The Finishing Fling

I have been feeling 'pinned' lately much like these scarves! I had originally thought that these would be a quick project being plain weave and featuring colour, but apparently not. I might be the 'queen of twill' as Lynnette called me, but it seems I have a lot to learn about plain weave.

I took the first two red stripe scarves off the loom and immediately wound on the greens. I thought I would do finishing on the reds while weaving off the greens. I had them pinned out on my old board and worked out the twisting order to keep the colours solid over the barber pole look.

While I did lose some of the colour intensity, the finer black silk weft did a great job. Please notice the straight selvedges. (Not because I'm showing off, but because this is important for my story later on. )

I'm able to twist groups of equal size except for the two little red stripes and I'm okay with the little skinny group. I can work that up with beads and such.

Above you can see the reds are done and I'm weaving away on the greens. At no point did I have any trouble with the tension. In fact, it was beamed on wonderfully and I'm enjoying the weaving very much. (okay, don't get too far ahead of me now! :)

Next up was beading and I went for red beads on the black sections and black on the red, then a fancy 'special' midsection. It was fun choosing! They are only 5 inches wide so this didn't take very long.

A little star for the midsection on one red scarf.

Meanwhile, the greens are off the loom and now being fringed. Sorry these pictures are a bit dark but something seems to be wrong with my Canon DSLR. Sometimes the flash works, sometimes it won't... and even when it does, its not really bright. Mind you, these are dark colours!

Same as before, colours were twisted onto each other and went quickly. You can see how nice the edges are here!

I put some of my new green beads to work and got them all tricked out in an afternoon.

Here's a close up of the work under way...

All done and this one shows the centre feature showing a little dragonfly. Our yard is full of them this year!

All four scarves went into the laundry tub for a good soak and gentle wash, rinsed and then hung to drip dry outside under the upper deck. There was a nice breeze that day and they dried quickly.

The edges now have a wavy edge and the centre stripe seems to be so much 'tighter' then the solid green or black tencel. It's all tencel, but the variegated portion came from a different source.

The selvedges seem 'lumpy' now.... what the heck is going on here??

What was beautifully straight and smooth, looks like this now...

and like this....

In fact out of four scarves, only one is okay as far as edges are concerned. I was not happy and tried to think what had gone wrong! The centre tightness I could understand as the two types of tencel are from different sources. This problem disappeared with careful steam ironing thankfully. Love my Rowenta with 400 steam holes!! In fact the scarves are buttery soft despite the tighter sett. I'm left with nasty edges to deal with. So I did what any other weaver does at a time like this, you call your BFF and whine! Lynnette recommended I try the cord edging trick like she had done with her edges on her echo weave scarves. This sounded fantastic and I got right to it.

I used 4 ends of black tencel, wound two against two ( to mimic the small coloured group in the fringe). The length of yarn ran down an entire hallway to a door knob at one end of my house and me stretched away at the other and twisting like mad! I got it as tight as I could but even after you knot the end and release, some twist comes out. This means as you hand sew it on (yes, hand sew) you must add additional twist to keep it firm as you go.

I settled on this method. Which ever side the thread comes out on is my starting point. So with extra twist applied and securely held by my thumb, I sew through the scarf edge and into the cord.

Then come back from the other side the same way. This would hide the sewing thread neatly and produce no visible evidence. This goes on for the entire 72 inches of one side, then I flip and do the other. Yes, I'm that crazy to do this but if I don't do something, these scarves won't sell at all and be a total waste of time, yarn and $$. So much for my fast and easy project!

So before you think this is silly, take a look at the edge now behind the sewing area! Smooth and straight! Yes, there is a bit of a ridge where the cord is, but so long as its consistent along both edges, it looks like you *planned* it. :) The end of the cord just blends in with the rest of the twisted fringe.

Here's the green edge all done...from nasty to nice! Thanks Lynnette!

So this is my current work area as I have the second side of a red scarf to cord up and then a final green scarf. To keep my nose to the grind stone no new project is going on the Louet Spring until this remedial work is done by way of as a reward. So I plug in my iPod and turn on my bright light and sit in the cool studio and stitch away....

Send in a search party if you don't hear from me again soon huh? This post has gone long so I will save the finishing of the second white shawl till next time...