeds and chose to sley the cloth at 36 epi, so 3 per dent in a 12 dent reed.

Once I had it sleyed I thought it looked a tad crammed, but I hoped that slimming down the weft would be the answer.  I tried 10/2 tencel in red and 20/2 tencel in black and neither of them were good.  The red tencel just fused into the back ground with the warp and the black tencel was too spidery.

I thought that the warp just looked too tight overall.

I decided to re-sley the warp at 30 epi, so 2 per dent in a 15 dent reed and I’m much happier with the look of the warp although the scarf will be a tad wider than anticipated since I had 256 ends of warp, I now have a 8 1/2 inch wide scarf.

The pattern I’ve chosen for this scarf is a 10 shaft Crackle weave grid and the weft I’ve chosen is 8/2 tencel in gold. Now I’ve just got to buckle down and weave it.

Can you see them?  We got 12 golf ball sized oranges off our wee tree and there is candied orange peel in our future.  

Autumn Hand Painted Silk Scarf on Ten

It’s been quite awhile since I sat at the loom.  Spring and summer are always so very busy in the garden and with just enjoying the lovely weather; that weaving takes a back seat.

A few weeks ago we pulled out all the natural coloured silk we had and spent four days painting and washing silk warps ready for the cool weather when weaving beside the fire is the perfect way to spend a day.

This is one of the first warps I painted and I gravitated toward it because it looks just like the Raywood Ash tree in our garden.  The colours are moss, plum, fuchsia and old gold, so autumnal.  

Once I got it on the loom I realized that this is a very busy warp . So naturally I had trouble with choosing a weft that didn’t mute any of the colours or just fade against them. The first wefts I auditioned were moss, gold and red/violet.  The red/violet was the clear winner in this batch.

This batch is purple, navy and the red/violet again and the red/violet is the winner, it's a brave choice, but a stunning one I think.

Since it has been months since I last wove I wanted an easy weave to treadle. The pattern I decided upon is a 10 shaft undulating twill that has a lovely feathery pattern and as a bonus it has a straight twill treadling 1-10, a perfect way to limber up my weaving legs.  This is the draft I used.

All the pattern set up is in the tie up and the threading.

The sheen on this silk is coming through beautifully and frankly although this is waaay out of my comfort zone,  and I’m loving it.

Today I got the scarf off the loom and here she is in all her glory before wet finishing.  It will look scads better after a good wash and press, but I’m still really stoked with it.

Even though it's not yet wet finished it still looked good on the mannikin.

We have ventured into the world of Brugmansia this year and I’ve just got to say WOW!  This is Madame de Pompadour and the blossoms are a full 16 inches in length and these blooms smell amazing in the evening. The first shot is just as she's opening.

This shot is in her full glory.

Silk and Tencel Scarf on Ten Shafts

I have had some hand dyed 2/12 silk in Denim Blue in my stash for a while now.  I keep looking at the hanks and wondering how to showcase the lovely randomness of the colour. The silk has been dyed so that the colours are pretty even throughout the skein with small lines of darker blue here and there, but as always with hand dyed there could be some unexpected surprise spots.

I chose a graphic ten shaft, ten treadle twill and I have treadled ‘as drawn in’. Hopefully I have allowed the colour variations to shine through. The warp has 200 threads and it is sett at 24 epi.  

The scarf it a little wider than usual, but that is the only way I could centre the motif.

I love to show the threading from the back of the loom.  It really gives a forecast of the overall shape of the pattern that is to come. This one has definite diamonds.

My weft is 2/8 white Tencel and I aimed for a 50/50 weave to keep the pattern square.  Beat is really important when you have such a strong square over pattern.  White was a quiet choice for this scarf, but I really liked the idea of having a low contrast with high lustre to allow the pattern to gleam through.  

This is the scarf off the loom but prior to washing.  You can see there is some difference between the front and the back, the blue and the white trade places throughout the motif. 

Sorry about the lighting, but we’ve been overcast for weeks it seems; my counter top is bright white and grey, not this weird yellow tinge!  

Another shot showing both sides of the scarf.  There are really two patterns at work here, the big square boxes and the diamond stars in the centre.

And one more beauty shot.

Baked a couple of loaves this morning and Oh My! The house smells wonderful.