Pink perle and silver silk warp.

April 11, 2011 Monday

Dana stopped in yesterday with the #3 100% mercerized cotton crochet thread that I will be using for a guitar strap she has commissioned.  

Her little nephew has taken up guitar, and his birthday, along with a talent show will be in May.  He is only, or will be 7 yrs. old.  So the length of the strap that came on the guitar's maximum is 48 in.  The width is 2 in.  This means that it has to be a little longer, actually quite a bit longer, than the strap I made for KraftyMax's camera.  The width and thread count will be the same though.   I will do a 40 thread wide and 6 to 7 ft. long warp for the strap.

He is into flames, so I will do his name and try for some flames in double weave.  Because he likes flames, I will be using orange, yellow, red and black for trim.  His favorite color is orange, so that is what one side will be.  The other side will have vertical stripes of color that will show inside the design factors on the front/orange side.  I really loved how Max's strap turned out and I learned a few things  during the process of weaving it.  I think this one will turn out equally as well.

In the meantime...for about the last week, I have been trying to do something with my pink/gray project.  Next time I won't do quite as many color changes in the striping...that, along with the sheen of the silk, is giving me design factor issues.  Nothing seems to 'pop' the way I thought it would.  As a result I have been doing an awful lot of 'pondering' the piece and even more un-weaving.  LOL  Haven't gotten very far, but here are some pictures.  

The warp is really pretty, I just wish that the camera picked it up better.

There is a set of hearts, 3 in fact, small, large and small again, below this geometric design.  I have tried so many designs that didn't work.

It is a 7ft. long warp, 74 heddles/threads per shed = 148 thread count total.  It is 3 1/2 to 3 3/4 in wide and has a 50 thread pattern area.

Notice that each horizontal stripe has 3 color changes...this gives 6 colors to the design area...VERY busy to the eye.  I won't do it this way again.  I also only have 50 threads wide for the design area, which is making it even more difficult.  I am used to a much larger pallet. This band will be added to the poncho project.  

After the guitar strap I have to do a pebble weave (my 1st attempt) hat band for Mr. cphilip, then I need to do a purple piece for the poncho.  It seems that since I do so much purple for so many other people, I don't think to do purple for myself.  I get kind of tired of it at times.  ;o]