Interleaved Waves

It’s magical to watch the amazing color blendings of a four-colored warp and one-colored weft as the weaving progresses on the loom.  Inspired by the various images in both Marian Stubenitsky‘s book, Weaving With Echo and Iris, and Bobbie Irwin‘s book, Weaving Iridescence, I designed a few drafts using four colors and interleaving in the threading.  The color blendings looked pretty good in one of the drafts so I wove it as a sample that I plan to cut up and share with my fellow members of the Fine Threads Study Group at Complex Weavers.  Here are photos of the finished piece and also how it looked on the loom:

Interleaved Waves, woven on 16 shafts, cotton, 2022

Interleaved Waves, woven on 16 shafts, cotton, 2022 (close-up)

Interleaved Waves, woven on 16 shafts, cotton, 2022 (on the loom)

For the warp I used 20/2 non-mercerized cotton in four colors: blue, yellow, green, and black. For the weft I used the same cotton in a dark pink. The sett is 42 e.p.i. and about 40 p.p.i. As you can see below, these yarns do not look very impressive at first glance, they are not even shiny, but once woven, wet-finished, and seen in proper lighting, the transformation is magical. The colors become iridescent – they appear to be changing as the angle of view changes. The colors are most playful and bright from close-up and not so much when viewed from a distance.

Warp and weft for Interleaved Waves, cotton, 2022

Using Fiberworks weaving software, my design started out with a simple pattern or design line that I networked using initial 4. Opting for non-parallel threadings, I then interleaved this networked pattern line with a straight twill, and then interleaved this with itself. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? It really is with the interleave tool in Fiberworks. The final result is four interleaved threadings with four repeating colors. The treadling is just one networked pattern line of one color. Here’s a partial draft of my design:

Partial draft for 16-shaft Interleaved Waves, 2022

Hope you’re inspired by this post. It’s mid-February now, and I’m enjoying the subtle beauty I see in my yard. A few days after I took this photo it snowed again, but I’m looking forward to Spring:

Waiting for Spring, February, 2022

Wishing you well, see you next time!

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Woven Pleats, Squiggles & Waves

As I continue to weave through these difficult pandemic times to help me get through it all, new weaving projects are swirling around in my mind.  Searching for inspiration I came across Erica de Ruiter’s article, “Magic Pleats on the Loom from Eight Shafts to Two” in Weaver’s magazine, issue #31 (Spring 1996).  I also found a wonderful PDF file online from the Westfield Weavers Guild by Dawn McCarthy, “Creating Texture with Pleats, Fulling and Shrinkage.”  Weaving pleats looked like fun, and so I gave it a try.  I wove a few samples, some turned out well and some didn’t.  Here’s a pleated scarf that I think turned out well:

Pleated scarf woven on 8 shafts, cotton, 2021

Pleated scarf woven on 8 shafts, cotton, 2021 (close-up)

Pleated scarf woven on 8 shafts, cotton, 2021 (on the loom the pleats are flat and emerge after wet finishing)

I used 20/2 cotton, two strands together for the warp at 30 e.p.i. and 20/2 cotton, one strand only, for the weft at about the same p.p.i.  Notice in the photos above that on the loom there are no visible pleats, they really emerge only after wet finishing:  I washed the scarf by hand, gently squeezed out the excess water, rolled it in a towel, and placed it down flat to dry, pulling on it vertically helping the pleats to magically emerge.  I used a broken twill draft but straight twill will work as well:

Draft for weaving 8-shaft broken twill pleats

Erica de Ruiter wrote another article, “Scarves in Diagonal Pleats,” in Weaver’s magazine #37 (Fall 1977).  I really like these diagonal pleats that appear wavy when woven.  However, 16 shafts and 32 treadles are required, and I don’t have so many treadles.  So I made some adjustments to the draft, reducing the number of treadles to 16.  Instead of big waves I got smaller squiggles, but I still like it.  I used the same type of yarns, sett, and finishing process as for the previous scarf, and here it is:

Squiggly pleated scarf woven on 16 shafts, cotton, 2021

Squiggly pleated scarf woven on 16 shafts, cotton, 2021 (close-up)

Here’s the draft, straight twill this time:

Draft for weaving squiggly 16-shaft straight twill pleats

At this point I wanted to play with more waves, not necessarily pleated, and came up with some wavy interleaved designs.  I wove the sample below using purple and tan 20/2 cotton for the warp at 54 e.p.i. and 20/2 red rayon for the weft at about 38 p.p.i.  This sample is not pleated, it’s flat:

Interleaved waves woven sample on 16 shafts, cotton & rayon, 2021

Below are the drafts for the above sample.  I interleaved a straight twill threading with a 5-end advancing twill threading, and the treadling is networked.  The first draft shows two repeats.  The second draft shows one repeat and will be enlarged and more readable if you click on it:

Draft for weaving 16-shaft interleaved waves (two repeats)

Draft for weaving 16-shaft interleaved waves (one repeat, click to enlarge)

Hoping 2021 will be a good year for all…see you next time!

