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.

What Is the Difference Between Fulling and Felting?

Pictured above: a coat of fabric in silk noil and baby alpaca, 

woven in Deflected Double Weave and fulled for warmth and durability

Before I begin, please understand that the coat pictured above is a work in progress: I haven't finished sewing it!

Anyhow, many years ago I was talking with a felter-friend of mine, telling her how I "felted" a hand-knitted hat I had made. She corrected me, telling me that I had really "fulled" the hat -- not felted it -- because felting involves raw fiber while fulling involves fiber that has been knitted or woven.

Here's how the two terms are defined by Britannica.com. (U.S. readers, remember that Brits spell fiber as "fibre.")

Felting, consolidation of certain fibrous materials by the application of heat, moisture, and mechanical action, causing the interlocking, or matting, of fibres possessing felting properties. Such fibres include wool, fur, and certain hair fibres that mat together under appropriate conditions because of their peculiar structure and high degree of crimp (waviness). Wool can produce felting even when mixed with other fibres. 

Fulling, Process that increases the thickness and compactness of woven or knitted wool by subjecting it to moisture, heat, friction, and pressure until shrinkage of 10–25% is achieved. Shrinkage occurs in both the warp and weft see weaving), producing a smooth, tightly finished fabric that is light, warm, and relatively weather proof. A common example is loden cloth, first produced in Austria in the 16th century.

There are a lot of mysteries and opinions (oh my, the opinions!) involving these two processes. Which soap to use? How hot should the water be? Machine wash or hand wash? Do you "shock" the wool by immersing it in cold water after using hot water? Can you heat the fiber in a microwave? And so on. 

I won't be addressing all of these questions; I'm talking about my own hand-woven fabric and how I went about fulling it. Here's the "before fulling" state.

And here's what it looks like after fulling.

And here's another view.

The colors in the photos vary because I used two different painted warps to weave the fabric in Deflected Double Weave. I dyed the silk noil in a range from teal to purple to turquoise and I dyed the baby alpaca warp in a range from lavender to periwinkle to mauve.

You might be thinking: I like the piece before it was fulled. And there's an argument for that, certainly. The main reason I fulled it was for texture: This was to be sewn into a coat and I needed a sturdy, warm fabric for that. I also just love the look of fulled handwoven or hand-knitted fiber: it acquires an organic, more natural look, less angular and tidy -- and to my eye, far more interesting!

Here's a photo of the back of the coat to give you a better idea of what I am going for.

The fulled fabric has a bit more eccentricity and quirkiness, in my view.

I've long pondered the question, "What makes wool felt?" The simple answer lies in the microscopic structure of the fiber. It has tiny scales on it that open with heat and soap and agitation (and pH, when you get really scientific about it) and then lock into each other as the agitation continues.

Here's a photo I found on Pinterest that gives you a microscopic view of a number of fibers. Unfortunately, I can't find where it's from because it's all over Pinterest, with no attribution.

See the scales on the coarse wool and fine wool (first and second fibers on the left)? And see the smaller less defined scales on the alpaca (third from left)? 

Many people will tell you that alpaca can't be felted or fulled -- but that's not really true. It's just that it takes longer to do so.

And I can testify to that. Without going into all the gory details, it took me several days of washing and sloshing my 8 yards of fabric in the bathtub, in the sink, and even in the washing machine. There's even some nudity involved but I won't go into that on a family blog ;o)

I just wasn't getting the results I wanted -- and then I remembered a spinner telling me that she used Murphy's Oil Soap to felt her wool. Murphy's is slightly basic, at a pH of about 11, and that change in pH helps the scales to open which in turn promotes their locking together.

So I tried Murphy's and yes, I did get the results I was after. Not perfect, but close enough. 

And I learned a lot in the process -- which is half the reason we fiber folk enjoy what we do! Thanks for reading.

The Story of a Scarf

I'll start with the basics: This is a 12-shaft weave, using three hand-painted warps in 60/2 reeled silk, at a sett of 60 epi, using an extended parallel threading, with a 120/2 spun silk weft.

