More deflected double weave scarves

After a month's holiday in Australia on Bribie Island I was enthusiastic to put the next warp on the loom for three DDW scarves.   

The white, pale pink and mid pink are one warp and the wine is the second warp.  The pattern is four threads of one warp and four of the second right across the width of the scarf. 

I wove the first scarf, cut it off the loom, twisted the tassels and wet finished it.  That was when I found that the pale pink yarn was not behaving as wool should.  After a bleach test I discovered it was a manmade fibre.  What to do?  Throw away the whole warp?  I decided to take some of the white merino, wind another warp and dye it pale pink.  I pulled the remaining warp, 6.5 metres, through the heddles and reed to the front and carefully cut a thread off, tied on the new thread.  That looked successful so did the same with the midpink band so all shrinkage would be the same.  It rolled on to the back beam with no problems and two beautiful scarves are the result.  (I wear the dud scarf occasionally.)
 

 

 

I had noticed that the Marion Powell threading for shadow weave is similar to what I was using.  I wound a warp with 1 x 1 colour and tied it on to my previous warp.  My sample worked but, to me, was rather boring.

 

 

Since I had a 1 x 1 warp on the loom I wondered if Turned Taquete would be more interesting.  It worked but decided it wasn't mind catching enough to weave three scarves.

I cut the warp off and it will be used another time.

 

(Bleach test for wool - place a length (maybe 20 cm) of yarn in a little pure bleach.  If its wool it will dissolve away completely in about 30 mins.)

Melanie Olde Workshop

 In May I organised, on behalf of Creative Fibre for the upper half of the North Island, a workshop with Melanie Olde of Australia,  "Thinking Outside the Plane".

 

To quote Melanie "Weaving often deals with effects to manipulate the single flat plane of a cloth, but what if you expanded, pushed and pulled that plane?  Handweaving offers many opportunities to explore and design the 3-dimensional plane, taking cloth to another level through specialised multi-layering techniques."

 

The workshop covered how to increase and reduce the surface area of weaving, how to merge different sequences for exciting effects and create fabrics that pop out of the plane.

That was the official explanation; unofficially we just had fun.

 

 A piece of Melanie's work.

My first piece with all four layers working well.

 

 

Off the loom and manipulated - looks a bit like a rock pool anemone.

One layer of warp was either on a second back beam or, as in my case, weighted at the back.  This allowed us to do fun things like stack four layers of pencils in rows - 4 layer Orthogonal.  The white warp, in my threading, is the binding warp passing up and down through all layers while the other three warps are linear and pass straight between the layers.

A fabulous workshop and who knows where the information will be taken.