Turned Twill with a Color Twist

 

The Not 2 Square Weavers have been meeting through the magic of Zoom for several years.  This really bites into our ability to handle all the lovely textiles that members have woven, but  we still have the pleasure of looking at the colors and hearing the stories of how they have been created.

This past month, Karen W. talked to us about her adventures with a color trick on a turned twill design that she she wove.  She was eager to use up bits and pieces of yarns from her stash and fished out four colors she thought might work with a draft that another member (Wendy-Marie) had shared with the group. 

 

 

 There are lots of ways to give this color trick a whole new look.  Wendy-Marie used 8 colors in her towel (see photo below).

 And really pushing the envelope, there are 14 different colors in this towel.  The optical illusion  is that this towel has been turned on its side in case you were wondering how the colors rearranged themselves!

 Just so you can get a really good look at what is happening, here is a close up photo.

This is such a neat trick to make a design look very complex and we wanted to share it with all of you. What a fun way to use up stash odds and ends and get a lot of bang for your buck! 

 

 The draft, shown above, isn't a complete repeat of the design, but the trick is in overlapping colors in both the warp and the weft.  As you can see from the draft above, you don't keep the colors strictly within the blocks.  The little color trick allows you to get more visual blocks in your design.  Karen kept her color sequence in the warp and the weft the same, so that her overall design was symmetrical.  This  is one choice.  You could do a free form design, but warping stripes of various colors in no particular width, then weaving in a similar fashion by either using the same colors as are in the warp, or different colors.  Hint:  Click on the draft photo for a larger  view of the details.

The source for this draft is Handwoven Nov/Dec 2013 pp.38-39 by Yoriko Oki with Vicki Robinson.  Their article shows the draft with separate instructions for the color placement.  With these instructions you can weave the pattern and their article indicates the resource they used was a great article by Alice Schlein in an older Handwoven issue (Mar/Apr 2001). Alice's article starts on page 38 and has a clear draft with the color placement on the draft itself, making the process much clearer to me.  Once you have the concept in mind, you can alter color placement to make many more interesting twill plaid designs.

Another way you might tweek your draft would be to vary your tie up.  Look at this article for ideas https://bannermountaintextiles.blogspot.com/2024/02/two-block-twills-with-multiple-tie-up.html 

Pandemic Weaving

Not 2 Square Weavers have been meeting monthly for many years.  All of a sudden, the pandemic put all of that to an end, at least for the foreseeable future.  So, like many other groups, we have reverted to Zoom meetings.  

The first few meetings were a bit strange because we are used to passing around our month's work, asking questions and feeling the textiles with our hands. But, after several meetings now, we are getting used to the new format and still want to share what we are doing with other weavers.

This month, Diana shared a stunning scarf with us.  She delved into the world of supplementary warp and used a pattern from an older issue of Handwoven. 

Here is her description and a photo of that scarf.

Structure
Ground Warp- plain weave and Atwater-Bronson lace
Supplementary Warp - Overshot

Fiber
Ground warp:  8/2 rayon in pale yellow and natural
Supplementary warp:  20/2 rayon doubled, in teal
Weft:  8/2 rayon in pale yellow

Sett
24epi (48epi in supplementary warp areas)

Finished size
8 1/4" W x 73"L + fringe

Notes
When winding the warp, add at least 20% more in length to the supplementary warp than you have wound for the ground warp.


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Ingrid has been weaving scarves, and like Diana, is trying out new weaving ideas.

Here’s a picture of the new scarf.  It was woven with 10/2 tencel from Just Our Yarns (different color-ways for the warp and weft), sett at 36 epi.  The structure is an 8-point M’s twill, the tie-up is 2-2-1-1-1-1- twill.  It wove up beautifully, didn’t shrink much and felt nice and soft after a gentle machine wash and laying flat to dry.

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Wendy-Marie has moved out of the area, but the fun thing about Zoom is that she can again participate in Not 2 Square.  This month she had a couple of adventures to share.

"This month I worked on a scarf based on Sarah Jackson's "Brasberry Scarf," (Handwoven, May/June 2019).  Since she used analogous colors and I did not, I was not sure how it would turn out.  But the blocks came out fine.  In the Jackson pattern, the weft changes color 4 times, and the blocks expand as the scarf progresses.  I think I will re-do using only one weft color and only one block size.

My second project was a boundweave rug based on Wendy Bestor's design, but not her colors.  This uses Collingwood rug wool (900 ypp).  I found it came out better for the weft if I wound three threads of wool together on the bobbin than to throw the yarn three times in one shed as suggested by the pattern.  I did not achieve anything like 14 ppi, so ran out of warp.  My weaving buddies tell me this is because I was using my Baby Wolf and suggest that I weight the beater next time round.  Despite a number of weaving errors (including accidental asymmetry), I like this rug a lot.  It is very attractive and sturdy."