Oh and it's not quite finished (what you don't see in the photo is the unplied fringe on the back of the mannikin).

I call this design "Pagoda" because the pattern looks like the multi-tiered roof of a Buddhist temple. See the the cascading pattern in the middle of the photo? And the colors remind me of Asian silk fabrics. Plus the cultivation of silk itself originated in China.

The story behind this piece is that it wasn't really planned at all!

It simply started with the yarn, which was undyed reeled silk from Habu. I purchased it for a bargain price when our guild was selling the yarns and equipment of a good friend, the late, abundantly creative Joy Duskin. I didn't even realize it was reeled silk -- which means silk that is thrown (or wound) straight from the cocoon, the most treasured silk of all. (Most of us purchase and weave with spun silk, which comes from incomplete pieces of the silk filaments and is less sleek and durable.)

I had never woven with reeled silk -- and this was in the gum, to boot! ("In the gum" means that the sericin from the silkworm's spit, which helps maintain the structure of the cocoon, has not been removed, so that the silk is stiff and has a matte finish. Silk can't be dyed in the gum. Also, removing the gum improves the luster, hand, and texture of the silk.)

The yarn sat in my sewing room for at least a year -- until I got together with two friends, Molly McLaughlin and Deb Kaplan. They both know lots about silk and Deb patiently showed me how to de-gum my skeins in hot water and soda ash.

This story is getting way too long, so let's cut to the dyeing: I wound two warps and hand-painted them with MX fiber-reactive dyes in two different colorways -- and THEN decided that they were too close in their hues. So I hand-painted a third warp. That's why you see a band of color in the center of the photo and different-colored bands on either selvage. I was planning an Echo design, which is typically threaded color A, color B, color A, color B, etc. For this scarf, using three hand-painted warps, the threading was A-B-A-B for about 4 inches, then A-C-A-C for about eight inches, then back to A-B-A-B for the last four inches.

Below is my design line, which I created on 8 shafts instead of 12, which left room to create a parallel threading 6 ends above the original design line. I chose not to put this on a network, just to see what happened.

Original design line on 8 shafts

The threading on 12 shafts: 

My original design line plus a parallel line 6 shafts above

In Fiberworks, here are the steps involved.

1) I expanded the number of shafts to 12 by going into the dropdown menu labeled "Tieup," clicking on "Shafts and Treadles," and increasing the number of treadles to 12.

2) Next, I clicked on the "Warp" dropdown menu, then clicked on "Parallel Repeat." I left the box checked that says "Add Shafts Above" (because I already created 12 shafts to work with), then I clicked on "Shafts shift by 6," and then clicked "Apply."

Next I created a classic Echo (also used for Rep) tieup, which is an ascending twill tieup with half the shafts up and half the shafts down, like so:

And then I created an advancing point-twill treadling, but that was all long warp floats and definitely unweavable.

Still, it was easy to solve, just by adding a parallel treadling. Using Fiberworks, this was done by clicking on the "Treadling" dropdown menu, clicking on the command that says "Extended Parallel," then putting the number "5" in the box labeled "Treadles Shift By," and then clicking on "Apply." (I shifted by 5 treadles instead of 6 as I had in the threading because I wanted to use only 10 treadles. So I divided 10 by 2 to get the correct parallel for the tieup.) This is the way Rep is treadled, on an extended parallel treadling. But the scarf isn't traditional Rep Weave, because I use only one weft yarn rather than the two (one thick, one thin) that characterize Rep.

And here's what the final drawdown looks like. (The red lines in the warp tell me where I need to shift my color arrangements from ABAB to ACAC, remembering that I'm using three hand-painted warps.)

Here's a closer look at the scarf itself.

And one more view...

I hope to enter this in an exhibit next year -- and I will let you know if and when it's accepted! Thanks for reading.

