Weaving with silk

Silk is an intimidating fiber no matter what you’re doing with it. It took me awhile to sew my first garment out of silk, and weaving was no different. Especially when the yarn I got my hands on was so beautiful. This is a silk-wool blend yarn that is hand dyed in a set of matched colors.

Part of my timidity with weaving came from the fact that I felt the yarn was too delicate to use as warp threads. It is loosely spun and with a slight “fuzz” that I knew would catch and fray on my wire heddles. So I needed the perfect yarn to pair with these beautiful colors.

Eventually I found this incredible dark-purple colored 100% silk, and I knew it would be the yarn to work. It is smooth and strong, and even though it is super-fine I knew it would hold up with the wire heddles.

I chose a simple twill tie-up for this scarf, as I really wanted the yarn to be the star of the show, and not my fancy treddling. I had a lot of fun blending each color of yarn into the next, creating what I hoped would turn into a smooth gradient of color bleed. It worked better for some colors than others, but still turned out lovely.

Fulling this scarf was about as scary as anything else. I’ve done two other wool projects, but never a silk-wool blend. I wasn’t sure how the fibers would really react. In the end, I floated it on a couple of inches of luke warm water in the bottom of the bathtub. I’m usually pretty rough on the rayon and tencel scarves I make, I want them to be able to take a lot, and I know the yarn can take it without warping too much. I twist and wring them out to really get them saturated and move the thread about. I was a lot more gentle with this scarf, I pressed it flat to the bottom of the tub, and shifted it a bit, but I didn’t twist or wring it as I didn’t want anything to shrink unevenly. I stuck it in the dryer on a cool air-fluff for a few minutes, to beat some softness into the yarns. But I removed it quickly and let it air-dry for the remaining time. Over-shrinking this scarf was my biggest fear, but it all turned out well in the end.

 

When making this scarf, I decided to measure the warp for about twice what I needed. I figured if I was going to play with silk, I might as well learn something while I was at it. So I did another scarf that was 100% silk in both warp and weft. The warp is the same as the one above, and the weft is another silk yarn that I purchased while I was hunting for the mate to the yarn above. This weft was a little bit slubby and un-even in how it was spun, which is why I ended up moving away from it for the warp to go with the gradient wool blend. But it was perfect as another weft. In color it was a slightly darker raisin color that really created a nice effect with the warp. I like describing this scarf as “dark chocolate raspberry.” It is almost brown in some light, but berry colored in others. The 100% silk in warp and weft is smooth and crisp and is probably the most luxurious scarf I’ve made yet.

Weaving with silk was actually a breeze. Its a super strong fiber, and less prone to tangling. It was easy to keep the warp strong and smooth and straight. The wool-silk blend stretched a little bit, which made it harder to keep the selvages tight and straight. But the 100% silk worked perfectly as the warp to compliment them.

I’m very proud of these two scarves. They’re the first things in while that I really feel like I took a risk on, or learned something new. Don’t get me wrong, its fun cranking out a rainbow plethora of rayon scarves in arbitrary combinations and ideas. But it also feels good to really try something new, and be worried that you’re doing it wrong, and in the end find out that it’s all okay and it turned out great!

Silk Intimidation Scarf – In progress

Late last year I wrote about that feeling of being intimidated by yarn. (Read it here.) As silly as it sounds, just about every crafter or maker I’ve ever talked has felt something similar. Sometimes a base material is so beautiful you almost don’t want to alter it. You feel intimidated by an inanimate object. You’re almost not sure you can make it better by transforming it into something else, or you’re afraid you’ll screw it up and waste something so perfect.

But holding onto a yarn and never doing anything with it, no matter how beautiful, just isn’t the point. Yarn shouldn’t sit in a bag. It should be worn, and felt. And so, eventually, I got over my intimidation. And it was absolutely completely and utterly worth it.

This silk wool yarn blend is by far the most beautiful yarn I’ve worked with yet. It is soft, but smooth and silky with a slight fuzziness. The hand dyed colors are simply amazing. I’ve been able to create beautiful color transitions as I work one yarn in as the other one goes out. It is a perfect weft yarn. The warp is a dark raisin color in 100% silk that just slides through the heddles and reed.

This scarf is still on the loom. I’m still afraid that something might go wrong (you never know what might happen when you take something off the loom and full it…) But I’m still glad I went for it and played with the yarn that scared me. I’m taking photos pretty much every step of the way, for each solid color area and each transition area. I just can’t stop looking at this scarf.

Yarn Intimidation

I received some of the most beautiful yarn I’ve ever seen as a gift about a year ago, and I’ve been too intimated to do anything with it. Yes, I can utterly be intimidated by yarn. But I know I’m not alone. We’ve all had that moment where we’ve found a material so wonderful, and so perfect, we’re afraid to screw it up. Afraid to make that first cut of fabric. Afraid to unspool that yarn. Afraid to take the first step that you can’t undo, that means it’s begun and you better do it right.

One thing that’s been holding me back is that the yarn is a wool/silk blend. It is spun slightly loose to make it light and fluffy and so so soft. But that means I’m a little afraid to risk it as warp threads, which take a fair amount of abuse from the heddles and the reeds. Its a great weft fabric, but it means I need something equally amazing as a warp fabric.

I think I’ve found it. This is a super fine spun mulberry silk thread, dyed it a lovely dusty rose color. It is so smooth, and very very fine, but silk is super strong. And the color is subtle enough that I hope it will allow the dyed blend to really pop and be the star of the show.

Now, I just have to work up the courage to begin.

Clasped Weft Scarf

This is a clasped weft scarf in soft wool. I’d seen a similar effect on pinterest somewhere, and just loved the way it looked. Almost like a sound wave pattern, or a city skyline. I read up about it, and discovered the concept of “clasped weft.” Its really quite simple, but so striking, and varied depending on how you use colors. I want to do a tutorial for it, once I have another project that needs it, but for now I’ll leave you with this cool gif I made.

I know, I still think gifs are cool, sorry. 😉

It was a fun project, my first done without a specific purpose or person in mind, simply because I wanted to experiment. Now that I know what it looks like, I suspect you’ll see more clasped weft projects soon. Its definitely slower to weave, but I’ve got some good ideas on how to use it. You could encode binary messages using one colors as 0 and the other as 1, hehe. You could weave in a section of music you really love. You could imitate a specific city’s skyline, or measuring carefully get some cool sine curves. It’s also a pattern that lends itself well to weaving in some LEDs or conductive thread, not that I’m getting too excited or anything.

Anyways, proof that my loom as been busy in the last six months. Very very busy as you’ll find out next time.

Wedding Shawl

This is the second finished project from my loom, and I love it almost more than the first. It was intended to be a wedding shawl for a friend… Who was getting married in June, in 100deg weather. Ehh, its the thought that counts 😉

The pattern is called “huck lace,” and it was fascinating and easy to weave. It creates an interesting wave-like pattern by alternating basic weave sections with long “float” sections. This means that once the fabric is removed from the loom and loses that tension the float areas are allowed to bunch together, while the plain weave sections stay stable. It also means that the warp threads float on one side, and the weft on the other, to create an interesting color effect.

I was inspired by the pattern in examples online, and I wanted to do something traditional by giving a blue gift to a bride. I found a lovely soft full wool (Jaggerspun Heather Line 2/8) in cream and light blue. Oh it is glorious yarn. So easy to work with, and so soft once I fulled it.

In the end I was having so much fun I wove a little too far, the “shawl” is almost long enough to be a lap blanket. But it feels and looks so good, I can’t complain. I really truly enjoyed this project, and can’t wait to see what I’ll weave next.