What Twill is That?

By Amelia

The local weaver's study group -- Warped Ones -- has finished their study of Handwoven Lace (sure, I still need to do Bronson Lace ... but who's counting? there's no scorecard). We've decided on Twill as our next topic. Which is fantastic! I love twill!

Being the computer hopper I am, I hopped right on my computer after our last get-together, and came up with a bunch of fun online resources for twills.

I already pointed out Crazy Twills to you ... and myself. I've picked a draft there too, the +5-4 one, for my cotton/bamboo.

Then I found this book on Amazon ... ooooh twills :-) ... Twills and twill derivatives: Design your own four to eight harnesses -- my copy is on its way, I sure expect to have fun exploring it!

And if you like twill samplers but want them to be useful, this sampler towel set on All Fiber Arts will let you play with a variety of twill interactions in warp and weft: Page 1 and Page 2.

I've been playing a bit with WeaveDesign myself, seeing how changes in the warping effect the resulting fabric ... fun to see what points and points with opposing dots do to the weave, with the click of a mouse!

And here's a nice writeup from the On-line weaving archive: Twills, Twills, Twills by Eleanor Best -- 21 different twills to explore, with terrific color pictures of draw-downs and woven fabric!

Oh, and that picture at the top? Turns out this is the second dip into twill for the Warped Ones; I wasn't in the group the first time around, when they all did twill samplers from Jean Scorgie's article in a 1995 Handwoven. One of our members recently wove 3 silk scarves using her sampler as an aid to choose the drafts for them. They were lovely! So, I am weaving my own sampler too -- and will follow up with a variety of silk scarves based on it in my future, too ... after a few other planned twill projects. Perhaps the sampler will help me decide on a nice twill for my handspun Bison/Cashmere/Merino/Bamboo and Seacell skeins.

The sampler's 60 different drafts (I'm on # 40, though the photo was taken around #16 or so) are taken from Harriet Tidball's Weaver's Book and Marguerite Porter Davidson's A Handweaver's Pattern Book. I made my warp a little longer, so I may explore some Color-and-weave II twill/color interactions as well.

I also want to spend some time wandering around on Leigh's blog --- she's studied Waffle Weave, an interesting textured twill weave; and has some very nice posts on Twill Basics and a variety of twill weaves.

Dot has woven a fantastic sampler blanket based on 2/2 twill; 500 different warp/weft combinations -- wow!

I hope we're stuck on twill for a long time, because twill's sure stuck on me!
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Related posts:
An idea for a project (or two)
What's that woven swatch?
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posted 21 April 2009 at http://askthebellwether.blogspot.com/