Brocade Scarf

Brocade Scarf - Weaving has started

I have had a brief bout of flu which put me back a bit but everything is now back on track. I have woven the sample and the first 500 picks so the scarf should be finished over the weekend.

Some observations;

• I really need to do a photography course. I can only get a realistic colours if I take pictures in day light. The picture montage below give a slightly better idea of the colours.

• The 28/2 Alpaca Silk for the ground and 18/2 Wool Silk work very well together. I was slightly apprehensive that they might be too sticky to work at the close setts involved when using supplementary warps but the sheds are separating very nicely.

• I was having a problem with the warp from my end feed shuttle catching at random intervals with a nasty effect on the selvedge. After a lot of stuffing around I discovered that it was being caused by a fairly compact wad of felted fluff deep in the Honex mechanism of the shuttle. If I only I ever have to clean them every 8 years I can't complain.

Brocade Scarf

I am not sure if Brocade and Supplementary Warp are synonymous but I am going to call my next project "Brocade Scarf" as I am intending to achieve a subtle ribbon effect. We shall see.

The picture to the left shows the pattern; the colours are overstated. Some of the colours that I am using are quite close but I need a clear distinction in my weaving software so that I don't mess up the warp winding or threading.

The actual yarns, 28/2 Alpaca Silk for the ground and 18/2 Wool Silk for the pattern warp (I hope that the sheds clear!), are shown below.






























When I was putting the ground warp onto the bottom beam I discovered that the sectional warp beam above it (where I shall be putting the pattern warp) serves very nicely as an additional raddle.

I am putting on a 4 yard warp for one scarf: a sizable sample and some left over for tying on the next warp which a has got to be the way to go. In the past I have tied on behind the shafts but with two warp beams in position I shall have to do it in front of the shafts. 

Supplementary Warps - ideas and inspiration

 A bit of research

Since I got back from the UK last year I haven't done any weaving. I am not sure why not; it just seemed that nothing was interesting enough to justify the effort. I was still interested in weaving and read various bits and pieces and did some designing on my weaving software but ennui set in whenever I contemplated actually doing some work.
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Whenever Handwoven bring out electronic versions of their magazine I buy them so I now have every issue from 1988 to 2015. I was browsing through some of the older ones when I was rather taken by the front cover of the Nov Dec 1988 issue and the corresponding pictures inside on some scarves by Juanita Girardin. There were no drafts in the issue, just the information that they were in plain weave with an 8 shaft supplemental warp.
























The world wide web is a wonderful thing so I soon came to this page with loads of examples of Juanita Giradin's work. Lassitude was dissipated and I read everything that I could on supplementary warp/brocade.

Articles and Papers

 I looked for as many examples as I could; the majority of the articles in Handwoven were by Barbara Walker and her site has some lovely examples of what can be done with supplementary warps.

I took the photograph of one of the scarves and reversed engineered it to produce a draft. I used pixeLoom to produce the draft and WeavePoint's excellent  fabric view to check my work. . These are the notes that I made at the time.

Contemplating Juanita

The following  observations are based on what I think that I can see from looking at photographs of some of the works of  Juanita Giradin.  My interpretation could be completely wrong! Think of scarves of this type as being turned Monks Belt with a bit of Turned Overshot thrown in for good measure.

The body of the scarf is balanced plain weave. The warp and weft are both dark (black?) but there are areas where the warp is paler or alternating  pale and black.

The supplementary warps have a variety of interlacements and different yarns are in use.

In certain areas I find it hard to tell if the pattern is coming just from the ground weave or is from a supplementary warp.

The three pictures below are of the original scarf, the my interpretation as a draft and a graphic representation of the draft.

Original Work

Draft - my interpetation

Graphic Representation of my draft

Now, I have a Glimakra Standard with an additional back beam that I have often admired but never used. Time to get going again I think.