Balanced Weaves: When Both Warp and Weft Show

In Memoriam:  Virginia Davis died this month.

It’s appropriate that this post is to be about balanced weaves—balanced plain weave: Virginia Davis was an expert. She noticed that paintings were done on canvas cloth and that made her decide to weave her own canvas along with her Double Ikat and other dyed work. This piece is 12” x 21 ½” and is one of her smaller pieces. It’s one of her signature pieces where the edges of the ikat are purposely blurry so the effects of the dying done before the weaving are appreciated.  I’m so proud to have it hanging in my apartment. I love the optical illusions, too.

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In the close up of this piece by Virginia you can see why it is important that both the warps and wefts show.

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Here is a close up of a balanced weave shawl by Marlie de Swart.

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A larger area of Marlie’s shawl shows how the warps and wefts blend.

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Here is Marlie’s lovely soft shawl which I use as a blanket at the foot of my bed. It is beautiful to look at as well as wonderful to take a nap under. Everything is plain weave, over one and under one. This is the THIRD piece Marlie has ever woven. It is weaving perfection. Notice that in a few places she changed the weft in the shed.  I think she said the soft yarn was alpaca.

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At the end you can see the colors of the warp threads that Marlie used by looking at the fringe. See how the colors built into the warp are in a nice proportion and are different but relate with every change of weft.

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This photo relates to the illustrations in the two previous posts: this one being balanced weave and the warps are neither close nor far from each other.

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