Two panels, before joining.
I wove this whole big thing!
I wanted to make a wedding gift, the idea was a snuggle blanket for two. I measured one of my voluminous Indian shawls (which, being the ideal size for a piece of cloth, has long been my weaving goal,) and wound a warp that stretched across most of my deck. Yikes, it was huge. A good couple of yards longer than necessary, actually. We won’t go into details of the pre-weaving fracas - just use your imagination.
Tying on the epic warp, which will be rolled at the far end (see “fracas,” above.)
The warp is commercial yarn, dyed by Scarlet Tang of Huckleberry Knits, and the weft is a smorgasbord of handspun stash, including some that I did not spin. I remembered my bouclé samples and other interesting bits, and just threw it all in there. The reed is a made-by-me wonky thing, bamboo skewers lashes together and bound imperfectly. It gave me a nice, irregular dent of roughly 6 epi. Some of my more regular handspun two-ply was making a weft-faced cloth, so I needed to break that up with thicker yarns. The variation was forced at first, but became part of the character of the cloth eventually.
And it ended in the same spot it began - this is during the last hour of weaving.
Luckily I caught some wonderful weather, which made the weaving go faster.
It looked so nice in the sunshine!
I needed to weave 8 inches a day to get this done in time for the wedding, and that was not hard, since I was weaving about 8” in an hour. But it was a very focused task, compared to my usual meandering, and as a result, my largest weaving so far was also my quickest to make!
Finishing this piece successfully felt like a transition to a new place of ability. I’ve been aiming to weave large with the backstrap for a while now, and this proved to me that I can do it. And the feel of that big shawl - roomy, textured, rich and warm, made me ready to warp for another.