How to Find Your Place in a Complicated Treadling (Or: Sometimes You Just Have to Unweave)

I recently had an email discussion with a friend who took one of my workshops -- who, after arriving home and returning to her sample, could not remember where she left off. She sent me an email, including a close-up of her sample, asking if I could help her find where she was in the treadling.

Has this happened to you? If not, you are fortunate and you may have a genius-level IQ. If it has happened to you, you may agree that weaving can be a lot like the little girl in the nursery rhyme: 

There was a little girl,

Who had a little curl,

Right in the middle of her forehead.

When she was good,

She was very good indeed,

But when she was bad she was horrid.

Longfellow wrote that, by the way. Who knew?

Here is our exchange, below, beginning with a photo of my friend's sample. She was working on a network-drafted 8-shaft pattern, the kind of pattern that can make it very hard to figure out where you are in the treadling (or the threading, even more so). 

And here's a portion of the drawdown, giving you an idea of why it's hard to locate the exact place she left off.

So here's what I wrote to her:
_______________________________________________________

Dear Debbie,

Unfortunately the only way you can really figure out where you are is to follow these steps. Trigger warning: These steps include unweaving ;o)

1) You have figured out approximately where you are, so have your treadling in front of you with the area you think you are (or areas, often) marked clearly.

2) Begin unweaving, marking down which treadle you're using for each pick.

3) Once you start to see a pattern (which is backwards, of course, but you know that), double check it against your treadling sequence (in step #1, where you've marked where you think you are).

4) Once you're pretty darn sure you've found it, start weaving forward. It will soon become clear whether or not you're correct! 

5) If you find you're incorrect, sigh deeply and/or curse, go back to step 1 and begin again.
_______________________________________________________

Have you ever unwoven anything? Are you philosophically opposed to doing so? As for me: I do it all the time!

You Can't Judge a Warp by Its Color (and Other Musings on Hues)

This photo proves my point: You can't judge a warp by its color -- and certainly not by any color in isolation. Weaving is all about connections. And typically the colors we enjoy in a woven fabric (especially with latter-day designs like Echo and network-drafted Jin) are the end result of those connections.

The warp yarns in the photo above are blue and burgundy and, while you might guess this if you looked at the sample at the top of the photo, you really can't tell from the sample at the bottom. The overall look changes dramatically based on the colors of the wefts: salmon in the bottom sample and coral at the top.

(I am tempted to deploy a bad pun here: You can't judge a warp by its color -- because there's always something weft....)

A warp is not a finished product. To me, this is such a valuable lesson. Equally important, a single color of yarn doesn't give us much information about the look of the fabric. Always, always, colors connect and play and contrast with each other -- and any fabric that delights or dazzles results from a combination of warp, weft, pattern, texture, light, individual perception, finishing, embellishment, perspective and so many other factors.

More evidence: The photos below show samples woven on the same four-colored warp. (Yes, these are all different patterns, but please just consider the overall palette of each sample.)

Coral-colored weft

Navy weft (I think -- maybe royal blue)

Bronze weft

What surprises me even more about Echo samples like these is that the weft yarn is just half the grist of the warp yarns. And yet it has such an impact.

And yet another example, a favorite of mine from a workshop I taught in Edmonton, Alberta, last May. Maryanne Hawryluk wove my 8-shaft parallel-threaded pattern "Falling Stars" for this sample in double weave. Can you guess the colors of her warp yarns? How about her weft yarns?

Here's the answer: Her warp yarns are red and green and her weft yarns are purple and the same green, all 10/2 cotton.

What makes this sort of color-bending effect happen? A while ago I posted a couple of images on Facebook that blew my mind: Images from computer drawdowns of an 8-shaft pattern I wanted to weave. Keep in mind that THE WHITE WARP COLOR DOESN'T CHANGE in the photos. But our perception changes with the different colored weft yarns.

Above draft uses an all-blue weft (of course, the fabric isn't weaveable because the wefts aren't tied down. I hadn't gotten to that point when I noticed the effect you see in the next photo.)

