What Came Off The Loom Yesterday

A while ago I warped up my loom with 6 yards of lace weight wool.  (2 ply lace weight yarn from Hide & Hare: Romney, Corriedale, & Merino cross)  (EDIT: Since someone asked, my loom was set up for an even weave/twill with 18 epi.)  The idea at the time was to weave several samples for a long term historic weaving project.  I will post more about this in the future.  At the end of the 5 samples I still had a lot of warp left.  In truth, one of the samples was suppose to be yardage but weaving with a weft of cobweb weight (2 passes for each shed) was getting to me.  I will write more on this soon, I promise.   I used the rest of warp with 3 separate wefts of different yarns. 

The top one has a weft of Berroco Boboli Lace (42% Wool, 35% Acrylic, and 23% Rayon)

The middle has a weft of Plymouth Yarn - Mushishi (95% wool/5% silk, Colorway: 13)

The bottom has weft of hand spun teeswater wool.

All examples are pre-washing (photos of washed fabric are below).

Most of these are going to be Christmas presents for family.  I suspect that they will become table clothes and place mats, and perhaps an infinity cowl.  The fabric started as 22" wide but has shrunk between 21" and 18" wide.  Each is about 1.5 yards long.

Oddly enough the teeswater weft which was highly twisted and single ply, made the fabric do this after it came off the loom.  The corners curled up wildly on their own.  I was a little worried and thought that this would be forced to become pillows.  However it has relaxed almost completely after washing and hang drying.  During the middle ages c. 1350, many fabrics were woven with a warp of single ply z-twist and a weft of single ply s-twist to create a balanced weave with single ply yarns.  Here is a perfect example of what happens when you don't do that.

Above: Before Washing

Below: After Machine Washing

The fabrics all softened a lot after washing and they got a lot more fuzzy. The fabric in the middle, shrunk the most and fuzzed up (bloomed) the most but the colors in the weft are now a lot more visible.   And unsurprisingly the one that shrank the least, and bloomed the least, was the one with the wool/acrylic blend yarn. The historic weaving samples have washed up quiet differently and are more pleasant to work with and to look at I think,  Its more like a nice wool fabric that you might buy than the "novelty" weaves if this post. Having now washed all of these I suspect they will all become infinity cowls for Christmas presents.