When I was taking the double weave class at Pacific Basin Textiles in Berkeley, CA in the 70’s I decided on combing several ideas in my final project. I wanted to make a color blanket plus I wanted to try an optical illusion of a triangle laying on top of it. At first it seemed like a great simple idea.
I wanted a black frame which meant its own double weave block. No one said that all the blocks had to be the same size, right? So, one block was the color blanket and the second block was the black borders on the sides. (More on the top below). That meant 8 shafts.
I wanted the fringe to show so the viewer could appreciate how the original colors of the yarn were altered by the weaving.
My loom had 2 more shafts which I used for a separate warp for the triangle. I probably used both shafts when one would do—just because—and it spread out the dense grey yarns more that way. In a sense, that meant 3 warps with wool yarns. I never thought that it might be difficult to open the sheds. But because I had a loom built by Jim Ahrens (AVL) the sheds were not a problem.
I picked up the yarns as needed with pickup sticks for the triangle. Otherwise, they just floated in between the two outer layers.
Here’s the back of the hanging. This way I could see how black crossing all the colors would look. Also, I arranged the colors in a different order from the front side.
For another experiment, I made the border grey so I could see how grey crossing all the colors would be like.
At the top, I had to weave and extra piece to get the black border and I sewed it on. Inside, for a flat rod I used a sturdy flat metal bar.
What I learned. Right away I saw that I didn’t like the way mixtures of colors of strong value differences looked. Much later I learned that colors blended better when they were closer in value. I thought at the time I was seeing lots of samples of color combinations. I never consulted the blanket for that purpose, but I will always remember that I don’t like dark purple and bright yellow as a yarn mixture!
Love your comments on what you learned. I too am not a fan of colour gamps with strikingly different colour values. Thank you for sharing your exploration of double weave and the utilisation of the 3rd warp for an ‘illusion’. Food for thought
Ruth
Gorgeous, what a fantastic idea!
nice your article, and happy nice day unimuda