I'm working through Mary Black's a New Key to Weaving and warp-faced weave was one of the topics in the chapter on plain weave. I had some cones of 3/2 perle cotton that must be 15 years old and thought I would use that up. The colors certainly haven't faded with age. This piece of cloth will make your eyes vibrate. Way too bright for my tastes.
At first I tried to be disciplined and work out the best arrangement of colors and strips. But since I wanted to use up all these little cones of color, I just gave up and wound stripes in random sections of 1/4 to 1/2 inch.
During weaving I found that I really had to pull in on the selvedges or they came out extremely loose. Maybe that is required with a warp-faced weave. Just the opposite of weft-faced where you need to be careful not the pull the weft in too tightly and have the warp draw in too much.
Not sure what I'm going to do with this cloth. It is fairly thick and stiff. I was thinking of maybe using it to make a small lunch bag.
Things learned on this project:
1. It pays to be disciplined and take the time to harmonize and arrange the colors in a striped warp.
2. One or two very bright colors in a warp are probably enough.
3. When warp-faced weaving tightly pull up the weft against the selvedge to avoid sloppy edges.
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