| Here's a shawl I just finished for a customer who wanted "all white with some metallic." I used five different yarns and wound the warp holding five ends between my fingers. The yarns were smooth wool, unmercerized cotton plied with gold, loop mohair, and shiny boucle rayon plied with wool, all in natural white. Also, fluffy mohair in bleached white. The weft was smooth wool.
I sett the warp at 12 epi and threaded for plain twill. But then I decided to add a bit of pattern, and turned the direction of the twill after every 5 inches. To make it easier to remember in which direction to treadle, I tied a purple thread to the selvage at the beginning of each section: on the right side if I was going to treadle from right to left, on the left selvage when I changed direction and was to treadle from left to right.
The shawl was 24" on the loom, 20" after it was finished. Length: woven 90", afterwards, 78" plus 4" fringes. I tied the fringes in bouts of 10 warps, and then strung gold beads onto the wool ends with the help of a Butlers floss threader (a great little tool!). I then put a dab of tacky glue (fabric glue) just above each bead and pushed the bead on top of the glue. This way, they'll stay without the need to make knots.
The shawl was hand washed with Dove detergent, spun out in the machine and air dried. I then tossed it in the drier on Air for 10 minutes to shake off any loose mohair strands, as they tend to come off on clothing.
A pleasant project even for a beginner!
Marina |