Checkerboard swedish lace

I revised the draft developed in the last post to get it back to 10 shafts and 10 treadles. Repeating the treadling at the changing of layers to create a closed selvedge.

At first I was just going to weave a sample but in the end I added a few more warp ends so that the sample could be a scarf.  After the first square was woven I noticed a couple of misthreadings, so corrected them and started again. The yarn is 15/2 silk (14 wraps/cm) so each layer was sett at 7epcm (18epi). I experimented with zquares using weft in both of the greens in the warp and alternating them.

The silk is lovely and soft with the doubleweave giving it more weight. The sett was a little close, the colours a little too similar and the silk too reflective for the plain weave to be seen through the "windows" in the lace, but the lace adds a nice texture to scarf.

Networked doubleweave

 

Gone down a bit of rabbit hole with this. Above is a networked double weave fabric with areas of double and single cloth. Eva Stossel has done some very interesting work with networked doubleweave using yarns with different shrinkage. I ll probably try some similar things or maybe a wool that felts and one that doesn't.

I've been trying in vane to network something with two different structures. Its complicated because ideally you need structures transposed to a straightdraw threading, but the number of shafts becomes too big, even with frequent turning of the draft and using a treadle reducing program. In the process, I came up with a chequerboard design for Swedish lace over plainweave. It reduced to 10 shafts but I added a couple more to try and get a firm border. The lace appears in the opposing squares on the reverse.

Doubleweave experiments

I started thinking about doubleweave. Usually one weaves two (or more) layers of plain or sometimes twill weave and through altering the tie and up, treadling and number of shuttles, one can play with which layer is on top and whether they are joined to form a single double cloth, a tube, two separate layers, etc. But what would happen if the two layer were completely different weave structures? What if they used different yarns, at different setts? 

After some experimenting on fibreworks, I decided to mix plain cloth on one layer with a classic swedish "mosquito" lace on the other. The plain cloth was in 8/2 cotton, whilst the lace was in 20/2 both at 24 epi. Because of the way the weaving progresses in doubleweave with alternating picks in each layer, I figured that the weft density of the plain weave (24ppi) would control the density of the swedish lace to the same number of ppi. With the much finer 20/2 yarn this give an even, open weave. 

The resulting two layers are tied together in the weave at intervals and I hoped this would create a transparent lace cloth with windows to the plain cloth beneath. Rather like a stained glass window.

I used up lots of stash to make a multi coloured plain cloth, but kept the swedish lace white.

warped at 48epi combined

fabric on the loom, the windows in the lace aren't evident until the fabric is washed and finished

the finished cloth

I think there are lots of possibilities with this method, monksbelt springs to mind as another suitable weave structure for one of the layers. One could also fill the pockets formed between the layers with 'objects' as the weave progresses, sealing them in forever once the layers are woven together at intervals. A project for another day.