Friday 11 May 2012

Evolution of a Blanket Warp

I finished 11 blankets yesterday.  The front beam was so bulked up (on the left) that I could hardly get my knees in while seated on the bench to weave.  By then, you can see that the back beam on the right was almost empty.



As usual, the final blanket brought in all I've learned through this project.  Not only does a weaver learn about the fibres and weave structure differences, but the design process is fun. This time I kept a record of the blankets I wove:

  1. The first blanket is always my chance to test the warp, find and fix any threading errors, and just get acquainted with the new project.  It's like an introduction for me.  For blankets, I always start with a fairly basic design with the least-precious weft fibres I will use.  This first blanket is B118 which I blogged about on April 23.
  2. The next blanket has weft of grey handspun Romney wool from Wenger Sheep Farm.
  3. Then I used a lighter grey handspun Romney wool from Wenger Sheep Farm that morphed into dark brown (ahem, when I ran out - but it looks great).
  4. I then used up almost all the rest of the grey wools from the warp with some black introduced.
  5. Onto a new wool colour that I had stored away - it's a gentle sandy light brown, and I added a little of the very last light grey, and some black.
  6. Then I wove with some recently discovered brown handspun that I must have spun a long time ago. But it's quite nice and the blanket looks great - it will be quite heavy in weight.
  7. Back to the sand-coloured wool with some white - now being fringed.
  8. Over to my big stash of cream handspun wool/mohair.
  9. More cream handspun wool/mohair in a broken twill pattern instead of the smooth diagonal lines that all the previous blankets have.
  10. And more cream handspun wool/mohair in a combination of straight and broken twill blocks - wow.
  11. The grand finale: Grey, cream and sand wool in short blocks of broken twill to make a very long blanket (approx. 2.5 m finished) as the warp kept going and going until completion.
Let me know if you're interested in any of these blankets when they're finished!

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