The Calcutta towel makes another appearance

Five years ago, Sue started on a journey to recreate a favorite pile towel from her childhood in Calcutta.  The whole family had the towels in different colors; they were bright and had pile weaves on both sides.  Sue really wanted to figure out how to weave them herself.  The first post about these towels appears here. 

Recently Sue dug out her draft and started weaving more of these towels.  No pile, you understand, but with the basic structure that you can see in the ends of the original towel.  The towels have a label that says they were woven in Calcutta - the pile suggests a factory weave.  We joked that maybe Sue should return to see if she could find the factory to see how they manage the pile.  Would the factory still be there we wondered.

Sue thinks that the original towel has alternating colors in the warp - which would be fun to try. 



I know you are dying to see the draft that Sue figured out.  Hours went into this relatively simple draft, but I'm not sure I've seen it elsewhere.

 

 

 

 

Here are the towels recently woven by Sue in colorful cottons to help her remember childhood memories in Calcutta.

 



Weaver's Poker - Beryl's Hand

It seems like a very long time ago that we all got together and pulled our poker hand from a series of 5 bags (structure, yarn, design element, color and color relationship) We were allowed to discard one card which left us with four items to incorporate in a woven piece.

Initially, my hand looked pretty workable. 
Structure - gamp
Yarn - silk
Design Element - To look ancient or faded (discarded)
Color - green
Color Relationship - Triad Complement (in my case purple and orange to go with the given color of green)

As the months went by, however, I struggled with a couple of the items.  Silk and "to look ancient or faded"  I really didn't want to use silk and then deliberately fade it with a chemical of some sort.  And then, there was the question of not wanting to buy any more yarns for this project - so I added the constraint of using what was currently in my stash. 

I toyed back and forth between using cotton and fading it with a discharge or dipping into my silk stash which I'm rather picky about saving for something special.  Finally, when rummaging around in my silk box, I found several cones of some rough silk that I had purchased from Robin and Russ, many years ago.  Frankly, it didn't look or feel much like silk.  I had a cone each of a brownish purple, teal and a burnt orange .  I needed green, so I wound off a good amount of the teal and overdyed it with yellow.  The  resulting green was a good solid bright color.  The purple was kind of ucky, so I overdyed that as well and used all that was on the cone. 

The next step was to create a gamp design.  I wanted to make this a useable piece, so I put together an eight shaft point and advancing twill threading and then mirrored it.  I played around with some tie ups and found one that showed off the design well and went with it. 


This is one half of the warp.  To use this design, mirror the threading for the other half of the warp.

Next step was to get yards per pound of my silk yarns to see what kind of a warp I could put together.  I decided on the green and the purple in the warp and the orange for the weft.  I tried looking at a design with stripes in the warp since I had less purple than green.  Finally, I decided to make a green border and then alternate the purple and green through the center of the piece.  When I wound the warp, I had to use one extra green thread on the border because I ran out of purple yarn.  The green and purple turned out to be very close in value and almost make another color when warped next to one another.

The warping and weaving was fairly straight forward, although keeping track of  first the threading and then the treadling required concentration.  After I had done one repeat of the pattern, I thought  that if I changed the tie up it would make it more gamp-like.  So I used a total of three tie ups in the piece.  And, no, I didn't use a dobby.  I got under the loom and changed the tie ups!  Each of the tie ups shows off the two color warp differently - a great learning experience in itself.

When I wet finished the runner, I used fairly warm water and soap to remove any of the lingering sericin in the silk.  It was rinsed with a squirt of white vinegar to restore the pH to the fiber.  I was being careful when I pressed it, but then found if I ironed with a little pressure, the silk became lustrous and softened nicely.

It was really a fun learning experience and a great one to do in weaving groups. 

Marcy's towels - with a few variations on the same threading

 Marcy shared a series of towels she has been weaving by tying on to her existing warp with new colors.  The original towel design is in Handwoven Collection #3, if you happen to have it and the towels are on the back cover.  Marcy didn't make plaid towels, however and used the stripe sequence three times across the warp and she added one of the neutral color stripes on each side to balance the design.

The towel below was woven on the first warp and the draft for this towel is directly below.

Broken twill

 

 

On the second warp, Marcy started using a different treadling sequence - and of course, new colors in her warp stripes.

 

 

 

And, the third warp with yet another color way. Using the draft directly above.  This gives a very textured finish to the towel which will be perfect for absorbency. 

 

But, we can't stop there.  Here are two more treadling variations to be tried with this versatile four shaft threading.

