How Many Samples Does It take to Get It Right?

Answer: As many as it takes. 

Which is kind of discouraging but, as they say, the truth hurts ;o)

The sample above is the best one, but it's the final one: it took me five other samples to get there! It's a 6-shaft Deflected Double Weave design that I'm working on. I want to weave what I'm calling a "Puzzle Scarf," just because it looks like a lot of fun.

I love the complexity of it and the mystery of how this can be done on 6 shafts. I also love the texture of this piece: It starts out as gauze on the loom, but when you full it with hot water, soap and agitation, it turns into a pretty indestructible piece of cloth.

Here's what it looks like on the loom:

And here's what it looks like before fulling:

The process of fulling for this is fairly detailed, as you have to take the piece out of the water, wring it out and lay it out flat about every half minute in order to make sure that none of the "puzzle parts" stick together. You really want to define the image of three intertwining layers in the cloth. 

So what about all the sampling? Bottom line, it's really necessary for some pieces. I believe that, if you take your work seriously -- that is, if you aim for certain results and you're intent on achieving them -- you have to do what it takes to get there. 

Still, sometimes you have to fight the discouragement that comes with yet another bad sample, yet another re-sleying, yet another re-threading.... I think, as a weaver or a fiber artist, you do understand!

OK, the first sample. I wound a warp of 18/2 superfine merino from JaggerSpun in three colors, as you can see: red, burgundy, and purple. My sett was 24 epi in a 12-dent reed but I had to sley the reed with empty spaces between the colors to get the effect I wanted.

In the case of my first sample, I sleyed 6 ends per color and left 2 empty dents between each color. Which, after fulling, was too dense for my taste, giving the cloth the hand of a jacket fabric rather than that for a scarf.

Too dense

For my second sample, I overcompensated: I again sleyed 6 ends per color but then left 4 empty dents per color in a 12-dent reed. 

Looks like a confusing but colorful fishing net.

The trouble in this case was that my motifs were elongated (if you look carefully at the red warp and weft, for instance, you'll see long rectangles rather than squares). So my beat was off. And the cords that formed after fulling were way too thin, which meant that I had to re-thread from 6 ends per color to 12 ends per color.

Which I did, and came up with this.

OK, so we're looking better, but still the motifs vary in shape.

My next thought was to re-sley so that there were just 3 empty dents between each color. And to try to beat more steadily so that each color formed a square (looking at both warp and weft together).

Better yet, but the cords are still too thin for me.

Back to the heddles, re-threading so that I would have 18 ends per color, still leaving 3 empty dents between each color.

Now we're getting somewhere -- but the cords aren't fully fulled ;o)

Understand that, with each sample, I was learning a lot and I was gaining practice. I realized through this process that -- because this cloth is kind of a messy-looking fabric, with organic shapes and spaces in between the plain-woven blocks -- I had to finesse some of the details. I had to make it as tidy as possible, you might say. To me, this meant fulling the cords till they were solid (which involved sometimes cutting a wayward thread or two after fulling). 

I think the results are worth it. But I have to confess, now I'm at the end of the warp! I have no warp left to weave that scarf I was planning, which adds yet another step to the project: re-winding another warp and re-dressing my loom. I'm not entirely unhappy with this, as I want to try different colors next time.

Thanks for reading!

Waves of Color: Double Weave with Echo Threadings

"Knit on with confidence and hope through all crises."

Elizabeth Zimmerman

As usual, Elizabeth Zimmerman nailed it: Substitute "weave" for "knit" and that's some of the best advice I can think of in these troubled times. 

So let's look at one of the most beautiful techniques weavers have been focusing on lately (at least judging from Facebook and Instagram and texts I've gotten from friends).

There's this gorgeous piece, from my fellow upstate New Yorker, Amy Parker (first photo shows side one, second photo shows side two):

This is an 8-shaft double-weave fabric woven on 32 treadles with a variety of warp and weft yarns, according to Amy, all around the grist of 10/2 cotton. Each vertical section has 2 colors in the warp and 2 in the weft, so the back side of the piece looks different from the front.

The draft is by Marian Stubenitsky, who generously shared it here on handweaving.net. (It looks a little dark in this reproduction, but hopefully you get the idea.)

Here are some 32-shaft samples by Susan Weigel Balascio, posted recently on Instagram. The samples, using fine threads in the warp, are wonderful. One half of her warp was black merino and pale yellow and the other half was 20/2 Tencel in blues and purples. In the first sample below, she alternated purple merino and a thin red/gold film for her weft yarns. For the second sample, her weft yarns were 38-gauge copper doubled and a 3-ply green silk.

While photos are great for observing color and form, there is no substitute for the sense of touch, to know the hand of a fabric. Susan says the samples are light and lofty, which is ideal for collapse fabrics. Thank you, Susan! 

As for me, sheltering in place with my husband and my looms, I've been weaving up lots of samples with 4-color warps, in preparation for workshops I hope to begin teaching online. The photos below show both the front and back sides.

The thing I like about this last sample is the texture, produced by using 18/2 merino for one of the wefts. The technique is known as differential shrinkage, where one fiber shrinks (the wool) while the other does not (cotton), creating pleats and puckers in the fabric. (Specifically, the double-weave structure divides into two layers in some sections and interlaces in others. Where the layers split, the layer with the wool weft will full and shrink with agitation in hot water and soap, drawing in the cotton layer so that it crinkles and collapses.)

Here are a few more samples, these in just two warp colors, showing how differential-shrinkage techniques will make the fabric collapse -- but again, only where the two layers aren't interlaced.

There are many ways to achieve collapse effects with double weave, but they all require a sett and beat that are more open than normal. So, for instance, if you're working with 10/2 cotton in the warp, you would normally weave this in double weave at a sett of 48 epi (24 epi for plain weave x 2 layers = 48 epi). In the case of all the dimensional samples above, my sett is 36 epi. And I'm thinking it could have been even more open. 

Further, collapse techniques work best with finer yarns, so a 20/2 cotton warp would produce a lighter, softer hand in the fabric. 10/2 cotton in double weave creates a sturdy, less flexible fabric, although it would work well for a jacket.

One last note: Designing these structures isn't easy -- and sampling them doesn't always produce success, at least in my experience. Understanding that nearly all Echo-based double-weave patterns are interlaced double weave, you really have to know that there are large-enough parts of your design where the two layers are weaving separately. 

Remember that double-weave sample in the photo at the beginning of this post? I was SO EXCITED about taking it off the loom and scrubbing it up to produce a collapse fabric. Which didn't really happen...

Yes, that was the result. I suspect that there were really no spaces in the structure where the two layers did not interlace. My bad. I liked the sample better before washing! Which brings me to another quote from Elizabeth Zimmerman:

"Now, let us all take a deep breath and forge on into the future, knitting at the ready."

Knitting, weaving, whatever you choose, forge on! Thanks for reading.

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.