Bubble Weaving Draft

By Paivi Suomi on March 13, 2011

This draft is from Mary Snyder’s workshop given around 1967 in Connecticut. The sample was preserved in a notebook of the late Anne Martinez McIntosh and is in the Connecticut Weavers’ Guild library.

The draft in the notebook was written evidently for a sinking shed tie-up. I reversed the tie-up in this draft. The weave is called “Distorted Warp and Weft” and is a four-shaft cell weave. The original sample was woven with white cotton yarns. No unusual shrinkage is evident.

Yarns for this warp and weft are heavy wool, Savoy, in natural white; the finer yarn is rayon in turquoise and periwinkle. I chose these yarns for their difference in shrinking when fulled: wool shrinks when subjected to soapy hot/cold water with agitation; rayon does not.

Warp Length: 2 yds. Length of cloth woven was 54″. Length of cloth after fulling was 40″.
Warp Width: Width in the reed was 27-3/4″. Width after fulling was 16-1/2″.

The 10-dent reed was sleyed alternating 5 ends of wool in every other dent with 13 ends of rayon, 2 per dent. Begin and finish with the heavy wool. Use floating selvage. After the piece was finished, the ends were secured with hem stitching and it was first soaked in cold water, then immersed in hot water with mild detergent and machine washed with normal agitation for 15 min. and machine rinsed in cold water. It was then air dried. The result is a white wool background with rows of turquoise and periwinkle “bubbles”. Fun!