Tuesday, November 16, 2021

Diana's Inlay Shawl Project

Diana has been working for the past 3 months on a project inspired by Nancy Peterson in Handwoven, Sept./Oct., 2021. It is a plain weave shawl in stripes of random widths and colors, 24” in the reed. What makes it more than just a plain weave shawl is, again, the randomly placed inlay patterns upon the stripes. The pattern for the inlays Diana chose is from Davison, p. 131, Johann Schleelein’s #123, which creates interlocked circles. The pattern structure is 26 ends, so all stripes in the shawl are multiples of 26. Some stripes are 26 ends wide, some 52, some 78, and one is 104. It takes 20 pics (alternated by tabby) to complete the pattern, so her pattern inlays vary from 2 to 4 times in length.

The warp is 8/2 tencel in three different pastel colors and 8/2 rayon in two other colors set at 24 epi. The background weft is 16/2 bamboo in coquille, and the pattern weft is Malabrigo Mora silk in two different colors, lettuce and teal feather.


Inlay pattern shawl with shuttle showing the small shuttle to pick up and weave in pattern upon a stripe



Inlay pattern shawl off the loom. The ends are hemstitched and the fringe will be twisted (soon).



  

There is quite a bit of handwork to do which is finger weaving in the loose ends of the pattern weft on the back.

This is the reverse side of the shawl with pattern yarn ends not finger woven in yet.