Look What I Found Waiting for Attention!

I am working on unfinished projects while staying home. I have a lot of work ahead to “mine”. So far, I’m happily keeping busy and staying well. I get to see people on my hall and on walks in our gardens outside the building so am not lonesome. I sure hope our isolation is effective.

Years ago I went on a trip to Italy to visit velvet weavers. It was a wonderful experience visiting so many wonderful places in Italy as well. Velvets are very expensive so it wasn’t easy to bring home pieces. Occasionally we had an opportunity to purchase some scraps. This little piece is 7 ½” x 4” but I love it and am thinking of mounting it so I can have it out to enjoy. The velvets were costly because of all the silk pile threads in the warps. They always were woven on jacquard looms.

Look closely and you can see the tiny cut velvet threads.

This tiny sample is 1” x 1” and has a lot to see. Some areas are “regular velvet” meaning the woven loops are cut. Other areas you can see where the loops were uncut. In the areas where there is no velvet showing on the right side, all the velvet warps are woven into the ground weave. These areas are called voided velvet. So, in this piece we have cut, uncut, and voided velvet.

A few of us were given a chance to weave on a jacquard velvet loom and this is my part of the piece we wove. There wasn’t enough time to even think about cutting the loops. This piece measures 3” x 3 ¼” and I treasure it. How nice to find it again.

Here is the place where we were able to learn how the jacquard loom works and to punch our cards for the pattern above that we wove. We lived on the little campus during the 2 or 3-day workshop.

I brought home this big piece because there is an error in the weaving and couldn’t be sold at full price. I chose it because there was so much voided area which meant that the dark magenta velvet threads were carried along in the foundation invisibly. It is 20” long and 25” high. Can you see the error very close to the bottom?

Here is the error. I love it. It shows the evidence of the weaver (or a glitch in the jacquard mechanism).

Here is the wrong side. I had it framed with plexi on the front and back to remind me that all those dark threads were carried on the back and invisible on the front.