Blue Alpaca Woven Shawl

Blue Alpaca Woven Shawl

It's finally cold enough to where I wanted something a little extra to keep me warm.  This was just the thing today!

I wove this up last winter with Janet's Favorite Twill.  It was really meant to be an experiment -- The first warp on the "new-to-me" Kessenich 4-shaft floor loom.

The alpaca yarn was given to me by someone at work after she retired.  I think she'd gotten it from an Aunt of hers who had passed away.  I think she heard me complaining about the cheap scratchy acrylic yarns the craft ladies were using as not being something I wanted to work with for weaving.  Her ears perked up, and she knew I would appreciate "the good stuff."  Thank you, Nancy Schmidt.  This is wonderful yarn!

 Detail of the closure / clasp.  This pin is from Scotland.

Here you can really see the warp strings, too.  I used a maroon cotton, as we were setting up to do rugs last fall.  It looks a little "rough" and rustic here, but I do like the effect.  

Next time, I will use a natural colored wool carpet warp with similar alpaca yarn in browns.  That should blend in better.   

I came across this picture from last winter when it was still on the loom.  I had forgotten how well this particular style of shuttle worked so very well for weaving this cloth, as I was able to get almost a whole skein of yarn on the shuttle.

Detail of the weave structure : Janet's Favorite Twill

Detail of the binding on one end.    Very clean and tidy.

This worked really well, and would also work for hemming rugs.

On the other end, I tied off the warp strings and left them hanging long.  When I did the wet-finishing, I probably went too far -- but then this was all experimental, remember?  The end with the loose warp strings hanging off as fringe worked really well to felt that end of the shawl--the strings were beating the fabric into submission.  It's a really nice thick felt on that end! 

I will probably trim off the strings, and bind them under a black ribbon, to make it more like the other side.  

As a result the felted end is much shorter than the other end, that didn't get the extra massage work.
Here' you can see the difference in the widths end for end.  It also shows the difference in the felting and not so felted.

A note about the weave structure (for future reference, when I want to recreate what Ive done here) :

 

Treadling Notes for Janet's Favorite Twill

I had to do some adapting to make it work with the straight draw set-up on my loom.

Straight Draw means, basically, that the warp strings run conscutively through the heddles of each of 4 shafts.  

Shaft 1 Heddle 1 String 1

Shaft 2 Heddle 1 String 2

Shaft 3 Heddle 1 String 3

Shaft 4 Heddle 1 String 4

Repeat for subsequent sets :

Shaft 1 Heddle 2 String 5

Shaft 2 Heddle 2 String 6

Shaft 3 Heddle 2 String 7

Shaft 4 Heddle 2 String 8 

I also have my treadles set up in a "walking" configuration. This means that :

Treadle 1 lifts Shaft (1+3)

Treadle 2 lifts Shaft 1

Treadle 3 lifts Shaft 2

Treadle 4 Lifts Shaft 3

Treadle 5 lifts Shaft 4

Treadle 6 lifts Shafts (2+4)

Basically, the outside peddles allow you to do a common weave with every other string up or down--It's like you'd be walking, alternating the outside treadles to make common cloth.  Pedal 1 lifts Shafts 1 + 3 at the same time.  Pedal 6 lifts shafts 2 + 4 at the same time.

The 4 treadles in the middle lift each of the 4 shafts individually.  I tend to think of these as a set all on their own : 1-2-3-4 (rather than treadles 2-3-4-5 out of 6 total.)

Depending on how you combine the treadles, you have quite a variety of weaving patterns available.  The treadle pattern listed on the cards above makes up Janet's Favorite Twill.

For me, it was easier to write the card to read from th bottom up, as that tracked how the cloth was woven in front of me.   It was also easier to think of each line as a pass of the shuttle through the open strings. 

1st pass :  Treadles 1 + 2 which lift shafts 1 + 2 (actually treadles 2 + 3)
2nd pass : Treadle 6 (2 + 4) which lifts shafts 2 + 4
3rd pass : Treadles 2 + 3  which lifts shafts 2 + 3 (actually treadles 3 + 4)
4th pass : Treadle 1(1+3) which lifts shafts 1 + 3
5th pass : Treadles  3 + 4 which lifts shafts 3 + 4 (actually treadles 4 + 5)
6th pass : Treadle 6 (2 + 4) which lifts shafts 2 + 4
7th pass : Treadles 1 + 4  which lift shafts 1 + 4  (actually treadles 2 + 5)

When I was weaving, I used a bead system to help me keep track of where I was in the treadling pattern.   I was amazed at how brilliantly this weaving hack worked to keep me on track, and prevent loosing my place!

Who's Janet?  Janet Dawson teaches the Floor Loom Weaving online class at Craftsy, where she shares no less than 37 weaving draft patterns, of which this #13. 

 

Cozy & warm!