I love the drape and the cool, silky smoothness of using Bambu 12 in weaving.  Bambu 12 is a rayon made from bamboo, and is widely available.

After weaving the project sample in JST Online Guild, Season 3, Episode 1, Denting, I wanted to push the boundaries further by experimenting with Denting in a Double weave format.  I wanted the holes created by the open denting on one layer to expose the plain weave squares of the second layer.

I set out a colour order using alternating darker colours of Ginger, Acorn and Fig, with lighter colours Sweet Corn, Willow and Maize.  I wound the warp as shown: 24 ends per inch, 24 picks per inch.

And threaded the loom putting the darker colours on shafts 1 and 2 and the lighter colours on shafts 3 and 4.  I wove each colour to square, first a dark square on the bottom, then a light square on the top, twisting the colours at the selvedge.

This seemed to give me the effect I wanted, a dented hole in the top layer appearing over a woven square in the bottom layer.  I finished the sample, took it off the loom and washed it, and got – what I wasn’t happy with – a sleazy, loose mess, with the two layers barely held at the selvedges.  It just looked like a poorly sett and woven piece of fabric with no structure. I was not happy with how the two sets of colours played with each other.

I continued to sample and try different “ways of weaving”.  I tried alternating one shot dark on the bottom layer followed by one shot of light on the top layer to square.  This gave the fabric the structure it needed, but I couldn’t see the colour of the layer underneath.

In the end, I love the final scarf I made, with areas of two-layer weave punctuated with stripes of plain weave across all four shafts, finished with a beautiful plain weave check using all the colours of the warp.