Sampling with 'Energized' Yarns, Thanks to Handwoven Magazine and Lunatic Fringe!

It all started with an email from Christina Garton at Handwoven magazine: Lunatic Fringe has a new line of "energized" yarns, called Gevolve, that she would like to feature in a story. (Energized is a broad term referring to yarns that are single-ply, elasticized, overtwisted, or otherwise likely to change shape after washing.) 

I love working with yarns like this because they cause two-dimensional handwoven cloth to pucker, pleat, or pouf in all sorts of organic, unpredictable ways.

Would I be willing to do some samples and write up an article for the Yarn Lab section of the magazine? (The yarns would be free, of course.) Would I be willing? Now what would any self-respecting, full-blooded, stash-loving weaver do?

Also, I'd like to give a shout out to Michele Belson of Lunatic Fringe, who was kind enough to send me more yarn -- MORE YARN -- when I called and said I needed it.

Photo at top: The Gevolve yarns, beginning from the left, are silk elastic in natural and black, linen crepe in Z twist and S twist, and silk crepe in S twist and Z twist. (The S-twist silk crepe is tinted pink to distinguish it from the Z twist. The color washes out after weaving. And the yellow color on the cone on the right is what I call a "yarn bra" -- a plastic mesh sleeve that keeps the yarn from raveling.)

The Yarn Lab piece will appear in the spring 2022 issue of Handwoven, so I'm not to give away any details -- but Christina gave me the OK to share with you some additional samples ahead of time. 

Here's a four-shaft pattern in double weave, using 16/2 bamboo in lime green and magenta in the warp. 

Front of sample: Looks pretty flat, right? On this side of the double-weave cloth, I'm using S-twist silk crepe as the weft. It's drawing in and the effects are seen on the other side.

The weft for this layer is 16/2 bamboo. There are "pockets" in the fabric (openings between the two layers) which crinkle up in response to the draw-in of the active silk-crepe yarn on the other side. The draw-in happens because the 16/2 bamboo is an inactive, non-collapsing yarn.

Here's a closer look at both sides:

Front: Can you see the fine white-ish weft? That's the silk crepe. This yarn is just about 1/3 the grist of the 16/2 bamboo, so it almost disappears in the weaving -- but it has a big impact on the cloth.

Back: The blue weft is 16/2 bamboo. The fabric crinkles where the two layers separate and form "pockets." While the silk crepe draws in, the fabric on the other side collapses because the other yarns are inflexible.

So what are these pockets we're talking about? It's best to start with traditional double weave, which is based on block designs. With double-weave block designs, there are pockets throughout the cloth (if you're using a traditional double-weave tieup and treadling) except for where the layers change places (front layer becomes back and vice versa).

But when you're designing double weave using parallel threadings, you wind up with an integrated double weave (as opposed to block double weave, as mentioned above, or stitched double weave, where the "stitches" uniting the two layers are evenly placed). With integrated double weave, the layers will in some places weave together and interlace. In other places they will separate and form two different layers or pockets. 

Note: This happens with four-color double weave, when you're using two colors in the warp and two colors in the weft. If you weave a four-end parallel threading, using four colors in the warp, you will not get pockets. Just integrated double weave and no chance for collapse effects.

Here are a couple more samples of what energized yarns can do with these structures.

Front of eight-shaft double-weave sample: 16/2 bamboo warps in lime green and magenta and, for this layer, a weft of  Z-twist silk crepe.

Back of eight-shaft double-weave sample: Here, the weft is 16/2 bamboo in lavender. Where the structure forms pockets, you see vertical pleating. The fabric also stretches a bit.

Above, just for fun (because you can't really see the pattern): a four-shaft design using silk-elastic as the weft on this side of the fabric.

This is the other side, which has 16/2 cotton in bright turquoise for the weft. The pockets are long and narrow, but just wide enough to create some interesting texture. The silk-elastic is particularly stretchy and active: It shrinks the cloth to about half its width after washing.

Energized yarns offer so much opportunity for design and function: Think garments that stretch over the body's curves, jackets with self-collars showing the opposite and very different side of the fabric, cloth that pleats and puckers both vertically and horizontally -- or just in certain spots, for added interest.

And also, for the sake of inspiration: How about double-weave cloth that uses fine copper wire as one of the wefts? (I apologize for the small sample, but I ran out of copper wire.) I think of this for a bendable collar or cuffs, as seen in fabrics woven by Lotte Dalgaard.

Front, showing copper wire weft

Back, showing magenta 16/2 bamboo weft

Thanks for reading!

Sett and Re-Sett: Weaving Circles with Echo and Jin

This post is dedicated to Ingrid Boesel, master weaver and, together with her husband, creator of Fiberworks. Ingrid passed away last Friday and weavers around the world will sorely miss her generosity and creativity.

It seems that the more I weave, the more I go back to basics: sett, beat, yarn choices. I think it's important to ask questions all the time, taking nothing for granted.

