After finishing weaving project 19 I decided that the next project should feature the beautiful silk I bought at The Handweavers studio in June. It is marked as 3/1nm tussah silk. It feels beautiful on the roll. So soft and, erm, silky. Lovely.

Weaving Project 20

I ransacked my supplies to see what I had I could use as a warp, and found a small quantity of white embroidery silk left over from the first iPhone case I embroidered so thought I’d see if there was enough to make a bookmark (what else?) from. Because the silk was quite thick I went for single strands warp and managed to get 12 warp threads out of it.

It follows the exact same patterns as 18 and 19 - 8 rows of weft, a set of brooks bouquet gaps, 8 more rows of weft etc.

This is the fastest weaving project I’ve done so far. It went from nothing to complete in under 2 hours, and that included choosing the warp, setting up the little loom and a gap for breakfast. It feels so much more chunky after the fine work of projects 18 and 19 and makes me appreciate 18 and 19 that bit more I think. The silk was relatively easy to work with, and, unlike the wool in project 19 is nice and sturdy. The fact that it isn’t a consistent thickness gives an interesting texture to the finished bookmark and makes it a bit uneven in places, but deliberately so.

I don’t currently think this is a combination I’d use again, as it just seems way too chunky, but I am wondering if I could use it, or something similar to it, against a much thicker warp in a larger scale somehow. Or a thinner version of the silk at a scale similar to projects 18 and 19. An interesting material and a worthwhile speedy experiment. It’s fascinating to me the impact that material choice can have on what is effectively the same design.

Disclaimer: post written in early November and held back until after Christmas. If the tenses don’t make sense, assume this is the reason :-)