I spent a few hours today and completed the first piece – the coloured sampler with the weft stripe sequence matching the warp stripe sequence (~5cm stripes). I added a black and grey stripe (~2.5cm of each) at the beginning and a cream and white stripe (~2.5cm of each) at the end.

When changing to a new colour I threw a pick of the new colour, folded the end over the outside warp thread and placed it back into the same shed. A similar technique was used at the end of each colour. If I ran out thread within a colour, I unplied the end of the yarn and threaded a single ply into the shed. I overlapped an unplied end of new yarn length over the single ply already in the shed.

I decided to cut the fabric from the loom and re-sley the reed at 18epi to weave some twill pieces. So I measured the piece before washing, washed it on a normal warm machine cycle, partially dried and pressed with a hot iron. On remeasuring, I found that the fabric had shrunk ~2cm in width and ~3.5cm in length.

In the picture of the completed cloth pre-wash, you can see the effect of sleying the reed with 2,2,2,1 ends per dent (alternating bands of close woven warp and a single warp thread). This effect has gone in the post-wash fabric.

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