Weaverly

First of all, don’t let the different pinks confuse you. The problem is that all the snapshots were taken under different lighting conditions. For the record, the warp yarn is Lofty Fiber’s 8/2 cotton, Desert Sand, and the weft 8/2 cotton, Soft Pink. The most accurate color is probably the second photo.

Here’s the final bit, just before the cutting off. I did the hemstitching in the weft color.

After a vigorous handwashing in hot water, a run through the spin cycle in the washer, and hanging to dry overnight in the bathroom, the result is shown in the following image. There was considerable shrinkage, which I expected: 7% weft, 9% warp.

I was quite happy with the way the selvedges turned out. The floating selvedges did their job. And with consistent shuttle throwing and beating, and not too much fussing at the edges, I really got away with murder. As I mentioned in a previous post, the ideal situation would be to have a small plain weave block at the edge, but with only 8 shafts, I had to forego that luxury.

I no longer have the dexterity to twist or braid fringes (even with a mechanical twister), so it was a nice surprise to see that the 8/2 cotton, after washing, did its own twisting thing!

Just to have it all in one place, here’s the draft:

My goal in this particular shawl was to highlight the fabric structure and shrinkage differences in the plain and basketweave blocks. So I intentionally kept the tonal values of warp and weft very similar. But in the next version I want to add color, and I will make a slight alteration in the draft by adding a couple of separator threads between each block, as follows: