Sunday, April 20, 2008

Experiments in Huck

While studying The Complete Book of Drafting for Handweavers by Madelyn Van Der Hoogt with my virtual study group, we finally got to the Lace chapter. I've done huck before, mainly by following someone else's draft and was a bit stumped by the section. So, I decided to figure it out.

I designed an 8-shaft pattern threaded to a point, with shafts 3 through 8 for the pattern. There were huck hearts with weft floats centered on shaft 8 and smaller warp float hearts, centered on shaft 3. The rest is plain weave.













This is the reverse side of the sample:










These picture's don't show the fabric very closely, but the hearts look like hearts and having floats go in different directions and the hearts in different sizes adds interest. I used white warp and white, yellow, pink and dark pink in 10/2 cotton and 12/2 cotton in natural for the weft. I like the white and lighter pink. The darker pink might be create too great of a contrast with the white, but it does show off the huck pattern.

I will probably weave a few hand towels with this pattern all over and as just a boarder with plain weave for the towel. I might get adventurous enough to design new pattern that I can weave with the current threading. We'll have to see what happens.

Happy Spring,
Ingrid