My senior year of high school, I used some beautiful wool suit fabric to make my prom dress. I love the fabric. The pattern woven into the fabric is a series of squares and rectangles that together give the impression of a circle or sphere. I recently found a similar pattern in Strickler's 8-shaft Patterns on page 55 so, I had to try it out. Working through the pattern and design process helped me to gain more familiarity with both block designs and 1/3 twills. It is amazing to me that such a seemingly complex pattern is truly very simple to create on an 8-shaft loom.
I bought the weft yarn for this project at the Earth Guild in Asheville, NC earlier this summer. I don't usually buy yarn when I don't have a specific purpose in mind for it... but this was beautifully hand-dyed yarn in colors I love. I had been interested in working with hand dyed yarn, so, I couldn't resist it. This ended up being another limiting factor in the design process though. It is fairly thick yarn compared to what I have been working with lately (4/2) which meant that the design wouldn't be as fine as I was first conceptualizing. It also meant that I would weave up a lot faster than the other things I have been working on lately - which was a nice change. I also only had 4 oz. of this yarn, so that also limited how large a piece I could weave. What I ended up with is most likely to be a wall hanging for my dining room.
I really love this weave structure/pattern. I think I will be weaving more of it in a finer yarn - perhaps to use to make a jacket. Stay tuned for more. In the meantime, check out more pictures of this project here.
