Next Project

One of my older sisters asked me if I might consider making a dresser scarf for her - it's to be used atop a new cabinet she bought recently.  I'm honored.  I love to make things for my family, and my sister Carol has been a fan of my textiling since the beginning.  I think she still has a scarf I wove for her in 1983, during my apprenticeship!

Taking cue from the colorways I've been working in recently, particularly that of the madder red and the Osage orange/indigo greens together, I decided to continue with the green/red combination.  Today I remembered a skein of variegated green that I have, so I wound that from skein to clock reel to zakuri bobbin.  The reason for adding the extra step of winding first to the clock reel is that after dyeing, the skeins are slightly tangled (or grievously tangled, depending...) and trying to wind them on the zakuri bobbin is difficult; this is because as the silk unwinds from the skein, sometimes it 'pops' slightly as it emerges from a tangle, causing the swift to lose tension at first and then go to far into the other direction, and then usually breaking.  I found that, for some reason, if I wind from the swift to the clock reel, which are of a similar diameter, while this still happens, the tensile extremes are not nearly as intense, and it almost never breaks.  

Then, winding from the nice snug and very much not tangled silk now stretched on the clock reel, it can be wound onto the zakuri bobbins without any tangle-jerking and breakage.  

This skein of green is particularly nice.  I deliberately dyed it in the indigo after-bath in such a way that there would be a variance in the bite of the dye on the outer part of the skein v.s. the inner part, creating a range of green running from a soft chartreuse to Lincoln Green to a blue-tinged green at the other extreme.  Overall it is rather brighter than the green I used as weft last week.  

The dresser scarf is to sit on a surface that is 31" long by 14" wide.  I will then make it to have a finished width of 12"; with the 31" length of the cabinet, adding a foot or so to hang over the ends, I will make for a finished length of 55" not including fringe.  

This lovely green is to be the weft; for the warp for this project, I will be using the same silk yarn, but dyed madder red.  It is, in fact, the same dyelot as the madder red in the previous project, the sample warp.  

I've chosen a 16-shaft pattern from J. Wood's book.   I suppose I could change to any of the patterns in that book just by adjusting the dobby pegs, since all the threading is point threading, not even a W/M draft.  This is good, because if in the first inches of the weaving I change my mind about the pattern, I can just re-do the dobby pegs.  I suppose I could even experiment to see what I get if I make a w-sequence in the 'tie-up' (peg plan), even though I can't change the threading of the harnesses in mid-warp.

These elegant and elaborate point twills, I am told, were widely woven between 1750 and 1850, but I suspect that they might have become common at earlier times; they were, for example, woven in England during the late Renaissance, and probably originated in Northern Europe and Scandinavia.  It is possible that they were often used for monochromatic linen, for which they are quite beautiful when pressed and glossed, but just playing around with the pieces of the sample warp makes me think that surely they were at least occasionally woven in silk - the diagonal lozenge patterns combined with the natural lustre of the silk come together to form a textile of great richness.