The Third Part of my Weaving Series on my 4-Shaft Loom: The Night Scarf
I’m glad to present you the third part of my weaving series on my 4-shaft loom: The night scarf. In this video, I explain how I learned from my mistakes from the last video and how I managed to do a nice transition between my scarves on the loom. This time, I did not have to cut the first scarf and reattach the warp in order to weave the following scarf. Then, I talk in deep about the weaving of this third scarf which is woven under the theme “night”. For this blog post, I will mainly focus on the weaving of the third scarf.
So far in the series, we have seen the presentation of the project and the weaving of the first scarf in part 1. Then in part 2, we have seen the weaving of the second scarf which is woven under the theme “day”. Today, we are doing the opposite of that with the weaving of the scarf under a night theme.
The Weft Yarn
For me, the nighty feeling will come from two aspects: the weft yarn and the weft pattern. For the yarn, I have chosen some very nice Alpaca-silk yarn. I have chosen 3 colors which are black, grey and navy. The scarf will be mostly woven in black, but with some stripes of the other colors. I will explain how I do them later.
The Weft Pattern
For the weft draft, I referred myself again to my bible, which is Anne Dixon’s book titled The Handweaver’s Pattern Directory. This book has a very large variety of draft patterns and it really inspires me to try different things. Here’s where you can get this wonderful book: https://woolery.com/handweavers-pattern-directory.html?aff=214
This time, I did the draft that can be found on the bottom of page 33. I really like this pattern because of the twill that changes directions every now and then. I also love the little “M” and “W” inserted in the pattern. They remind me of stars!
Talking about stars, I will be making some at specific places in the pattern with the help of the navy and the grey. This should really bring a more nighty feeling to this handwoven scarf.
The whole draft pattern has 30 picks! I know, it’s a lot! But it’s really not that hard to follow. In a nutshell, it has the fun “M” pattern twice and the rest is simple twill.
Weaving the Pattern
For the weaving of the pattern, I did not have to change the setting of my treadles from the last scarf. This means that I didn’t have to crawl under my loom to attach them differently. What a relief!
Basically, I’m weaving twice the whole sequence of the draft pattern in black. Then, I start the third sequence. There, I weave 5 picks of black and after that I start weaving the stars in. My idea is to have the stars in the “M” section of the draft. I also wish to have a gradient effect. So, I weave 3 picks of navy. Then, I reach the heart of the “M” and I weave 3 picks of grey. I weave 3 picks of navy again and then I keep on weaving with black until the end of the sequence. By having the navy in between the black and the grey, this gives the gradient effect that I was looking for. I find it looks like the halo around the stars in the night sky.
I repeat those steps all the way through the end of the scarf. In total, I wove for about 70” (1m75) and I made sure to hemstitch at the beginning and at the end of the project.
Stars or Moons?
Now that the weaving of this night scarf is finished, I curious about one element of my pattern. I have been weaving the stripes of color with the intention of weaving stars. However, the more I look at it now, the more it reminds me of moons. I would like to ask you: what do you see, stars or moons?
The Final Scarf
For the final scarf, I need your help! I will be opening a poll on my YouTube Community Tab and I’m asking you to chose what project I should be doing for this 4th scarf. The vote will be closing on November 2nd 2021. I can’t wait to see what project will win! Once the results are in, I will get weaving! This final video should be out a in few weeks. It will also feature the four scarves finished!