I have been doing some weaving lately and I wanted to experiment with weaving silk without using my handspun for the experiment.
I have two partial cones of 60/2 silk (think sewing thread). One cone is white and the other is dark royal blue. Just to give you an idea of the fineness of this thread - it's 14,000+ yards per pound.
I knew that I didn't want to weave anything that fine - I'm doing good to put on a warp that's 12 ends per inch. I also didn't know how much thread was on each cone. I took my bobbin winder and filled three 6 inch bobbins with the white. I plyed those into a three ply and then cabled that back on itself for an almost fingering weight yarn. It's about 150 yards per ounce. I was able to get another one of those from the cone of white. So, I've got two skeins - not nearly enough for the ruana that I want to weave.
I wound off the rest of the white onto one bobbin and plyed that into a 3 ply with two bobbins of the royal blue for a barber pole yarn. I plyed three bobbins of blue together and then plyed that with the barber pole yarn.
The 4 skeins are sitting in a rich green dyepot right now. My plan is to warp with the overdyed blue and weave with the green. I'm hoping that the blue will take some of the green, the white thread in the blue will influence that and that the difference between the two colors will be noticeable but similar enough in value to not be contrasty.
I'll wait until it's dry to see what to set it at, but I think 12 ends per inch will work. I hope so, cause then I can get about 36" wide by 7 feet long (depending on the take up)
What do you think?
I know - I should have taken pics of the yarn before it went into the dye bath - but didn't. The yarn will sit in the dye bath all night long to be sure that the deepest possible color is gotten. This is my first time using Gaywool dyes. I didn't have the color I wanted so I did an emergency trip to the Fiber Factory and Gaywool is all they had.
I expect to get the yarn dried tomorrow and on the loom by tomorrow night.
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4 comments:
You are amazing and your work is always lovely. I'm sure it will be lovely.
Can you do a swatch in weaving?
As a weaver of 60/2 silk, I think this is going to be just gorgeous. The only thing I would suggest is that allow for some experimenting with sett. A multiplied yarn such as yours will not probably weave at the same sett that I plied yarn of that thickeness would weave. Also, silk does not bloom or shrink and so needs to be sett fairly close.
Oh, yeah. I'd say that sounds crazy;-) Without a doubt...
hello... hapi blogging... have a nice day! just visiting here....
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