Designing and creating a collection of deflected doubleweave handwoven scarves
As a handweaver weaving mainly handwoven scarves, snoods and shawls I was delighted to be given the book 'Double with a Twist by Marian Stubenitsky' for my birthday last year. It is a beautiful book. Many of the designs are worked on a loom with more than 8 shafts. I have an 8 shaft floor loom so as a result only some of the drafts are accessible to me with my loom. The book does however have some 6 shaft patterns which together I have used across 8 shafts to create some new scarves and cowls and this blog shows some of the weaving created.
Deflected Doubleweave
Deflected doubleweave is a weaving structure that I have spent much of the last year weaving. The fabric has areas of colour blocking and the weaving structure looks quite geometrical on the loom with long warp and weft floats. However when the fabric is removed from the loom and washed the pattern softens to create some beautiful patterns and a light and airy fabric. The areas of tabby weave and the floats shrink differentially creating a softening of the pattern. Where a square is seen on the loom a circle is created after washing.
A deflected doubleweave creates a reversible fabric
A deflected doubleweave has floats on both the underside and upper side of the fabric and these floats are in different positions creating a reversible design. Unlike a true doubleweave each side of the fabric is not the exact opposite of the other.
The design
This weaving used 4 different designs/threading patterns across the warp of the weave. The first threading was repeated so that the same pattern could be seen at each edge of the weave creating a degree of symmetry. The yarn used was a 2/17nm lambswool at a sett of 15epi. Deflected doubleweave works best in my opinion when two contrasting colours are used. I like to used one solid colour and shades of another for the other colour. Above you can see that I used a white/ecru yarn and then a number of shades of blue from navy to electric blue. I have now woven this design in three colourways.
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