Story Time

Some months ago, I (intentionally) unearthed a prepared warp I’d put together in late 1994.  Really.  It has traveled with me ever since, the intention being to weave a length of fabric with it.  I did not; here’s part of what I did ~

When, with the good sense acquired by an additional nineteen years of weaving, I looked at my notes for this warp, it was obvious to me that any cloth woven as I’d planned would best be described as sleazy.  Not at all what I wanted in early 2014.  So I reworked all the calculations and design, developed a far more interesting pattern using my design software, and went to work.

There are three very fine rayon yarns in the warp — rose, burgundy, and what I call French blue.  Each individual warp “thread” is actually two of those yarns run together, so that across the width of the warp the sequence goes rose/blue to rose/burgundy to burgundy/blue.  The pairs are blended where the changes take place so the transitions are (relatively) unnoticeable.  This was the plan I had years ago, but with the doubled threads set farther apart than I did in the end.  The passage of time, and the accretion of experience, had given me better information about what would work well with these very slippery shiny threads.

Three elegant shawls (approximately two feet by seven feet, plus fringe)  resulted from this marriage of color and pattern, two of which sold even before they were off the loom.  The one pictured here is still in my inventory, available for purchase.

The fabric is gooshy (my favorite term for the kind of cloth I aim to create), lustrous, and lightweight.  A perfect Autumn or Spring extra layer.

I could not possibly have produced something so complex or so structurally sound in 1994.  Hence, the title of the series — Time Warp.