Shifted Warp Fibonacci Shawl

Wrap warp in a circle on the board

Warp in a circle

There’s a way to make variegated yarn look like there is more going on just by making the sections of color line up and then by shifting them slightly.  Yarn wound on a warping board in the usual fashion makes the colors fall in random order. But if the same yarn is wound in a circle, you can manipulate those colors to fall together.

I like to use the Fibonacci number sequence whenever I set up stripes in a project. So these stripes are 2, 21 or 34 threads wide.colored yarn in Fibonacci stripes

In order to give a little more movement and interest to the piece, the multi-colored stripes are shifted by 5 inches.  The weft is two different yarns.  One is a rayon chenille and the other a 5/2 perle cotton of the same color. The yarns alternate in plain weave using two shuttles. These two yarns together give the shawl a “hand” that is soft and luxurious (the feel of rayon chenille) and still lets the colors of the warp show through.

Lots of color excitement on the loom.

Lots of color excitement on the loom.

Shawl with colors in stripesThe end result is a shawl with a lot of movement in the color.  Nothing boring here.

 

Save

Save

Posted in Cotton, Dyeing cotton, Fibonacci, Instructional, weaving, Yarns. Tags: , , , , , , . Comments Off on Shifted Warp Fibonacci Shawl

Shredding Blue Jeans

Why shred your blue jeans??  So you can weave them into a placemat, of course!

Loom in garage (1)This is my loom in the garage.  Blue jean strips give off a lot of lint/dust when you weave them and it’s hard to vacuum out of carpet.  Therefore it’s easier to weave them in the garage.  Notice the mask hanging on the loom?  I wear that when I’m weaving the mats.

Weaving in the garage is not all bad.  Below is the view I have while I’m sitting at the loom in the garage.

Loom in garage (5)

Just past the lawn is the South Fork of the Kaweah River.  It makes a lovely sound.  Sometimes I’m treated to a passing neighbor.  There’s a bobcat who cruises through occasionally and one day she was followed by her kitten!  Just 2 days ago, a cute little fox trotted by with a dead gopher dangling from her mouth. Yay!

Rich cutting blue jeans (2)

This is my “lovely assistant” (hey, if  a magician can have a “lovely assistant”, why can’t I?)  My husband, Rich is using a rag cutter to make quarter-inch strips which I will use as weft in the placemats and sometimes in mug rugs as well. By the way, he’s the one who built my beautiful studio…a good guy to have around!

Silk Wedding Shawl

We recently had a special wedding in our family and I wanted to make a special shawl for the bride. I had some sumptuous off-white 16/2 spun silk yarn that I knew would provide a lovely sheen and luxurious drape.

Beautiful Lisa in her wedding shawl

I used a mixture of 5/2 perle cotton, and 2 textured cotton/rayon blends as the warp. I wanted it to be sheer so I wove it in plain weave. Plain weave, however, does not let the beautiful sheen of the silk show to its best advantage. So, I randomly wove sections of twill which allowed that silk to float over the warp threads allowing them to shine.

 The end result was a lovely bride in a shawl that prepared her for any chill the evening might bring.