That's what I've been doing over the past few weeks, weaving up samples for a workshop I'm teaching in April at the New Hampshire Weavers Guild: "Echo and Turned Taqueté for 4 Shafts and More."

Because Echo and Turned Taqueté (now better known as Jin) are warp-emphasis structures, they call for a dense sett: typically more than a twill but less than for double weave. BUT, many folks are weaving 4-color Echo and using a looser sett, even a plain weave sett, because they want to maximize the color effects, creating iridescence by using the same grist yarns in both warp and weft.

For the samples in the photos above, I used 20/2 pearl cotton in the weft and in the warp, which was sett at 36 epi, normally used for plain weave.* I also tried out a variety of weft yarns, all in 20/2 cotton, but using different combinations.

Here's what the pattern looks like woven as Jin, adding a tabby treadling.

Same threading, same sett, different treadling. And the circles are ovals. (Jin, because you're inserting tabby, always stretches out the pattern.)

Here's the drawdown for the Echo design at the top of this post. (Let me know if you want me to share the WIF with you.) I cropped the image, because it's way too big to show any details otherwise. I've used an advancing point twill in the threading and treadling both, so that the circles change in subtle ways across the design.

But back to sett. I really loved the way this fabric turned out, surprisingly, as the sett is way more open than I've ever used for Echo. So, out of curiosity, I decided to re-sley the warp at 48 epi, which is a twill sett for 20/2 cotton. I changed the tieup and treadlings as well because I still wanted rounded shapes.

So here's a different tieup and treading, sett at 48 epi.

Four colors total in warp and weft, and I'm still getting those rounded shapes, although I don't like this design as well.

Next I wanted to see what happened at 60 epi, which is a traditional sett for Echo (denser than twill at 48 epi, but more open than double weave at 72 epi). And I had to rework the treadling again to compensate for the denser sett.

This time I used a 12-weight embroidery thread for the weft (about 10,000 yards per pound), because I wanted a finer yarn. It's a variegated thread in shades of green, which adds a kind of sparkle to the fabric.

Here's what the same design looks like with a weft of 60/2 silk (a sort of coral color, which you see in the middle section of this sample).

So much more to do -- and to show you! I started playing with the treadling, like so:

Which resulted in a completely different look that I like very much -- except I should have tried different colors for the weft (I used gold and red in 20/2 cotton for this sample).

I also tried a networked treadling (achieved by clicking on the treadling dropdown menu in Fiberworks, selecting "Fill Treadling" and choosing the "Redraw on Network" command). It's similar to the circles design in the photo at the top of this post, yet slightly different in that the blocks seem to show more.

And then there's this variation in the treadling:

Which results in this pattern:

I got here very easily, thanks to Fiberworks, again by clicking on the "Treadling" dropdown menu and then clicking on "Fill Treadling" and choosing a 13-thread Extended Twill. (Remember that I'm using the Mac version, so it might be different in the PC version.)

Lots of ways to weave in circles. Please try this at home! And thanks for reading.

*For those who aren't familiar with the Master Yarn Chart, a free PDF download from Interweave, it's a great resource. In it, you'll find the grist and three recommended setts (for lace, plain weave, and double weave) for every yarn that has been used in projects for Handwoven magazine since 2000. When I'm weaving with a new yarn, I use the Master Yarn Chart as a guide and adjust my sett if necessary after that.

Echo and Jin: Optimizing Color with Two Painted Warps

The headline is a mouthful, but the photo above says it better. It's an Echo pattern on eight harnesses, designed by Bonnie Inouye and published in the January/February 2008 issue of Handwoven magazine ("Two Patterns for Two Scarves," available by clicking here.)

I wove this sample using 17/2 silk noil for the warps (two separate warps painted in two different color palettes using Pro MX Fiber Reactive Dyes) and 20/2 pearl cotton in navy for the weft. The warp is threaded on opposites, allowing for two different colors to play with (or against, depending on your eye) each other in the pattern. The treadling too provides for wonderful curves and waves in the design.

The beauty part of this Echo draft is that you can also weave Jin by adding tabby. This is the second pattern that Bonnie refers to in the title of her article. Here is the same threading, with tabby, woven as Jin.

Yes! It looks longer, of course, because you've added tabby. But it's equally lovely, in my opinion, and the color shifts are just as interesting, thanks to the painted warp -- warps, really, because (at the risk of repeating myself) you're using two different painted warps together.

(A brief promotional bit here. I'm teaching the technique in July at the MAFA Conference at Millersville University in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Providing the course fills, that is. The name of the course: "Paint 2, Beam 1," and the aim is to create an ever-changing color palette for your warp, maximizing visual interest using a range of weaving structures.)

In the Handwoven piece, Bonnie has offered a different tieup and treadling for the Jin, which looks like this.

The drape of this fabric is wonderful, by the way. I wouldn't use it for a scarf, by any means, but it would certainly work for a jacket or coat. One caveat: silk noil in the warp is a bit tricky, as it tends to fray and break easily. The two-ply yarn offered me some surprises, to say the least, but the way it took the dye -- simply gorgeous! Silk never fails to please.