It’s been a few months since I’ve had time to sit down at my loom. I’m really looking forward to this piece!
This project is inspired by the beautiful sunrises I’ve been seeing lately.
The first step in the process was to prepare the warp. I took out all of the 20/2 silk yarns in shades of red, pink, orange & yellow
I want the finished dimensions of the scarf to be ~35cm by ~175cm. The wall hangings were about 4.4cm finished fabric/fan. So eight fans will give me ~35.2cm finished width.
After trying various combinations, I decided to use the eight yarns in the order pictured below – each colour will fill an entire fan, with both edges filling a fan. This will give me two scalloped edges. The first and last two threads in each fan will be purple (not pictured) as an outline.

Warp yarn – 20/2 silk in 8 colours; one colour per fan, with purple highlights of two threads at each side of each fan.
Weft yarn – Either black 16/2 mercerised cotton, 60/2 mercerised cotton or fine rayon (possibly 2/16Nm). Sampling is required to determine which I prefer.

Calculating the amount of warp required:
As the warp yarn is the same as that used in Warp 50 (Ondulé wall hangings), I decided to use the same warp calculations.
The warp will be spread at 27epi, that is sleying 1,2 ends per slot; ie 3 ends for every 2 slots. This means I need 54 ends of yarn in each fan (36 slots/2*3), giving me 432 ends in total (54 ends * 8 fans).
When the purple ends at the edges of each fan are taken into account, I will wind 2 ends of purple, 50 ends of colour, 2 ends of purple.
I decided on a warp length of 4m – I want to weave a scarf of about 2m on loom (180cm + 10cm total fringe length) + sampling (about 1m) + loom loss, take-up etc of 50cm.

SUMMARY
Warp length = 4m (1m sampling, 2m fabric)
Wind 432 ends in total – 2 ends purple, 50 ends colour, 2 ends purple.; wound with 2 ends in hand
Reed = fan – 18dpi at centre, 36 slots per fan
Sley 1,2 ends/slot = 27epi at centre of fan.
Raddle – spread 4,6 per dent (16″ total, 2″ per colour)
Weave in plain weave.
Threading = straight draw (ie from R to L shafts 1-8 repeating)
Tie up = 2 treadles – 1,3,5,7 & 2,4,6,8
Treadling = 1,2 repeated as required (throw the shuttle from the same side as treadling).
Frequency of vertical movement of the reed needs to be determined and will vary with the weft yarn used.

LOOM PREPARATION
I wound two balls of each warp yarn colour from skeins with the swift moving in a vertical direction (less slippage and snagging of the yarn as the skein is unwound) and then proceeded to wind the warp.
The warp was then removed from the mill and transferred onto the warp beam. This was followed by threading the heddles (much easier now that I have coloured ones on the odd numbered shafts).
I suspended the reed from the clamps positioned on the castle and proceeded with the sleying.
Once the sleying was complete, I tied the warp to the front apron rod, tied up the treadles and checked for threading errors.
I then wove the header with scrap wool yarn.
I have decided to weave approx. 15cm with each of the three possible weft yarns. I will weave a couple of picks of scrap 28/2 red wool yarn at the beginning (to allow me to differentiate between the two ends of the sample) and also between each of the sections of weft yarn.
I decided to begin with the 60/2 cotton and so used this to hemstitch the piece.

I’m now ready to begin the weaving.