Celtic braid, redux

So, I was weaving unhappily along on some rather uninteresting satins (5-shaft satin and 6-shaft broken twill), when inspiration struck and I thought, “Hmm, that Celtic braid pattern is on a 24-shaft straight draw, too…I wonder what would happen if I tried weaving it?”

So I cued up the .wif in my faithful WeaveIt Pro, and off I went.

And….WOW!!!

Celtic braid in 60/2 silk, white on white, photo without flash

Celtic braid pattern woven in 60/2 silk, photo taken with flash

That’s the wet-finished, pressed version.  As they say, “Winner, winner, chicken dinner!”

I am still wrestling with whether to use this for the dress.  There are two problems I can see:

(1) it might be too “busy” to go with the other fabrics

(2) the incredible delicacy of the pattern makes the eternity knots and double-happiness characters look coarse by comparison.

But I am thinking that, since the sample looks almost pure white from a distance, I may weave it up and use it anyway…at a distance it will look pure white, and will show off the coat nicely in wedding photos.  Up close there may be some clash, but it should be fairly minimal and offset by the fact that, should the coat prove too hot, the dress will be of interest even without the coat.  And I think it will look good on me.  So I think I will very likely use this pattern.

At the very least I will weave a few feet of narrow samples from this…then I will weave up some more narrow samples of the eternity knots and the Chinese double-happiness characters and drape them over the dress form, to see how well they go together.  One of the unfortunate part of having cut up all those samples for the study group is that I no longer have large pieces of fabric to drape over the dress form.  So I need to weave some more.

And that is my success story for today…back to Weavolution!