Twill Shawls

I was browsing through my yarn stash in early April and stopped to admire the large quantity of Malibrigo wool sock yarns that had been collecting over the past few years.  Each time my local Ben Franklin had a sale, I picked up a new skein.  They are wonderful yarns with so much color it makes my heart sing when I look at them.  (Which is exactly why I bought them in the first place).  I started laying the yarns out  to see how the colors meshed and then added some more sock yarns from my stash that I had dyed and others that a friend had dyed (Wooly Daisy).  Shawls, I thought.  Big woolen shawls with loads of color.

The first thing was the design and since there were so many colors, I opted for twill blocks.  A three block profile was established and this gave me the option of weaving off the blocks with different treadling sequences. 

After carefully weighing the yarns or seeing what yardages were on each skein,  My calculations told me I had enough yarn for 12 yards at 28" wide and I plotted out the color stripes, keeping in mind how many yards of wool I had in each color.

As I started winding the warp on the beam, I found that some of the yarns had more elasticity to them than others.  Warning bells went off in my head.  This would mean that after these yarns were released from tension, they would contract differently than the others, leaving ripples in the finished cloth.  I had to pull off some of my stripes (sectional warping made it possible) and actually buy more yarn to fill in the spaces.  My original stripe plan was altered as I warped - for better or worse, who knew?

I devised several drafts to fit the striping and added a basketweave selvedge to the edges.  I thought that I could do some shawls with blocks of broken twill and some with straight four thread twills.  Because each block of twill requires four shafts, the main body of the shawls required 12 shafts with another four shafts for the selvedge. (16 shafts in all).

Once the loom was warped, I wondered what color weft should I use to unify the dizzying array of color stripes?  I found some nice dark teal wool, a meadow green (the cone said it was cashmere - I'm not convinced) and finally some nubby silk that I dyed in a dark purple blue.

 

I hoped that I would have enough warp for four shawls, but sometimes my block sequence begged for a bit longer piece, so I wove them out at close to 100" more or less.  Big shawls that make a bold statement when worn.

 

I look at the shawls draped on my mannequin and wonder if the orange stripes aren't a bit too bright for the rest of the warp.  The red seems OK, but the orange?  Well, it is what it is.

 



It's Called Imbrication!

At a weaver's estate sale, I picked up a copy of The Virginia West Swatch Book.  It has some lovely weaving ideas and one that clicked with me was a draft that she called Imbrication.  As she explains in the book, imbrication is the overlapping of tiles, scales and shingles. 

 



Here is a close up of the shawl I wove using this draft.  I used up balls and balls of cotton dye samples that a friend gave me when she cleaned out her studio and interspersed them with 5 or 6 colors of blues and blue green cotton in the warp. To make the shawl a bit more luxurious to touch, I used one strand of tencel and one of bamboo in black for the weft yarn.  Then, I finished the ends of the warp with a picot bead edge, rather than a plain hem or twisted fringe.

Here is the draft.  The threading can be used on quite a variety of weaving drafts.  Take a look at Double Two-Tie Unit Weaves by Clotilde Barrett and Eunice Smith if you have a copy for ideas.  One thing is that this threading seems to be treadle hungry and you may have to use a skeleton tie up. 

Draft for the fancy yarns

 

A friend of mine wanted to know how to use some handspun art yarns in weaving and I have often had a similar dilemma.  I have used the draft shown above many times and find that it has a multitude of looks depending on the yarns you use. 

 

Here is the way to use the draft with thicker fancy yarns and thin plain ones.  The warp is a smooth yarn and sett according to the grist of the yarn for plain weave.  The weft yarn shown in gray is either the same as the warp (can also be the same color) or finer than the warp.  Four shots of that in a half basket.  Then two shots of your heavier fancy yarn.  Of course, you will have two shuttles going.  The best way to do this is to start each shuttle from a different side of the warp so that the selvedges get picked up and the yarn not being used carries along neatly.

 

 

 The black and multicolored shawl above was woven with Noro  as the thin yarn and black rayon chenille as the heavy yarn.  Unfortunately, the chenille wasn't locked in well enough with a slick warp and has a tendency to worm.  Pretty - but not saleable. 

The red shawl was woven with  Sari Silk yarn as the thick and black silk for the thinner yarn.

Because the thick yarns are spaced out with four shots of plain weave in a fine yarn, the shawls are flexible and drape well. 

The Whole Nine Yards

These three shawls were on my loom for a very long time but were finally finished the later part of October and I'm just getting around to putting this blog post together. Nothing but procrastination here! The shawl in the photo above is called Morocco Sands and I was really excited that it turned out well because I took a leap of faith when I chose the weft color. The warp for all three shawls was a rayon boucle in a dull rose and a 16/2 bright coral ring spun rayon. I had a chartreuse boucle on my shelves that appeared to be just about the same value as the combined warp color, so I went for it. Irridescence was achieved and I was so pleased that I got it right!

This shawl is called Glen Eagle and is one of my one shuttle plaid designs. Actually, the plaid is in the weave structure which is a networked twill threading and treadling. The tie up was 3/1 and 1/3 twill blocks. The twill blocks are shattered in the weave structure and fade in and out on the shawl.

This last shawl is called Esperanza for "hope" in the cure for breast cancer. I'm donating the entire amount of my sale proceeds to Women of Worth, in Grass Valley.