Since my post on Wednesday, I have experimented with doing this weaving in a couple of ways. I wove with the weft coming from two different directions this time. I still had the issue of not having a “perfect” diagonal line between the two colors. Then I remembered Kathe Todd-Hooker saying that soumak could hide that uneveness. I pulled out my Tapestry 101 just to make sure that I knew what I was doing, and got started. I am still weaving one of the long triangles at a time, then a row of soumak with the the next triangle color. Pretty smooth! In the picture above, the soumak row is the first row of purple at the top of the weaving. Yes, the tapestry is going to have some texture now, but it’s not extremely noticeable. I will also have to decide how to handle the previously woven sections—see the close-up below. Maybe some pseudo soumak after the weaving is finished? Of course, other people outside of the weaving community don’t notice all those imperfections. But that’s a post for another day.
Here’s a tutorial on soumak.
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4 comments:
Yay for soumak! Twining would do the same thing, only with less bulk. The only thing about Twining is what to do with the ends, as there are 2 instead of 1. I start with a folded weft at one end so there are only ends at the end not the beginning.
If you start at one end, then start at the other and have all the ends meet in the middle, you can just hang all the ends out the back; but if you're into having the back all tidy, you'd have to do something else.
Jan, I used to do twining at the beginning and end of each piece, so I don't know why I didn't think of using that in this situation. Hey, this thing has become a big experiment, so maybe I'll use twining next.
There are other ways to solve the step problem that don't involve twining or soumak (though those are good solutions too depending on how you want it to look), but they are kinda complicated for a blog comment. The step differences are created by whether you're wrapping on a raised or lowered warp and how those build up successively. You can use some less obvious techniques to correct for it. But glad the soumak worked!
I don't usually have problems with steps. Maybe I'm not holding my tongue right! I'm enjoying the experimentation, though.
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