Fine Cotton Summer and Winter Scarf

Hi there folks.

This post is about a weaving kit I brought back from my trip to the weaving exhibition in Borås, Sweden.

I made several visits to the stand of Venne Cotton . They had stunning displays of cotton and examples of their woven scarves. Here is a taster......................

I was very taken by their fine cotton woven scarf kits and ended up buying four !! So this is the story of the first one.

The kit contained three small cones of very fine thread. The warp was a variegated 40/2 cotton incorporating blues, purples and white. Two cones for weft, firstly, the pattern weft, 40/2 cotton in a nice shade of turquoise,  a favourite with me. The second cone was for the tabby weft and it was 40/2 wool and cotton mixture to provide softness. Venne is a Dutch company so the instructions came in Dutch and English with warping and treading diagrams for both a floor loom and a table loom. The draft was described as a summer and winter technique.

I have never done summer and winter before and I haven't often used two shuttles so new territory for me.

Actually, I found the weaving to be very easy once I had got started and into a rhythm. The wool and cotton tabby weft was very fine and easy to break. I tried to hemstitch with it but had to change to the warp thread as it broke after just a few stitches.

I started both shuttles on the same side, I don't know if that is correct but the selvedges looked so good I decided that's what I would continue with.

Anyway here is how it looked on the loom. you can see how the variegations in the warp show through and provide the pattern.......................................

It did take a long time to grow being such fine thread, I would go as far as to say the weaving got a bit boring as there was no change just a tabby pick then a pattern pick. I only did small amounts at a time to avoid making mistakes.

I wove to about 75" and I am glad because when I washed it it shrank quite a lot and the scarf ended up about 67 ". There wasn't a lot of yarn left over, in particular very little warp ! Fortunately I made my samples very small or the scarf would have been even shorter.

As usual, for me, I probably was a bit firm with the beating. Once it was washed it didn't soften just as much as I would have liked although 15 minutes in the drier helped along with a few whacks on the work surface !! The final result looks like this..........................

I am undecided whether or not I really like it !! Maybe a 'quieter' warp would have been nicer.

However, technically it has turned out well and I will look forward to tackling the other three kits which are quite similar summer and winter designs but in different colours.