Faux Ikat Scarf in Delphinium Blue made in Zephyr Merino and Silk, hand-dyed with Wilton's Delphinium Blue.
Remember the epic weaving project from a few months ago? The weaving part has been done for a few weeks already. I finally cut it off the loom and did the finishing work on it -- sewing in the loose ends / broken / repaired strings, finishing the ends ... wet finishing.
Here it is fresh off the loom, with the measuring tape ribbons still attached.
I wove 72 inches on the loom, plus a little extra to keep as a sample at the end -- until I ran out of weft.
Instead of fringe, I added a satin binding. I zigzagged the woven edges, and cut the fringe down to about 1 inch, then encased it in the satin binding. It's a little stiff now, but as I rub my fingers on it, it will wear down and get soft (like when I was a kid).
Once the binding was managed, and a few broken/repair ends woven in, it was ready for wet finishing.
Simply let it sit in a bucket of room temp. water for an hour or so, then wring it out and pull off more water with a towel, and let it dry.
This was another reason for keeping the sample piece. This way, I can really tell was a difference the wet finishing makes. The finished scarf is "plumped up" and much softer. While the sample piece is much more inhibited, shall we say?
I absolutely LOVE how this turned out! Especially the "broken" delphinium blue dyed warp. And how the weave pattern shows through the dyed and un-dyed sections.
I even had enough left (after the planned 72 inches) to do a small sample that I can keep with the pattern and notes. I can also compare how it looks compared to after the wet-finishing.
I think this photo was taken BEFORE wet finishing. You can see it's a little more tightly bound here, not so fluffy as the photo above.
Here are the other posts about this project:
1 comment:
Soooo beautiful and different. How exciting to complete it and be so pleased with the results.
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