A tromp as writ version

 

treadled rosepath version



Blue Scarf

Igor is the next weaver to finish his scarf for the challenge.  Being the last to pick a bag of yarns, Igor found he was left with his own. 

 

The yarns used in the warp were one thread of variegated rayon, another thread of thick and thin rayon and one thread of turquoise bamboo.  They were sleyed at 20 epi.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Igor wound two threads (used as one) for the pattern weft.  These were slightly different grists and shades of blue.  The tie down thread was another rayon in lighter blue.

Below is the draft of this project.  Igor got the structure idea from Beryl who found a basketweave draft that had a plain weave tie down in finer threads (both warp and weft).  He then added two stripes of 2/2 twill  to the draft and threaded them on shafts 5-8.  There are six picks in a complete repeat.  Tie down, pattern pattern, tie down, pattern pattern - using four treadles.  It was hard to keep hands and feet coordinated - four treadles against three shots.

 

 

Here is his scarf on the loom.

 

 

 

The scarf turned out beautifully, with a nice hand.

 

 

 

 

The edge finish was brought up at a previous meeting by Mardi who used it on a rep weave sample.  It is called Cavandoli knotting.  The beaded fringe was more extensive than Igor normally does.  He used one small copper bead at the base of each twisted pair and one blue bead midway between the scarf and the end knot.

 

 

Finished Scarf Detail

Another beautiful scarf that is probably destined for a foster child this coming holiday season.  There is also another scarf on Igor's loom with this warp.  It will be interesting to compare it to this one.

The Intriguing World of False Damask

In the weaving world, false damask is just a four thread broken twill.  At a recent Not 2 Square meeting, Jackie brought in two lap robes for Holiday Cheer gifts, both woven in false damask or more correctly labeled "turned broken twill blocks".  What our group found most amazing was the optical illusion created by placing darker lines at the block changes.  We started digging deeper into this illusion technique and found a couple of sources that take a slightly different approach to the structure.

Margie and Sue holding up the lap robes woven by Jackie

This is the draft that Jackie followed for her two lap robes with the exception that Jackie used large blocks and wider black outlining.

This is a draft found in a Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns draft #246 on pg. 60





You can see that they are very similar, but the second draft uses only six threads in the outline stripes (black) and the outline isn't threaded on  all four shafts of the block.

There are two other examples of the color and weave version of this block weave.  Check out Jackie's towel and Dee's towel from previous posts. 

There is a lot of variation that could be used with this block structure.  Think about changing the squares to rectangles; make the rectangles unequal in size and play with the color in the outline stripes.  

It's either not enough shafts or not enough treadles!

At the February meeting, one of our new members (Wendy-Marie) brought a recent copy of  Handwoven  with a two block twill draft.  She wanted to weave yardage for a Happy Coat with the body of the coat in the two block twill and have the border be plain weave without adding a separate piece of material.  Wendy-Marie's loom has 8 shafts and we assume 10 treadles.  Ingrid and I eagerly pointed out that she could use three thread twill blocks and have the plain weave border.  We went home to our respective weave programs and tried to come up with a draft for Wendy.  We forgot one important piece of the puzzle.  Treadling for two three thread twill blocks will be three picks long for each block and plain weave is two picks long. 

 

Here is Ingrid's solution.  The treadling is easy, but the border isn't plain weave except when you change from one twill block to the next.  It will work with a floating selvedge, though and it is a border treatment.

 

 

Beryl's solution.  Treadle plain weave along with the twill blocks (depressing two treadles at once).  Three picks against two is probably not going to be all that easy to remember.  If Wendy had 12 treadles, it would be a straight treadling sequence.

 

I put this problem into Tim's Treadle Reducer, but the solution also used two treadles at once and the treadling sequence was a nightmare.

 





This is the clean version for 12 treadles. 

Dear readers - do you have a better idea?   Let us know and we will post your ideas and give you credit for them!

Pictoral Tutorial - Weaving placemats and napkins on the same warp

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned that Sue Habegger used to sell placemats and matching napkins using a technique in which the placemats are on a dense warp of 30epi and the napkins are woven on the same warp at 15epi by using half the warp threads for the upper layer and half for the lower layer. 

 

Here is the process in pictures and the weaving draft is here. (4th draft from top)

Cones of cotton yarn for warp

Warp being wound on warping reel

Warp set up on loom - sleying the reed

Keeping the warp under control

Heddle threading half way done



Warp beam down for access to heddles

 

 

 

Warp wound on the warp beam

 

Tying warp to front beam

Placemat weaving begins.  Sue uses mop cotton for the weft and a plain weave tie up.

Layers separated for napkins (note one shuttle for each layer)

 

Close up of the two layers for napkins

Finished napkins and matching placemats.