This draft uses alternating wefts of blue and black (again unweaveable -- but unbelievable!)

After checking with the wonderful resource by Joseph Albers, "Interaction of Color," I realized that this phenomenon is known as the "Bezold Effect." 

Here's how Wikipedia defines it:

"The Bezold effect is an optical illusion, named after a German professor of meteorology, Wilhelm von Bezold, who discovered that a color may appear different depending on its relation to adjacent colors. It happens when small areas of color are interspersed."

(Even so, I wondered if I was seeing things. So I then posted a question wondering whether the image on the screen itself had changed with the weft colors. Michael Stearn wrote back to tell me he had cropped the image so that he could compare the whites in isolation -- and the warp colors were indeed the same white throughout!)

So the yellow is really white. Thank you, Wilhelm von Bezold.

And while we're on the subject of yellow: In my travels, I can't count how many times I've heard weavers say, "Yellow is not my color." Nor is it mine (I never wear it) but I use it all the time in my weaving and teaching. And often in dye workshops it's the first color that's used up. 

Why? I think it's because yellow adds so much to the mix, such a glow, like sunshine. It's like salt: No one eats it straight from the shaker, but most of us add it to our meals.

Historic note here: In China during the Tang dynasty, light yellow -- the most luminous color -- was reserved only for the royal family. Anyone who violated this rule was subject to punishment or even death. You might want to consider this, our modern-day freedom and egalitarianism, the next time you purchase yellow yarn ;o)

Of course, the same principle applies to acid green and orange and bronze and gray and any number of colors that we normally don't think to use.

In closing, another example. Recently, my friend, Philadelphia weaver Hedy Lyles, jokingly told me she broke down and bought a cone of yellow yarn. And before making this unusual purchase, she wove with a bit of yellow in the warp for her beautiful piece shown in the photos below. (Handweaving.net draft #61157 modified for 24 shafts, with 3 colors in the warp: hand-painted warp "Denim Jewels" by Kathrin Weber of Blazing Shuttles alternating with blueberry and mineral green.)

My takeaway: Use yellow, most times sparingly. It can make a pattern shine. And remember too how important it is to think out of the crayon box when it comes to colors. And how important it is to work out of our comfort zone. And how important it is to sample. Yes it is!

Mother Nature -- or more specifically, natural selection -- does it all the time.

Photo of an Australian Common Bronzewing taken by Gregory F. Coonghe, 

shared on Facebook by Sherri Campbell. 

How to Design Double Weave Using Fiberworks

The photo above shows you what inspired this post: an extraordinary scarf using a collapse technique, created by British weaver Sally Weatherill. Her deflected double weave scarves are to die for -- but it's this silk double-weave scarf that I keep coming back to.

A few years ago, I spent way too much time trying to figure out how to draft this. Finally, I gave up and sent her an email -- to which she replied quickly and generously, sharing her draft and eventually some samples with me.

And guess what? All my analysis was in vain! The scarf was woven HORIZONTALLY on the loom while I had spent hours looking at it vertically. Beginning with a warp of green and blue silk, she wove a band maybe 10 inches deep, using inactive wefts in green and blue silk alternating with active wefts (elastic, I'm thinking, in the fuchsia and purple areas) and then cut it horizontally and serged the sides. This approach, assuming you have a very wide loom, would allow you to weave many scarves on just one warp.

So much for my thinking out of the box....

Here's the draft, thanks to Sally:

Look closely at the tieup:

The threading and the treadling are both straight draws, so the key to this beautiful design lies in this double-weave tieup. Does it look strange to you? Many weavers (myself included) find double weave hard to fathom.

So, for my benefit and hopefully for yours, let's break it down, looking at designing double weave on just 4 shafts with weaving software -- Fiberworks, in my case.

We'll weave the top layer on shafts 1 and 3 and the bottom layer on shafts 2 and 4. And we will use two different colors to represent each layer: in this case, purple and green. 