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Interleaved Echo Weave…

…or non-parallel interleaved twill designs would be a more accurate way of describing what I’m working on now, as I later learned from Bonnie Inouye.  Bonnie gave a seminar called “Interleave” at the Complex Weavers Seminars 2014 which I was not able to attend, but in her usual generous manner she shared with me the handout for her presentation that answered some of my questions on this topic.

I have done some work already using parallel threadings to weave echo designs, and now I’m excited to share some of my experience with non-parallel threadings.  The first time I read about it was in Sandra Rude’s article in the Complex Weavers Journal 2006, “Adventures in Not-So-Parallel Threading, Part II.”  At that time I didn’t understand any of it, but after giving it a few tries and spending many hours using the interleave tool in Fiberworks PCW, I think I get it now.  Also, I bought Marian Stubenitsky‘s beautiful new book, Weaving with Echo and Iris, full of amazing color photographs that are a feast to the eyes.  The book has a lot of great technical information as well with chapters on various related weaves.  It’s a treasure!

I like to experiment and weave samples especially when I’m learning something new.  One of my first interleaved designs started out with two easy threadings that I interleaved to design a third one.  In Fiberworks you can copy one threading, go to the second threading and under “edit” choose “interleave paste.”  A dialogue box appears with several options and a slider that shows you how the two threadings are being interleaved as you move it to the right or to the left.

Two threadings interleaved to design a third one

My complete 8-shaft draft includes the interleaved threading as shown above, a twill tie-up, an advancing point treadling, two colors alternating in the threading and one solid color in the treadling.  Here it is showing one repeat of the threading and one of the treadling:

Draft for Interleaved Twill Woven Sample showing one repeat of threading and treadling

Below are photos of the sample I wove using the draft shown above.  I used 20/2 cotton with two strands together for warp and weft with a sett of 28 epi and about the same ppi.  The warp ends alternate purple and burned orange and the weft is bluish turquoise.  I learned from sampling and from reading articles about these types of designs that the sett may be closer or may be more open and warp and weft may be of different sizes, depending on what you want to achieve.  For example, Sandra Rude in her earlier article in the Complex Weavers Journal 2005,  “Adventures in Parallel Threading, Part I,” writes that a more open sett looks more like an ordinary twill but you get more color blending because more of the weft shows.  More color blending is what I was aiming for in this sample:

Interleaved Twill Woven Sample

Interleaved Twill Woven Sample (close-up)

The more I experiment with interleaved designs the more I like it.  Below is an example of a 16-shaft, non-parallel interleaved networked twill design that shows just part of a larger draft.  For short, I prefer calling it “interleaved echo weave” because back in 1996 Alice Schlein already named these types of designs with parallel threadings “echo weave.”

Interleaved echo weave partial draft – non-parallel interleaved networked twill threading and networked twill treadling

Finally, here are photos of 16-shaft interleaved echo weave scarves that I designed and wove with different patterns.  I used 20/2 Tencel that I dyed with fiber reactive dyes.  I was invited by our friend, Jill Beech, a ceramic artist whose beautiful work is interesting and inspiring, to show and sell some of my work at her open studio during the end of the year holiday season.  That’s where these scarves will be going.

Interleaved Echo Weave Scarf woven on 16 shafts, hand-dyed Tencel, 2014

Interleaved Echo Weave Scarf, hand-dyed Tencel, woven on 16 shafts, 2014

Hope you enjoyed reading about my adventures in the non-parallel weaving universe.  See you next time!

Eva

UPDATE January, 2016:  Below are images of a new interleaved echo weave shawl I designed and wove:

Interleaved Echo Weave Shawl woven on 16 shafts, pearl cotton warp, cashmere/silk/merino weft, 2016

Interleaved Echo Weave Shawl woven on 16 shafts, pearl cotton warp, cashmere/silk/merino weft, 2016 (close-up)

UPDATE 2019:  Marian Stubenitsky, author of Weaving with Echo and Iris, is now sharing some of her beautiful drafts on handweaving.net at this link.

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