These are placemats and a runner in warp rep based on the Waterdance pattern in Kelly Marshall's stunning book: Custom Woven Interiors. It took a very long time to gather and choose the 5/2 cotton (plus some 10/2 that I could double) to use in the warp. The threading consists of 26 6-thread blocks on 10 shafts, with each block composed of two colors. Using Kelli's colors as a guide and my experience doing these wraps in a wonderful rep class at Vavstuga in October, I started making wraps, one for the first color in the block and another for the second color in the block. It was quite a while before I finally was satisfied with the wrapping and could proceed with winding the warp. The sett is 48 epi, with 2 ends per heddle and 4 per dent in a 12-dent reed. The thin weft is 10/2 cotton in "hemp" from Silk City, the thick weft is a tripled strand of 3/2 cotton in color 7503 (natural) from Webs. The placemats would have hems 1 1/4" at each end with 19" of weaving in between. For the first placemat, I followed Kelly's treadling. However, I soon realized that there are actually 32 possible treadles using combinations of the pairs of shafts. I set up all 32 treadles in PCW and then decided to randomly weave 31 6-pick blocks. I used a random number generator to determine the first (thick) pick for each block. Every placemat is different! After weaving six placemats, I wove a table runner with 2 1/4" hems and 48" woven in between. At that point it didn't seem like I had enough of the 3/2 cotton weft for another runner, so I bought some Sugar n Cream in black. Needed only two strands of this for the thick weft, used black 10/2 cotton for the thin. After this runner was finished, there was enough warp left for two placemats with the black weft.
So I got a total of 8 placemats and 2 runners. I hemmed them by machine, washed on gentle cycle, dried on low, pressed, then sewed up the little open ends by hand.
Thanks to Kelly Marshall and Becky Ashenden for giving me the skills and inspiration to complete this project.
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