8 Shaft Pinwheels

One of the 1st drafts I saw when I started weaving was a pinwheel draft. I've always wanted to try this weave and I had a bunch of 6/2 cotton to go through, so pinwheels it was. 

This was a bit tricky for me because I have a 10 dent reed. The closest I could get to 16 epi with a 10 dent reed was 17epi. Sleying the reed was quite interesting since I had to count out the sleying and keep track of the 8 thread stripes at the same time. That being said, the threading was easy because it was a straight draw 1-8 with an 8 thread stripe.

My next challenge quickly presented itself as I tried to decide how to handle the color change. I wanted to maintain a mostly purple selvedge so I decided to cut and tuck the grey weft while carrying the purple. 

 The sett was open just enough that the excess grey weft did not cause a buildup on the left selvedge. Once I got into a rhythm, the cutting and tucking went fast.

I decided to change the tie up for the 2nd scarf .....

Finally, I had some extra warp and decided to play around a bit.....

Now for the wet finishing!

Happy Weaving!

Craft Fair!!!

Please come out and see me, Lynette of LSG Crafts, at the Deep Run East Mennonite Church in Perkasie, PA on October 8th. Proceeds to benefit Worthwhile Wear, an organization supporting victims of human trafficking. I hope to see you there!

Adventures in Doubleweave

I had a bunch of horrible acrylic yarn I wanted to get rid of so I decided to sample some doubleweave. I plan to do a very large double width wool blanket but before I invest time and money on such a large scale doubleweave project, I think a bit more practice might be in order. 

I only have a 10 dent reed so I had to use a relatively big yarn to get close to 20 epi (10 epi per layer). 

I decided to mess around a bit with color so my warp was threaded with tan as the light color and 2 different blues as the dark color. I threaded 4d,2l,3d,1l for block A and 4l,3d,2l,1d for block B. 

My treadles were tied as follows:

1- shaft 1

2- shaft 2

3- shafts 1&2

4- shaft 3

5- shaft 4

6- shafts 3&4

Doubleweave with interchanged layers 

Doubleweave with 2 separate layers 

This just plain weave (only using treadles 3&4)

The sett was WAY too tight, but I'm happy with the selvedges and I only had one skip on the bottom layer. 

Happy Weaving!