To shorten the length of today’s motif I only wove a potion of it. But choosing what portion to weave…

There were so many possible ways to combine these two shapes. For example: the triangles pointing away from the diamond or diamonds on the outside of a triangle or two… I could easily get lost playing with design.

Until next time,

warp, weave, be happy! ~ Jennifer

Playing

Today’s motif is a sweet little diamond, the key word being little. It is only nine warp ends wide and nine pick tall. I felt it needed a friend, so I wove one. The orange diamond is the original design from page 38 in Anne Dixon’s book, The Weaver’s Inkle Pattern Directory: 400 Warp-Face Weaves. It is woven mostly using the unheddled threads, all except the two warp ends in the middle. Mine is woven on the heddled threads.

In counting out my pickup threads today, I realized I warped 26 pattern threads instead of 25. Hopefully some upcoming designs will not look too askew with a random line of color in the band. We shall see. Saturday’s motif is intense in pickup and is 25 ends wide.

Did you spot the mistake in yesterday’s motif? Someone wrote wondering where it is. See the little blue dot of weft peeking through. There should be an orange warp end there. I didn’t drop it from the front and it acted as a picked up warp end. Oops. I am always in awe of people who do wonderfully intense pickup and don’t skip any threads.

Until next time,

warp, weave, be happy! ~ Jennifer

The technique of pickup with both heddled and unheddled warp threads makes it very difficult to maintain a consistent band width. (Ha, that’s a good pun.) When picking up many threads, the band will naturally want to draw-in. This happens even more the more threads picked up. One way to counter the draw-in is to drop the partner (heddled or unheddled) thread for every thread picked up. When the partner thread is dropped, the reverse of the motif will be on the other side.

The motif on the left is the original pattern from page 38 in The Weaver’s Inkle Pattern Directory: 400 Warp-Faced Weaves by Anne Dixon. The motif on the right is the band flipped over. And as I look at reverse side picture, I see a spot where I didn’t drop a thread. Oops. Weaving goes much faster when picking up only, and for simple patterns I usually only do pickup. This motif in the book only calls for pickup. But picking and dropping threads really makes a striking band. How do you usually do this type of pickup?

Until next time,

warp, weave, be happy! ~ Jennifer

Today’s motif features warp ends picked up in pairs and a mixture of three pick and five pick floats. I was surprised by the final look of the motif. It reminds me a bit of filigree belt buckle I saw once. I’d like to see how it would look with the middle long float in a different color than the rest of the motif.

From The Weaver’s Inkle Pattern Directory: 400 Warp-Faced Weaves by Anne Dixon.

Until next time,

warp, weave, be happy! ~ Jennifer

New month new colors, no internet! Our internet was down for a few days, the internet tech laughed at how old our modem was and discovered we had some wiring that was poorly done. We are back up and running.

Welcome to February. I was not sure what colors to use for my band this month. For some weavers, choosing colors is easy peasy. Not so much for me. I suffer from the affliction of color indecision, too many choices and I struggle to settle on what is the “right” combo of colors. I mostly weave with Lunatic Fringe Yarns Tubular Spectrum yarns, 45 colors of cotton goodness, and oh my, talk about color choice! Some years back I wrote that their yarns is like having a 64 box of Crayola Crayons. I might start putting colors in a hat and just selecting at random.

My inspiration for this month came from the Pantone Color of the Year 2021 colors, Ultimate Gray and Illuminating yellow.

Of course Lunatic Fringe had two colors that fit the bill perfectly, 10 Yellow and Dark Gray. For the borders, I chose 5 Red Purple as a nod to Valentine’s Day.

These colors are making me so happy! Thanks Pantone for the inspiration. What do you think? While I might have paired gray and yellow with black or white, you know, pretty, but safe combos, magenta is outside of my normal color aesthetic safety zone, for sure.

Total random thought, how do you spell gray? I have always spelled the word g-r-e-y and find it interesting that both Pantone and Lunatic Fringe Yarns spell it with an A. According to Merriam-Webster.com, “Gray and grey are both common spellings of the color between black and white. Gray is more frequent in American English, whereas grey is more common in British English.” I am originally from the Northeastern United States . . . Not sure why I spell it like the British.

All of the motifs here are from The Weaver’s Inkle Pattern Directory: 400 Warp-Faced Weaves by Anne Dixon, pages 34 & 35.

Until next time,

warp, weave, be happy! ~ Jennifer