Note: It's hard to see how double weave really looks in Fiberworks because you really can’t look at both layers simultaneously. So, in part, you have to use your imagination. Keeping that in mind, here’s the first step. 

This is how the draft would look if you were to weave JUST the top layer (green in the threading and treadling). It’s a straight-draw threading and we're weaving plain weave on shafts 1 and 3. Notice that, with this tieup, the warp ends on shafts 2 and 4 (bottom layer, in blue in the threading) go unwoven. 

So how do you create a tieup for weaving the bottom layer? Here's my approach: I like to say that, to tie up the bottom layer of double weave, "up is down and down is up." You could also say that, instead of a rising shed in the tieup, you're tying up a sinking shed for the bottom layer. And yet another way to look at it is like a photo negative: what is black in the original tieup becomes white, and vice versa. 

(And yet ANOTHER way to look at it is to literally get under the loom and see that you have a mirror image for the bottom layer: a "lifted" warp thread on the bottom layer is really a warp thread that is down and a "lowered" warp thread is really a warp thread that is lifted.)

So, the tieup for the bottom layer looks like this, where your weft will be tied down (you might say “tied up,” remembering that this is double weave) with shafts 4 and 2:

Next you combine the two tieups for the two layers, because for traditional double weave you will weave the layers alternately, using two shuttles, to keep an even fell line. This treadling weaves on opposite sheds to achieve a two-layer structure.

Another way to draft it is with a straight draw in the treadling:

That's it. Of course, once you get into more than 4 shafts, there are many variations, including the 16-shaft tieup for Sally Weatherill's scarf. Browsing the internet, I have found compilations of suggested tieups for double weave. Marian Stubenitsky's book, Echo and Iris, is a good reference. And if you really want to dig deep into computer drafting, you might want to purchase Marg Coe's book, 4-8… Weave!

Thanks for reading. Hope you're not seeing double!

O Canada!

Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies, 

viewed from the lakeside trail

I wish that everyone could experience the beauty, friendship, laughter and food (oh the food) that I enjoyed while teaching in Canada over the past three weeks.

Cappuccino made by Dave Connelly, 

some of the amazing food and drink I enjoyed in Alberta

Thanks to Lyn Pflueger, a wet felter, spinner, and weaver who teaches at the Alberta College of Art and Design (and to whom I am forever grateful), I was invited to teach four workshops for the Heritage Weavers and Spinners Guild of Calgary, the Sheep Creek Weavers and Fibre Artists Guild, the Crocus Country Fibre Arts Guild, and the Edmonton Weavers' Guild. 

How to begin to describe the talent and skill of the weavers I met over 21 days? I guess the best way is to start at the beginning....

Above: Lorel Dederer (left) and her sister, Cammy Desjardins

Lorel Dederer shepherded me about and organized everything for the Heritage Guild workshop, "One Warp, Many Structures: An Exploration of Extended Parallel Threading." The 14 weavers who took the class -- from beginners to advanced weavers -- showed an awesome degree of skill and creativity.

Norma Camman talks about her samples of the 4-shaft pattern "Op Art."

Ellen Kovar experimented with collapse techniques 

using the 12-shaft pattern "Pink and Green."

Tracy LaRose painted two warps for her samples 

of the 8-shaft pattern "Falling Stars."

Siri McCormick pretty much knocked it out of the park 

with her warp choices for the pattern "Falling Stars" 

-- even though she insisted she was just using up yarns she had in her stash.

Next stop: Teaching "One Warp, Three Structures: Weaving with 60/2 Silk" at the Sheep Creek Guild. The space was lovely and my accommodations could not be beat: I was staying in the foothills at the timber-frame home of Deb and Stu Turner. Standing in their living room and looking out the front windows, you had a 180-degree view of the Canadian Rockies, the rolling foothills, hundreds of aspens, and the occasional grazing deer. 

The 60/2 silk samples were beautiful as well.

