What's on the Loom????

I was absolutely thrilled with my new warp and it's colors.  WAS.  LOL

I decided to warp up with a stripe background because this would allow me to try a speckled background, and I did try it.    It also allowed for the fact that if I could not figure it out, or hated it, I could still revert to my usual simple warp floats.  Had I known that this warp would be soooooo wide (which is a serendipitous good thing), I would have made the stripe area less wide.  Maybe just down the middle, or even on each edge and the center????  Anyway, I have a 96 thread wide pattern area.  I haven't been able to just happen onto a pattern that this works for.   But I digress, back to the speckles...Below you will see a picture.  

First I did just stripes to establish my width, 5 3/4 in.  Then I got out my Helen Bress Inkle book and did some speckles...didn't seem to be working...went and got roommate (2 heads are better than one you know, especially when one used to be a full time weaver)...decided I was indeed doing it correctly and started again.  I didn't like the up 1 down 1, too busy.  So I tried up 2 down 2, hummmm it was o.k...then I tried up one and down two.  Aha!  I love that one.  So I unwove the sample below and started with the up one down two...then I decided to check the backside...;o(...bummer, this system allowed for every so many threads NEVER to be tied down, somehow this way there were threads that would float the entire length of the fabric, that would be 7 feet.  More un-weaving.  I am just glad I looked at the backside when I did.  

Also, I was very mistaken.  This technique is definitely NOT like Laverne's warp float galore tutorial.  ;o(

I have learned alot with this warp already.  Use slightly smaller pattern area, double threading each heddle makes for a wider as well as thicker piece, I love the speckled background and I have indeed figured out how to do it.  Now, of course, I would still have to figure out how to do the speckled background with a pattern.  Didn't get that far.  I learned that to graph a 96 thread count design area you need to tape graphs together and the chart is HUGE!  Good thing I have in abundance lots of that tenacity Laverne talks about.  LOL

In the end I am just doing simple warp floats.  Diamonds so far as I don't know how big a motif will be, or it if will get elongated etc. etc. and etc.

Now for pictures.

Bottom up it goes, stripe, 2x2, 1x1, 1x2....

All of this but the stripes got unwoven...keep watching though the pattern is indeed happening for the next posts' pics.