I belong to a group whose mission is to made shawls to give to people who might need the comforting warmth of a wrap. Most of the women knit shawls or lap robes to give to others but since it took me about a year to knit my first shawl, I decided to stick to weaving them. My friend Dee donated a bag of red yarn to the group and I volunteered to transform it into a shawl.
The pile included mixed fiber content yarns and some without any indication of the fiber contents. Many either had or seemed to have wool in them but others may have had cotton or synthetic content as well. So for the warp, I decided to pick two of the different yarns and alternate these for a while and then switch to two other sets of yarn. This way there wouldn't be any place with a big section of one type of fiber content and another with a very different fiber content. The warp was sett at 6 epi and threaded to a straight draw on 8 shafts.
For the weft, I chose a black alpaca (70) wool (30) blend that was a similar weight to the red yarns. To keep it easy (I wove this at the group's retreat last weekend on my Baby Wolf portable loom) I just wove this as a 3-2-1-1-1 twill with straight treadling.
The result was very striking and very soft. I left the fringe with just hem stitching. I think someone will be happy to receive it.
The pile included mixed fiber content yarns and some without any indication of the fiber contents. Many either had or seemed to have wool in them but others may have had cotton or synthetic content as well. So for the warp, I decided to pick two of the different yarns and alternate these for a while and then switch to two other sets of yarn. This way there wouldn't be any place with a big section of one type of fiber content and another with a very different fiber content. The warp was sett at 6 epi and threaded to a straight draw on 8 shafts.
For the weft, I chose a black alpaca (70) wool (30) blend that was a similar weight to the red yarns. To keep it easy (I wove this at the group's retreat last weekend on my Baby Wolf portable loom) I just wove this as a 3-2-1-1-1 twill with straight treadling.
The result was very striking and very soft. I left the fringe with just hem stitching. I think someone will be happy to receive it.
