Collapse Fabrics with Deflected Double Weave

One side of the fabric

The other side

While it may not look like it, the above sample is Deflected Double Weave. Because it's woven on just 4 shafts, it's a very simple two-block pattern -- but it's Deflected Double Weave nonetheless, woven as a collapse fabric.

Here's the drawdown.

It looks pretty simple, eh? The warp is 20/2 cotton in stripes of purple and teal, sett at 36 epi. The weft is 20/2 cotton in a deep purple alternating with a fine wool/stainless steel yarn in fuchsia. This yarn is what creates the collapse effect: See the weft floats across the second block in the warp? At 75% wool and 25% stainless steel, these weft floats will relax and collapse when washed with hot water and soap, because the wool fulls while the stainless makes it crinkle. You can actually take this fabric and flatten it out or you can scrunch it up to get the crumpled effect you see in the photos. 

Here's what it looks like on the loom. -- gauzy, flat, and simple.

I used another yarn for the second weft in another sample: silk crepe from Habu Textiles. It's about 33,000 yards per pound, so fine that you can hardly see it!

It's very tough to wind this gossamer thread on a pirn (I always use an end-feed-delivery shuttle for fine and overtwisted yarns). It breaks so easily, as you can imagine. I actually used a doubling stand to help me, where I place the large bobbin that holds the silk crepe at the bottom of the stand and feed the yarn up through the tube that's used for doubling. It keeps the yarn nice and straight, which helps as I wind it onto the pirn.

So in this case I've substituted the silk crepe for the fuchsia-colored wool/stainless. The silk crepe floats and draws the warp ends in dramatically, making neat pleats!

One side of the fabric

The other side

Here's what it looked like before washing, in loom state:

To me, this fabric presents a real problem, because the sample is only about 7" wide! On the loom, it's 24.44" wide. -- that's more than 70% shrinkage, width-wise. So I like the first sample better, because it's about 12 to 14" wide after washing, which seems like a better width for a scarf. (That's what I want this fabric to become.)

Votes, opinions? I welcome you to voice your choice before I start weaving!

But before I end this post, I wanted to add a couple more photos. If you read my blog regularly, you may remember last month's post, showing a baby wrap I just finished for our new grandson, Owen. This month I finished knitting a sweater for him, using Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Surprise Jacket, knitted on #5 knitting needles with Kauni Effektgarn in space-dyed rainbow colors. I love the autumn colors and the vegetable buttons, especially since my daughter and son-in-law love vegetable gardening.

That's all for this month! Thanks for reading.

Collapse Cloth in 60/2 silk warp and overtwist weft

Many years ago, there was a wonderful magazine called Weaver's -- and in it, an article by Ann Richards on using crepon yarns for collapse fabrics. I have had it in my files for more than 15 years and FINALLY I wove up some samples. The impetus was the annual sample exchange for the Collapse Weave Study Group in Complex Weavers.

The warp is 60/2 spun silk in black and natural, threaded alternately in a straight draw. The photo at top shows the fabric after washing, with a number of different wefts. A closer look, below.

Here's the fabric on the loom, showing horizontal stripes woven alternately in 60/2 spun silk in natural and 30/1 wool in a Z twist.

And then off the loom, before washing.

Here's what the same fabric looks like, close up, after washing in lukewarm water with a bit of Orvus paste.

And here are two other samples. Below, I have alternated weft stripes of black gossamer-weight silk crepe from Habu with 60/2 spun silk in black. The crepe draws in more than any other energized yarn I have used, so this is a very elastic fabric when you stretch it horizontally.

Finally, a softer collapse fabric, as the weft is just one yarn: 30/1 wool in S overtwist (natural color).

Threading 1,456 ends on the loom at a sett of 32 epi amounted to some 45 1/2 inches in width, which collapsed to roughly 30 inches in width after washing. The length didn't change much, from around 45 inches long to 41 inches after washing. Lots of weaving for a shrinkage of 33%, but it was so worth it!