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.
What an interesting idea,! Thank you for sharing it.
Thanks, Liz. I’m enjoying the scarf that came out of this exploration, even though it was not what I had in mind at the beginning of the journey.