Schafenfreude

This version of the fabric, while not wholly opaque, is much crisper.  A small amount of light remains when switching from the plain weave to float sections, but otherwise, it’s nearly solid.  I was easily able to beat to square so that made me hopeful that if I was happy with this fabric, I could make yardage without too much difficulty.

First pass of colors was back to the dark blue and light brown.  Here it is against the light brown weft:

While that looks good, I liked the higher-contrast blue/light pink combination from the previous fabric, so I wove off a section like that as well.  Here it is against the darker brown warp.

And this is where I stopped.  I’ve more warp on the loom, so there’s one more round of sampling to come, but I also noticed that I made a sleying error near the left edge.  I put six ends in one dent, rather than the planned three.  Since this was a sample, I didn’t worry about it at all (there was enough trouble-free fabric elsewhere) but decided that I would cut off and finish this piece so that I could not only fix the error, but also make any more decisions about how I wanted to handle the end of the warp.

That said, here’s my thinking for what’s left:

1. Weave off a chunk with a combination of wool and silk.  Try different color wools to see if there are any that are truly appealing.
2. Weave off a chunk in monotone wool and overdye.  I remembered how much the dark Merino roving loves to be overdyed so I’m going to cut some sections and do them in red, teal and blue.  My hope is that a monochromatic, rich color scheme might make those big medallions bearable.
3. If any warp remains after doing those two, I’m going to pull out the linen/silk blend and weave off some with that.  I’ve both a light blue and a natural, and if I have enough, I’ll try and overdye a patch.

So, the first set of samples is off the loom and I put them through a wash in the sink, albeit a vigorous one, because I really thought it’d be better to see how they’d change before deciding wether to resley or rethread.  I’m glad I did.  First off, a shot of the finished all-wool piece.

As you can see, I did a few combinations.  The bottom is two color and a long treadling repeat to make squares rather than rectangles.  The center section is also two colors, highly contrasting and the top is two color but nearly no contrast.  They’re all interesting in their own way, but they all have one thing in common.  Too open.  For sure.

The shaping of the weave structure really starts to show, but there are big gaps between the threads.  I really, really don’t like that.  As you get closer, it gets worse.

Moving onto the two treadlings that are more “contrasty”, I’m really quite torn as to which I prefer.

I like the scale of the half-repeat for anything clothing-like, simply because the pattern isn’t too overwhelming.

And, the contrasting threads give a visual dimensionality to it.  However …

the squares really are quite charming.  For upholstery, linens, or maybe a blanket, great.  But I just don’t think this would lend itself well to clothing.  Just too big.  (for reference, the “circles” are about 3/4″ in diameter).

Now – everything goes better with silk, right?

Right.  Absolutely right.  There’s a sheen that makes this fabric really gorgeous and the hand is also wonderful.  But again, on inspection, too open.

So – in the finishing, there’s a lesson.  I’m not going to change the threading at all.  I am, however, going to resley this at 36epi and see how that goes.  And, I’m going to spend a bit more time with the silk and with the contrasting colors.  I do think that this is a workable fabric, I just need to pack it more densely.  Best of all, this is a fast change so I can still make progress this month.

Now, if only I thought that dealing with taxes would be this easy.