Adventures in Weaving

A couple of months ago, I ordered some Brassard 8/2 Cottolin in brown and navy. After Christmas, I spent a long afternoon dressing the LeClerc 36" loom with 435 warp threads in the brown Cottolin.

I say this was an experiment because there were several different warp threads that I had wanted to use:  more Cottolin, as well as merino wool in worsted, sport, and fingering weights, just to see what type of fabric each made and to have some idea of how much yarn each would use as weft.

For the non-weaver, the warp threads comprise the very long vertical threads and the wefts make up the horizontal threads.

The 435 warp threads gave me a finished fabric about 33" wide.  Multiple different skeins of weft threads combined to give me a piece of fabric 75" long.

The whole of the fabric ended up looking like this:

This picture, however, does not do the fabric justice at all.

I played with a couple of different weaving drafts (patterns). The first one was a diamond shape with the worsted weight weft:

This is a shot while it was still on the loom.  This color and pattern make up the bottom part of the first picture.

From there, I used some of the wonderful Vice Yarns Blurred Lines in Avocado in a different pattern:

Up close and in person, the pattern is very distinct, but the photo above features the wonderful gradient colors of the Blurred Lines. If you are interested, one 500 yard skein of fingering weight Blurred Lines as weft only, gave me a piece of fabric 33" wide and 22" long.  Not bad!

From the Blurred Lines, I moved onto Freia Handpaints Ombre Sock in Grapevine and finished with some Lorna's Laces in sport.

As to the finished fabric, I am of two minds at the moment. The first is to cut it up and make some cool knitting project bags and the second is to fashion it into a sarong skirt, which is my outfit of choice around the house.

The worsted weight fabric would make a stunning suit-like pencil skirt, and I think I may well weave some fabric just for that purpose.  Lined and with a zipper, it would be beautiful!

Think something like this:

The fingering and sport weight fabrics would lend themselves quite well to be sewn into easy-to-wear fall and winter tops; however, I think an evenweave would be preferable to a patterned weave. Something with relatively simple lines.

With that in mind, I have been eyeing some patterns over at Hot Patterns.

The first part of my plan was to test drive some different threads on the loom.  

The second part of the plan is to sew a pattern with muslin, so I can make whatever modifications needed to achieve the fit and look I seek. Then, weave the fabric and sew the top.

Yes, it would be much easier just to skip the whole weaving part and just buy fabric, but where is the fun in that?

In the meantime, I have another test to run, this time using the same warp, but pairing it with linen threads for the weft, instead of wool...

I shall keep you posted!