Monday 4 March 2013

Tartan and Twill

A friend asked me to do a tartan pillow using her choice of four colours of fine wool. My first test was a gamp (trying every colour with every other colour). I knew nothing about tartan except that the same pattern of stripes is used for both both warp and weft and it is often woven as a twill. There are thousands of tartans. I was at a loss to design my own, so I found a four-colour tartan and copied the proportions. I applied my friend's colours to it and made a "tartan ruler" as a way to chart the warp and weft.

From doing the gamp I realized that a full sized pillow with such fine yarn in pin weaving was going to be too daunting. I proposed a checkerboard sampler of 16 squares so that I can work small and modular. Eight squares will be tartan, and the other eight will be a two-colour twill. That way I can experiment with moving the design around on the tartan pattern and try a lot of different twill patterns.

I'm nearly finished the fourth square and find them relaxing to make.

6 comments:

  1. Ruth, every single of your projects is so rad! I love them! I just need to adapt to chunkier yarn as I have very little patience for lace weight. Thanks so much for sharing :)

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  2. Can you please tell me how you constructed this pin loom and how you secured the warp threads? Thank you!

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  3. Can you please tell me how you constructed this pin loom and how you secured the warp threads? Thank you!

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    1. Hi Alanna,
      I made the base of the pin loom with a stack of pieces of corrugated cardboard taped together. Make sure the stack is deeper than the length of the dressmaker's pins. I use a piece of graph paper to plan where the pins will go. If you look at this post in my jacket blog it shows you how to draw up the plan and place the pins for weaving a square (http://ruthsjacketproject.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/my-sett-ruler-and-pin-woven-samples.html). If you have any more questions, please ask.

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  4. Excelente !!! Muchas gracias !!! Me encanta lo que hacés !!!

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  5. This is lovely. I am new to weaving. Looking forward to being goid enough to make something like this. Love that you use dressmaker pins

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