Silk from Japan, Wool from Michigan Off the Loom

I finished off the rest of my silk warp with its length of pink and peach handwoven wool weft in 2/2 straight twill and a shorter section using the silk as weft in 2/2 broken twill, then took it off the loom and spread it  out to look at it more carefully.  There were some disappointments.

The long part woven from my pink and peach hand-painted sock yarn weft was the pretty color I had been enjoying as I wove it, but as I had feared, it was too firm and a bit too wide to work as a scarf. The uneven beating showed up slightly in closeup, but was not that noticeable from a short distance. I also thought the cream silk bands were too wide and even, so from a design perspective  it was not very satisfactory.

This is what the cream silk warp and handpainted wool warp looked like right off the loom, before any further finishing.

As I looked more closely I could also see some weaving flaws that I had not caught when I was weaving. Normally I could repair those with a bit of needle weaving, but I had used up every last bit of the handpainted pink yarn, so I had nothing left to use to repair mistakes. Still, I liked the overall effect of the pink and peach handpainted wool, softened by the cream silk warp.

At a workshop in Honolulu last summer on sewing with handwoven fabrics, Daryl Lancaster told us not to be discouraged if something did not turn out as we had planned. It would simply become something else, perhaps after it had been set aside for a while.

My Plan B had been that if the pink length was too stiff for a scarf, it could become a table runner. However, since I didn’t like the wide cream bands, I started thinking about what else I could do with it and immediately envisioned folding the bands into pleats and perhaps turning it into a wall hanging.

The pink handpainted wool hanging with pleats, knitting needles at the top.

I basted the pleats in and then machine-sewed them. I had left enough unwoven silk warp between the pink piece and the smaller silk broken twill for one good fringe. If I was using the pink for a wall hanging, I didn’t need fringe at the top, so I gave the fringe section to the broken twill piece.  I finished one end of the pink wool part by folding over the top cream silk band to make a hem, and made a twisted fringe at the other end. I gave it a good steam pressing on both sides to get the pleats to lie flat.

By the next morning, I had remembered reading a blog by a knitter who had sewn a holder for her collection of circular knitting needles by making pleats across a length of (storebought) fabric to hold the needles. Maybe that would work. I slipped a pair of gray straight knitting needles through the hem at the top, and tried out some narrow peach ribbon to make a hanger. I tried putting some of my circular knitting needles into the pleats, but they didn’t look too great.  There is  a wide pink section in the middle that looks like it needs something more. I don’t like my makeshift ribbon hanger at the top, and I will probably cut off the fringe on the bottom and just hem it. This is still a work in progress. I will take it to the weavers’ meeting tomorrow and get some advice, and then I will probably just put it aside for a while.

The piece of silk broken twill is also probably too stiff to be a scarf, as well as being a bit too short and wide. It seems to have a couple of places where I got the broken twill sequence wrong, but because of the solid color they are barely noticeable. It might soften up a bit if I washed it, but first I would have to stabilize all the fringe. And I’m not sure I want to go to the trouble of twisting all that fringe if I might end up cutting it off later.

Now I’m thinking that I should do as Daryl suggests and just fold it up and put it in my stash for a while. It might work better cut up as part of a garment. However, I know that the probability that I will actually spend the time to incorporate it into a sewn garment is fairly small. I don’t mind a little bit of sewing to finish off a new weaving, but I haven’t made any clothing for years. I would much rather weave than sew. I could cut up part of it to make some pockets or applique some shapes on the wide plain part of the pink hanging, but I am not quite ready to cut into a newly woven piece of fabric. For now, I am happy to declare these two items “done” and move on to a new project.

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