A weaver-friend asked me what to call this, and I figured it would be best to consult this group.
She is using a combination of yarns as a thick weft for a decorative edging. She sent a photo and it makes a lovely edge treatment. She has a ribbon (the kind you would use for weft or for knitting) and a metallic yarn and some rayon and some cotton in a nice selection of colors and textures. I think these yarns were wound on a small stick shuttle. She speaks English very well but was unsure what term to use for this. I have combined yarns for various special effects, so I thought about it. Her question to me is this: "When you have strands of yarns, ribbons and metallic threads and you combine them into one thick yarn what would you call that. Can you call it a strand or a bundle?" Here's what I wrote back to her:
I tell people that I have used such-and-such yarns "wound together" (if they are used on a pirn or a bobbin, fine enough yarns to wind this way) or "bundled together" if they are used on a stick shuttle or a butterfly. I think the critical distinction is that I did not spin the various yarns together to make a new yarn and introduce twist. The effect would be different if the yarns had been twisted together. This would also be nice for your decorative edging, now that I think about it, but it would look different. Plying various yarns together is also a possibility. We have terms for those things, spinning and plying.
I suppose it matters that I have only described these things to other weavers. They ask what color was my weft, and I respond that I wound three fine yarns together: a red silk, an orange silk, and a rust-colored rayon. A non-weaver might only need to know that the weft was silk and rayon, perhaps?
What would you have written? Do you use another term for a weft with combined yarns?
Bonnie