While I was working on Project 5, my husband pointed out that I hadn’t made anything for him yet!  So on 31 August 2018, I began making one.  I finished it on 8 March 2019 – obviously, I didn’t work on it very often…

For this project I used Ashford mercerised cotton Ne 5/2 for the warp:
Radiant orchid (purple) (56), Dazzling blue (46), Scuba blue (44) and Chilli pepper (red) (12).  For the weft I used Fog (cream) (03).  Paul chose the colours and the patterns.

I threaded the loom using the weaving drafts on page 90-91 of “The handweaver’s pattern directory” by Anne Dixon, with the 2nd (centre) warp threading (M and W variations threading: 2/2 twill).  Paul asked me to use all three of the weft threadings, resulting in stripes of about 10cm of each threading pattern.  This meant 4 repetitions of pattern 1 and 5 repetitions of each of patterns 2 & 3 before starting again with pattern 1. There were 48 threads of each of the 4 warp colours (total of 192 threads), each 250cm long.  The sett is 16epi.

25 Sept – I began winding the threads on to the warping mill
28 & 30 Sept – Wound warp onto back roller
4 Oct – Threaded right-hand heddles – dazzling blue and radiant orchid threads
5 & 7 Oct – Threaded left-hand heddles – scuba blue and chilli pepper threads
7 & 8 Oct – Sleyed the reed
13 Oct – Tied warp threads onto front beam and wove header
14 Oct – Completed first repetition of pattern 1 and hem-stitched end
3 Mar – Completed weaving
6 Mar – Hem-stitched end, cut from back beam and tied overhand knots for fringes – used 2 threads per knot, 1 from each of two adjacent hem-stitches
7 Mar – Unwound fabric and untied from front beam. Tied overhand knots for fringes as for the other end. The completed fabric measured 200cm x 27cm. The cloth was washed (warm water, normal cycle) and dried
8 Mar – Trimmed the fringes to 6.5cm using packing tape to make a straight line. Finished size 190cm x 24.5cm; not including fringes.