What's on the Loom????

I started another piece to use my loom to it's maximum capacity...and then I got a serendipitous surprise.  But let's start at the beginning.

I had tried to bring myself back into knitting and of course since I bit off on a fairly large project, and doubled stranded the yarn, I missed stitches, twisted stitches...I just have to keep reminding myself that I don't LIKE knitting.  It never has come easy to me, especially when I spent 2 yrs knitting socks for Christmas presents.  I LOVE the END result but the PROCESS stresses me immensely.  

So now I have to come up with something new.  SOOOOO...I tried to tie up a backstrap loom...another dismal failure  definitely too large a piece for a beginner like me.  I use alot of the techniques that the backstrap weavers use in their weaving's, but I prefer to do it on a rigid frame loom.  SOOOOOOO.....another dismal failure and now to avoid wasting the yarn, I wound the double stranded cotton into a huge ball.  I actually managed to save every inch.

SOOOOOO.....now what do I do?

I decided to put it on the Gilmore Mini Wave.  Since it was double stranded I decided to double strand the complimenting thread as well.

Since these are 100% cotton crochet thread in size #10, even when I maxed out the heddles on my loom, I never actually got the maximum WIDTH I wanted.  This time I did!  Four inches wide exactly.

Now for the big surprise.  I discovered that in warping this way (that is 2 threads in the same heddle treated as 1 thread), that when I do my pick ups for the design work I can pick and choose one of the other out of the heddle.  I think this is a sort of double face weave.  The results are that the front has the pick up design and the backside has horizontal stripes...with no wrong side...in other words the 'lifts' don't show on the back. They are actually hidden inside the the 2 layers.   

In some double weaves the design shows on both sides in reverse.  However, that also means that it is warped up pretty wide and then since you only use half of the threads it is much narrower when actually woven.  My width stays consistently the same.  You just don't see the reverse of the floats on the back.  This is a good thing as I don't really like seeing the back side.  If you look at the pictures previous posted on this blog of my scroll pieces you can definitely see the little dots of weft floats on the backside.  On this new piece you just see pretty stripes.  Wonderful.

Here is a taste of what is to come...

                                                 
                                                        This is the back side of the loom.

                                       Here are the stripes which will later become pick up designs!