A handwoven purple, lilac, teal, orange and beige merino scarf- deflected doubleweave.
 
This scarf is woven by Emma Baker on a Louet floor loom in Salisbury, Wiltshire using an 8-shaft deflected doubleweave structure in fine merino lambswool. The yarn palette is five colours: beige, purple, lilac, orange and teal - woven across the warp in an arrangement that distributes them differently on each face of the cloth.
 
The wet-finishing process
After weaving, the fabric is wet-finished: washed to remove the spinning oils applied during yarn production. This first wash causes the merino fibres to begin fulling - the fibres gently mesh together, producing a fabric that is denser, softer and slightly thicker than the woven-but-unwashed cloth.  The deflected doubleweave structure creates areas of tabby weave (short interlacement, high fibre contact) and areas with longer warp or weft floats (fewer interlacement points). When the fabric is wet-finished, these two weave structures shrink at different rates. The tabby areas contract more; the float areas contract less. This differential shrinkage softens and rounds the edges of the pattern - the boundaries between the two weave structures develop a subtle three-dimensional quality that would not be present in a woven-but-unwashed fabric. It is this quality that gives the scarf its distinctive softness of character.
 
The deflected doubleweave - reversible, two looks
Deflected doubleweave on 8 shafts builds two fabric layers simultaneously. The five yarn colours are distributed differently across each face of the cloth - the purple, lilac, teal, orange and beige appear in a different arrangement on each side. The scarf can be worn with either face on the outside, giving two visually distinct looks from one piece.
 
What makes this scarf special
Handwoven by Emma Baker in Salisbury, Wiltshire on a Louet 8-shaft floor loom - member of the Artful Collective and Wessex Guild of Craftsmen
8-shaft deflected doubleweave - complex structure producing a reversible, two-sided fabric
Five merino lambswool yarn colours: beige, purple, lilac, orange and teal
Wet-finished - washed after weaving to full and soften the merino, creating differential shrinkage at pattern edges
Reversible - wear either face on the outside for two distinct looks
Generous length: 31cm wide × 186cm long, with a 1cm frayed edge at each end
One of a kind - individually woven not reproducible
Presented in a gold-embossed Emma Baker gift box
 
Dimensions
31cm wide × 186cm long, with a 1cm frayed edge at each end.
 
A super special  gift worth
The five-colour palette and the reversible deflected doubleweave structure make this one of the most technically accomplished scarves in Emma’s collection. A significant birthday, an anniversary, a retirement, or a Christmas gift for someone who values exceptional handcraft over mass production. Arrives in Emma Baker’s gold-embossed branded gift box.