Introduction - textile design with floor loom weaving
Hand weaving on a floor loom creating luxury scarves, shawls and snoods allows for lots of textile design experimentation. The final design of a woven fabric is determined by a range of variables including the warp threads, weft threads, the threading pattern and the order in which the shafts are lifted when weaving. This blog details a recent weave weaving a deflected doubleweave design on an 8 shaft floor loom. Towards the end of the warp there was some experimentation with both the weft colour and lifting pattern resulting in quite different fabrics.
Deflected doubleweave
Deflected doubleweave is perhaps becoming my go to weave. It is given its name because it has two similar but distinct patterns on either side of the cloth hence the term doubleweave. Deflected because the design incorporates long warp and weft floats which shrink and full differently. When taken off the loom and washed the fabric shrinks differently in the float and tabby weave areas leading to a deflection and softening of the pattern edges. A recent weave was woven with fine 2/17nm merino lambswool in green, blue and grey at a sett of 15epi. As you can see below the weave on the loom has straight edged patterning which is rounded in the final cloth. The degree of deflection depends on the yarn used. 2/17nm merino lambswool is a fragile yarn and is supplied with a coating of spinning oils which help to strengthen and stabilize the yarn. During finishing this oil is removed and the lambswool shrinks somewhere between 10-15% which allows for the beautiful softening of the pattern.
Weft Colour
The weft colours in a deflected doubleweave are usually alternating numbers of dark and light threads which replicates the warping. Here I have used a light grey yarn and a range of blue and green shades. The scarf and snood above were woven with grey and blue weft whereas the images below show weaving with a grey and green weft.
Experimentation
Towards the end of the warp I decided to experiment. The first image shows the original deflected doublweave design. The second image shows a tabby weave alternating four rows of grey and four rows of blue. The third image shows a zig-zag lifting plan with only a grey weft used. Each of these snoods was woven with the same warp (colour and warp order as well as the warp threading). Who would have guessed that this would be the result when the weft colours and lifting plan were changed!
These scarves and snoods are now for sale in my website for UK delivery. If you live abroad then do contact me for International shipping.
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