Weaverly

On my interim warp I’ve taken some time to give my head a rest and weave samples of inlay. This patterning technique is hand-manipulated and slow. Inlay is sometimes referred to as brocading. I use the terms interchangeably here.

Small areas of supplementary weft that do not extend to the selvedges are woven on a ground of selvedge-to-selvedge cloth, in this instance plain weave.

These first few pictures show a red 60/2 silk as the ground weft and a heavy silk noil as the brocade weft. The warp is a mixture of yarns at 16 epi.

The brocading picks alternate with the ground picks.

For the next few samples I worked on a ground weft of 10/2 black cotton, with 2 strands of 8/2 cotton as the brocading weft.

Did I say this is very slow?

The brocading picks are laid in an 8-end sequence based on a satin weave, alternating with the plain weave ground. This brings the total weft sequence to 16 picks in my liftplan.

I’m having an awful lot of fun with this.

Department of Books. I’ve just read A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh. Pub. 1934. English Country House Murder, the first in a very long series by this author. Elaborately plotted, a fun read if you can temporarily ignore the racism, antisemitism, and other tropes of the time.