I changed the original design for the peacock feathers to include more solid black between the feathery parts. Here’s how it came out (look at the bottom row for the best view, as the top row still has the top part of the previous version):
handwoven peacock feathers, round 2
Contrast this with Round 1:
handwoven peacock feather design, in five-weft taquete
The new version looks much better, more feathery and less blobby.
Lillian (thanks Lillian!) made an excellent point when she said that the back side would not be the reverse of the front side, hence (possibly) not suitable for a shawl. (I am pretty sure the drape will be OK, as the four-weft taquete came out very fluid.) I’m still turning over various possibilities for lining the shawl – the main problem being how to attach the two fabrics together without losing the drape or spending 40 hours catchstitching them together – but it seems unlikely to succeed, at least for now.
(Those of you jumping up and down, waving your hands excitedly, and saying, “Stitched double weave!” are quite correct – that would give me one layer of plainweave to hide the bottom layer of the taquete, and I could then decorate the plainweave, if desired, using surface design techniques. The only small problem is that I’d have to resley at double the sett, since it is a doubleweave, which in turn means re-beaming, re-threading, re-sleying, oh, heck, just do a different warp. (Not to mention, six shuttles!) So, I may try this at some point, but not on this warp.)
This leaves me the interesting question of what to do with the fabric. The pattern is really too assertive (and too large) to use in clothing, and taquete is too delicate to use in something like cushions. A wall hanging it’s not. So it’s hard to think of what to do with the fabric, except decorative stuff like Christmas cards, and I’m not sure where peacock feathers fit into Christmas cards. I feel like I’m all dressed up with no place to go!
While I’m pondering this quandary, I received a cross-stitch sampler book in the mail yesterday. Someone (I’m afraid I don’t remember who) suggested to me that cross-stitch samplers are a great place to get design motifs, because the individual components of the sampler are so small. Indeed ’tis so, so I will probably weave up some butterflies (suitably adapted for taquete) and other small figures over the next few days as I contemplate what to do with my taquete fabric.
Meanwhile, I have just finished dyeing another set of samples, so look for Color Wheel #3 sometime soon…
Color wheel, attempt 3
I finished the next set of attempts for the color wheel. Here are the photos and my notes (note that the photo is very untrue to color, for reasons noted below – it’s more to give a general idea of what’s going on than an actual sense for the matches):
3rd attempt at dyeing a color wheel using Lanaset dyes
I am still finding it difficult to assess near-matches because of the glossiness of the silk and the way the hue-value-chroma changes (often radically) depending on the angle of the light. I am trying to do the matching at approximately the same time of day (7:30am or so) in the same place, viewing a flat horizontal surface from above. But it is still difficult. I look at the photo above – green does not look like a match at all because the light is coming from a slightly oblique angle, but viewed from straight above it matches perfectly. And so on.
I also decided to remove the color chips and place them on the card. The edge of the card has shadows that make assessing the match more difficult.
Here are my notes from the comparison (click to get the larger image so you can actually read it!)
notes from 3rd attempt at color wheel
The last assignment is to pick a color, any color, and try to reproduce it. I will pick a (relatively) neutral color since that is more challenging, and I want to do the hard stuff within the context of the study group while I can still get the thoughts of Karren and the other study group members. (And, you learn more by diving into the hard stuff first!)
Regarding my taquete puzzle, I did what I should have done at the beginning and called Sharon, my sewing mentor, to ask her about lining a shawl. It turns out it’s quite do-able – all you have to do is do an invisible, loosely-sewn tack about once every 10-12″ within the shawl, to keep the layers together. So it’s full steam ahead! I have purchased several thousand yards of rayon embroidery thread to do the weaving, and it won’t be here for several days, so I’m going to use the interim time to (a) further refine the peacock feather pattern, and (b) maybe weave up some butterflies. For some reason, I really like the idea of weaving butterflies!