Designing Collapse Fabrics with Deflected Double Weave

The main reason I love to play with collapse techniques is the element of surprise they offer: What you cut off the loom is seldom the same fabric after washing! I wove the sample above on 8 shafts, using 4 colors of 10/2 pearl cotton. It's a simple design using 4 blocks -- but what makes the difference here is that I alternated Venne Colcolastic cotton with 10/2 cotton in the weft. (I purchased the Colcolastic from Giovanna Imperia at the 2018 Convergence conference in Reno. She offers a large range of exotic and energized yarns for creating fabrics with texture.)

Here's what the sample looked like before washing.

And here's a closer look, showing you (if you look very closely) the two separate strands of the Colcolastic, which is 93% pearl cotton and 7% Lycra.

As I wove the sample, I had a feeling I would like the results -- but not that I would like them this much! I decided to add plain weave at the end of the sample, because plain weave will ruffle nicely when it's adjacent to a collapse fabric.

It's just a sample, but you get the idea. I can see a lovely cotton scarf in this design, easy to care for and fun to wear.

Some background here: I'm weaving up a series of samples for a new workshop I'm putting together, "Designing with Deflected Double Weave." I will be teaching this December 13-15 at the Weaving and Fiber Arts Center in East Rochester, NY, and then again in February at the Telerana Fiber Arts Guild in Mesa, AZ. The program chairs in Mesa asked me to leave wool out of the mix -- because clearly they have little use for wool in Arizona! At first, I was puzzled, because wool is so often a key fiber for people who like to design Deflected Double Weave. 

But then I started sampling, determined not to use wool. And I came upon this idea, creating alternating layers and then leaving two layers separate from each other....

And then I wove this sample, alternating 6 picks of hand-dyed silk ribbon with 16 picks of 10/2 cotton. The cotton floats on the back of the piece draw in and make the silk wefts collapse vertically, which creates an appearance of horizontal ribs.

And then I wove this, a more traditional Deflected Double Weave sample, alternating gold gimp in the weft with 10/2 cotton.

And another surprise, on a second warp of different colors, created a "gang weave" of warp and weft floats on two of the blocks.

The workshop is designed to give participants a choice of drafts on 4, 8 and 12 shafts. The threading will remain the same as we explore what happens when we change the tieup, treadling, and weft yarns. 

The challenge I've found in designing with Deflected Double Weave is that the drawdown is harder to read than with other structures, so that what you think you see in the drawdown is not always what you get in the weaving! Which makes it all the more interesting.

Here, for your consideration, is the threading I started with for all these samples, before I began to alter the tieups, treadlings, and weft yarns. This draft was the one I used for the sample pictured above featuring the silk-ribbon weft in an olive color. Let me know if you would like me to send it to you. And thanks for reading.

Collapse Fabric in Twill Blocks with 60/2 Silk and... Mystery Yarn

I am very happy with this sample! However, there were plenty of obstacles in beaming this warp. And then there's the question of the mystery yarn....

Here it is (next photo, below) on the loom -- about 12" wide in the reed with two different wefts. The weft in the bottom sample is from Giovanna Imperia. It's an Italian 100% cotton crepe in a terra cotta color. At 24,000 yards per pound, it's perfect for a collapse weft on a 60/2 silk warp.

The weft on the top is a silk tram, purchased from John Marshall at Convergence in 2014. Gorgeous pale olive color! Slippery as anything, but about the grist of 120/2 silk -- which is also great for a collapse effect on this warp.

And here's the draft. Simple enough.

I wound a warp of 9.5 yards, 756 ends, with alternating stripes of 12 ends each using 60/2 silk in orange and a variegated hand-dyed yarn I purchased from Randall Darwall -- also at Convergence in 2014.

Darwall is a brilliant weaver and dyer. I loved the yarn. Looked like silk to me. Trouble is, I could not, for the life of me, figure out what the grist was. I think, based on the inaccurate measurements of my McMorran Balance, that it's somewhere around 18,000 yards per pound. I sent it to Michael Cook, dedicated lover of all things silk and creator of Wormspit.com, to test it to see whether it was fine silk still in the gum. He sent back the disappointing answer that it was rayon or some kind of cellulose fiber.

Still, it was gorgeous and I started beaming the warp. Long story short, rayon -- and more specifically, Lyocell -- have a strong tendency to pill (or as the experts call it, fibrillate). This means that the yarns will often get stuck together, bound by these tiny and incredibly annoying fibrous pills. I spent an inordinate amount of time breaking them up, sometimes resorting to using a seam ripper.

Still, eventually, I was able to beam the entire warp. And the yarn is gorgeous, in the subtle colors that Darwall uses so well. 60 ends per inch, and no breaking whatsoever.

Here's the sample just off the loom.

You can see that it already tends to create vertical pleats, even before washing. And after washing in hot water and mild soap, with a bit of coaxing by pulling on the fabric vertically, the fabric collapses nicely.

All's well that ends well! Or begins, as I'm starting to weave a set of samples for the next Collapse Weave Study Group sample exchange (a study group of the Complex Weavers). Thanks for reading!