Playing with clasped-weft weaving

Several years ago, the program at our local weaving guild was about clasped-weft and clasped-warp weaving. Even though it may seem like I am not paying attention, I really am. This summer I decided to play around with the clasped-weft method.

Clasped-weft weaving results in a mostly weft-faced fabric. When executing the clasped-weft rows, each pass has double the weft. This left me questioning what to do with the rows of just one color. Sometimes I wove with just one strand, other times tried it with two. The results look different, but not necessarily wrong.

My efforts were based on a pattern in The Weaver's Idea Book, by Jane Patrick, called "Summertime Coasters". For warp, I used some Maurice Brassard 8/4 cotton warp (colorway 'Linen' I think). For weft, I started out with Tahki Stacy Charles Cotton Classic 100% Mercerised Cotton, in 'Milk Chocolate', 'Raspberry', and 'Leaf Green'. The yarn is a bit springy, if you know what I mean, and I had a hard time beating it down with the heddle alone.

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Then I switched to Pisgah Peaches & Creme Ombres ('Spring Meadows'), Lion Brand Lion Cotton Solid in white, and Den-M-Nit Pure Indigo Cotton (dyed). Although all are rated as worsted, the denim yarn is on the light side, yet it seemed to work okay with the heavier worsted.

By now I was getting the hang of things, including beating the weft with a fork to pack it down better. These are in the Den-M-Nit Pure Indigo Cotton (dyed and undyed).

Ordinarily, I don't use hemstitch for securing the warp fore and aft, but this time got in a lot of practice. A couple of these examples show you how it looks when you do it wrong, which forced me to learn to do it right.

These coasters were made on my Ashford SampleIt 9" loom, which is becoming my favorite loom of all.

Mug rugs in Shy as Acorn

I have no idea where or why I purchased two skeins of Seacoast Handpainted Alpaca Silk. I'm guessing it was from Tuesday Morning and I either liked the colorway name or I thought the yarn was lonely. I don't even like green!

When I decided to weave something smallish on my rigid heddle loom, I reached for this yarn because I knew I would never knit anything from it. While the skein was on the swift, I guessed the color runs would not pool. And I was right.

Not only was I right, the result is pretty nice. So nice that when I showed this project to my SO, he immediately wanted to know what I was going to do with the mug rugs. I assured him he was getting a set.

Pattern: plain weave on 7.5 sett heddle
Yarn: Seacoast Handpainted Alpaca Silk, colorway 'Shy as Acorn' (weft) and Valley Yarns in 'Natural' (warp)
EPI: 7.5
PPI: Approximately 7.5

One mistake I made was not leaving enough warp for the fringe. This made tying off excruciatingly tedious as I had to wrap the fringe around a crochet hook, pull the ends through the loop while pinching the loop with index and thumb, then adjust the knot with a yarn needle. I think it took longer than the weaving.

The first run of warp was long enough for nine mats, with one skein of weft yarn completing seven of those. I thought the second run of warp was long enough for five more, but NOT - only four fit on it. I warped enough for one more mat, just to use up the weft yarn.

I ended up with 14 rug mugs, enough to gift three sets of four plus have two leftover for my own use and to take to weavers guild for show and tell. Also, the more I weave, the more comfortable I become with the entire process. Now to break out the long neglected spinning wheel.