Each project has a different origins story. Some start with a concept, some start with a technique. These two shawls started with three balls of cotton/bamboo yarn in beautifully muted colors. It was early spring and both me and my husband could do with a new shawl.
With 8-shafts, you can do amazing things. I really love the possibility of incorporating both twill and plain weave sections in an advancing twill pattern. This technique allows you to create twill motifs that pop from a plain weave background. Alternating multiple colors in the warp adds to this effect. I set out to create two matching shawls using this technique alternating the three colors in the warp.
In general, I never make the same project twice. When making multiple projects on the same warp, I usually change the treadling sequence, the weft color, or both. In this case, I ended up using two completely different weft colors with the same treadling sequence. This happened rather coincidentally.
At first, my plan was to use the same weft color and differ in treadling sequence. I played around with drafts in my favorite weaving software for some hours and came up with a pattern containing starlike motifs in twill weave on a plain weave background. This pattern just felt right to me: no alternative treadling sequence would do it justice. Moreover, I was curious of how two completely different weft colors would impact the overall look of two shawls with identical patterns. I thus decided to make one shawl with a dark weft (black) and one with a light weft (cream). Both shawls have long fringes showing all three warp colors combined.
My husband and me are very pleased with the result. The pink, green and blue interact beautifully with both the black and the cream. The colors seem to work very differently in both shawls. On the left, the black separates out the different colors and really makes them pop. On the right, the warp colors seem to blend together making the white weft pop from the motif.
As a bonus, the twill section seems to deflect a little bit around the plain weave sections, especially in the centers of the stars. I really like this effect and plan to experiment with this more in future projects.
Please contact me if you have any comments or questions!