Before and After Gradients Lessons (2022)
Pattern: A 4 shaft point twill
Yarns:
- Warp: 100 ends, measured at 5yds, Spirit Trail Fiberworks Sunna (Merino, Cashmere, Silk blend)
- Weft:
- Sample/scarf 1: Fleece Artist Blue Faced Leicester
- Scarf 2: Handmaiden Camelspin (Silk, Camel) in “Amethyst” colourway
Sett: 12epi
Method: Weaving — multishaft floor loom (Leclerc Fanny 4 shaft counterbalance)
Completed: September 4, 2022.
This is a tale of two would-be scarves, and some serious “before and after” skills improvement.
I started thinking of this project in 2016, when I bought a set of (value) gradient skeins of wool, and thought it would be fun to use it in a weaving project. I got serious about it and got it on the loom in 2019. Out of the gate, I realized I was struggling to find a good match, weft-wise. My original plan (a variegated yarn) looked absolutely awful (picture included below). I played around with some alternates, and found an approach that sort of worked for me, and got to weaving. I wound up doubling the weft to get a decent fabric, and then it made sense to do clasped weft. I tried a bunch of different ways of moving the clasp as I went, and settled on doing “stepwise” progression, notionally around the twill diamonds in the pattern.
Then… the pandemic hit, and I was unable to get to that loom from November of 2019, until November of 2021. The project sat, patiently, on the loom. I, in the meantime, took a bunch of online classes and learned, among other things, how to do gradients properly (hint: value gradients are always going to be hard) and why variegated yarns are often difficult to use in weaving (depends on the variegation, of course). I also learned how to beat in my weft without excessive draw in, which evidently had been a problem before.
In November 2021, when I got back to the loom, I finished out the first scarf using the weft I’d started with. It’s quite clear where I picked up again — there’s a definite “notch” where the scarf widens out to a reasonable draw-in (instead of squishing the patterns on either selvedge).
In July 2022, when I was back at the loom to weave scarf number two, I brought improved colour knowledge to the party, and picked out a (much) more successful weft colour. I also pulled the edge threads out of heddles, and used them as floating selvedges. There were some things I just couldn’t fix — the sett was probably pretty much wrong for that yarn (too loose); I wasn’t ready to re-thread and make a skinny scarf, though. And, I ran out of the one skein of that weft yarn before I ran out of warp… in the end, the scarf (wet-finished) is 57 inches long, exclusive of fringe. I’d rather have another foot of scarf, but by that point I was completely “done” with the project, and anything I might have added as a weft extension would have looked like I’d run out of yarn.
So, instead, I wove a wee sample using some mohair yarn I’d tried as a weft. It wasn’t the right weft for this project, but it has convinced me I do want to use it as a weft in some project!
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