I bought 5x100g skeins of beautiful hand dyed 4-ply merino yarn from Ashford Craftshop in Ashburton – there’s about 320m/skein. The colour is “Cottage Garden”.
I decided that I would weave it into a wrap something like this blue one…
I will weave this in a long strip 60cm wide on the loom (sett = 8epi, 192 ends in total), so it will hopefully end up about 50cm wide after draw in and shrinkage. After weaving 150cm, a 20cm gap will be left before weaving the second 150cm. This will allow me to hemstitch the ends and create a 5cm fringe at each end of the completed fabric. I’ll know when I’m at the halfway point because I’ll make a guide yarn thread from the solid colour and mark it with the half way mark and end point for the second section and wind it onto the front and back rollers, but not thread it through the heddles – it will not be woven into the fabric. This will be my template so that I know how far through the weaving I have progressed.
I will weave a 5cm band of solid blue (see next photo) at each side and 50cm of the Cottage Garden in the centre. The blue will also be used as the warp thread for the entire fabric.
Once I have completed the weaving, I will sew the strips together along the centre-back.
The blue edges will be in plain weave (I think that a 1,2 lifting pattern will give me this), while the central “Cottage Garden” section will be the centre Huck threading on p167 of Anne Dixon’s “The Handweaver’s pattern directory”.
Yarn requirement calculations
Warp length
Weft length
Total yarn requirement
Yarn prices:
Cottage garden (Ashford Craft shop) – $39.05/skein, 5 skeins = $195.25
Blueberry (Knitworld) – $14.13/ball, 8 balls = $113
OK – it’s time to start winding the warp threads…