I will be registering interest to exhibit work at the “Stride by Stride” exhibition at the Eastside Gallery in Linwood with a silk scarf which has colour gradients in both the warp and the weft that I have called “Warp speed”. I created the pattern based on one I found in the student gallery of Tien Chiu’s class “Gorgeous gradients deep dive”. I worked on the pattern in WeaveIT software to create my version.

Neither yarn nor scarves have anything to do with space and black holes (or in this case – white holes). And yet, this piece appears to draw you into the centre of each of the coloured squares – or down the white hole! You are drawn in faster and faster as the colours progress from blue into white. Hence the title of the piece “Warp speed” (also a weaving pun) as it is like you are in a space ship that is making that jump to sub-light speed (as seen Dr Who etc). As you look at this piece you wonder about the speed that life is travelling at – with the years seeming to speed up as you grow older; also about the speed that we are all moving at everyday – faster and faster with less and less time to enjoy the present, and the expectation that everyone is able to keep up with this increasing pace of life. Also the increasing pace of technological change, climate change etc.

The warp and weft will be 20/2 mulberry silk in cream, yellow, orange, red, magenta, purple and blue.

Weave structure: advancing twill
Warp length: 4m (1 scarf + samples)
Finished dimensions: ~23cm x 1.8m
Total number of ends: 291 (285 in pattern + 3 on each side – 2 for selvedge & 1 for a float)
Width in reed: 26cm
EPI & PPI: 27.5
Reed: 10dpi, sleyed 2,3,3,3 ends per dent
Raddle: 5,6 ends/slot
Treadling = TAW Threading (so 284 picks per repeat).

I began by winding the warp using the colour sequence from the .wif file.

The loom was dressed from back-to-front as normal using a single repeat of the threading sequence from the .wif file – see below.

Once the warp was tied to the front apron rod, I wove the header rows and hemstitched with the blue 20/2 mulberry silk.

I am now ready to weave. The warp looks great – fantastic colours!