More fun with turned twill, this time with a song.    I have been thinking about how to turn music into weaving for a while now, and so I took the plunge.  I started with a simple song, in this case “Row, row, row your boat”.

From this, I made a profile draft based on the relative value of the notes.  So, an eighth-note has a value of 1, a quarter-note has a value of 2, a dotted quarter-note has a value of 3, a half-note has a value of 4, and a dotted half note has a value of 6.  Using this information, I created the profile draft shown below.  I looked at the first line of the song.  The first note is a dotted quarter note, with a value of 3, so I put 3 squares on the bottom line.  The second note also has a value of 3, this went on the second line.  The third note has a value of 2, and back to the bottom line.  I worked my way through the first line, Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream.  Then I mirrored the draft back to the beginning of the line.

I let each square of the profile draft become one unit of turned twill.  The squares on the bottom row were threaded 1,2,3,4 for each black square and the black squares on the top row were threaded as 5,6,7,8 for each square.  I used 2/8 Tencel in the colour order given.  The multi-blue was a beautiful skein of Tencel/bamboo, hand dyed by Teresa Ruch that I had been hoarding for some time. 

I wove the first scarf in Periwinkle Tencel, using the relative value of the notes of the second line, “Merrily, merrily, merrily ,merrily, life is but a dream”, again mirrored, to create the border design. 

For the second scarf, I switched to a light olive green and used a repetitive sequence for the turned twill design.  this scarf has an iridescent glow, and I love the way the colours look different on each side.

The scarves just sing along with the music.