An array of samples: at the top, using hand-dyed bias-cut silk ribbon as weft, 

on the bottom, using 60/2 silk as weft (apologies: can't remember who wove this)

60/2 silk in warp and weft checks, woven by Janine Jones

Sample woven by Brenda Geddes using overtwist wool 

to achieve a collapse effect

After class each day, Deb and I went exploring: She took me to the Leighton Art Center, the former home of landscape artist A. C. Leighton, who started what became the Banff School of Fine Arts... and to the Bluerock Gallery in Black Diamond, where I purchased one of Deb's beautiful scarves... and to the Tin Roof Fibre Studio, where Judy Sysak teaches Saori weaving and dyeing....

Judy Sysak (left) and Deb Turner at the Tin Roof Fibre Studio

Some of Judy's Saori-woven pieces

So I'm thinking to myself: talented fiber artists seem to be everywhere. Is it the medium? The people? Maybe the fact that fiber itself is so universally compelling that gifted folks around the world always manage to find a way to weave, knit, spin, dye, braid, sew and otherwise manipulate and organize soft twisty cords.....

And on to the next workshop: "Paint One, Beam Two: Painting Two Warps and Beaming Them as One" for the Crocus Country Guild. I stayed with Dave and Jan Connelly -- more five-star hospitality -- and was delighted to learn that they raise and train Shelties for agility competitions. They currently have four running about the house and fields.

Flash, who has placed third in Canada in agility competition

We spent the first day dyeing warps in the barn and the next day rinsing and drying them before beginning to dress our looms.

Warp painting in progress: MX fiber-reactive dyes on cellulose fiber

Warps hanging to dry. Dave pulled out a cooler 

that also works to keep food warm. We cranked it up 

to about 85 degrees Fahrenheit 

-- about 29 Celsius -- to cure the warps overnight.

Beaming in progress

Millie Tsuji's loom, dressed and ready for threading

Sad to say, I can't show you any of the final results, because this 2 1/2-day workshop is designed so that the weaving is done at home. (For any program chairs out there, if you're interested, let's talk about a full five-day workshop! We'd start with dyeing warps, then curing them and dressing looms, then threading and weaving up color samples. I think of this as a real weaving retreat.)

Then it was time to head north to Edmonton, with Robin Nixon kindly driving me some three-and-a-half hours to get there. (Fortunately she also got to visit her son, who lives in Edmonton, so it wasn't just a drive up and back for her.) The workshop there was the same as the first one I taught in Calgary, "One Warp, Many Structures: An Exploration of Extended Parallel Threading." Kyla Fischer was the program chair for the workshop and, once again, made sure I ate and slept well and was otherwise comfortable. Plus, she is a master at organizing people and looms! 

People tell me there is something of a good-natured rivalry between Calgary and Edmonton -- so, for the record, I will say that the weavers in both cities were equally skilled and creative.

Sandra Schulz's 4-shaft Echo sample in the "Blooming Leaf" pattern has a dimensional look.

The 8-shaft "Fun House" pattern woven in Echo by Joan White

had some beautiful variations using different weft colors 

-- particularly using a yellow weft (bottom section).

I love the weft-color choices in this Echo sampler in the 8-shaft Falling Stars pattern (readers, if you can remember who wove this, please let me know).

Double Weave sample using the 4-shaft "Blooming Leaf" pattern, 

woven by Bonnie Watt

Kyla Fischer discusses her samples of 8-shaft "Fun House" in Echo and Jin.

Shadow Weave sample woven in the 12-shaft "Lake Water" pattern 

by Catherine Melnychuk

Differential shrinkage sample woven by Kathy Buse 

on 12-shafts in Double Weave using the "Fish Tank" pattern

8-shaft "Many Rivers" pattern woven in Rep by Mary Ann Jackson

8-shaft "Falling Stars" pattern woven in Double Weave by Maryanne Hawryluk. 

Notice the warp colors and how the fabric colors are changed completely by the wefts.

For the record: here are the weft colors used in the sample above.

So much more to say... but I would have to spend many more hours writing about all that we wove and shared. At this point, all I can say is thanks for reading!