For a special project I need to weave a woollen shawl with fringes all around. Unfortunately my loom only has a weaving width of 70 cm, clearly not enough.
The answer is to weave the shawl folded into more than one layer so that it will be the correct width when taken off the loom and opened out. I’ve done this before, but only in two layers. With 20 cm needed each side for fringing two layers is still not wide enough. It had to be three.
Weaving three layers is a new experience for me and needed a lot of careful planning. This is the chart I used to work it all out.
And the rest of the calculations
Winding the warp onto the loom was an experience, to put it politely! The wool still has some lanolinein it, which makes it a bit sticky, and the section with three layers kept getting caught on the raddle and jumping out. In the end, one the width was firmly established on the back beam, I took that section out of the raddle and let it slide over a sheet of stiff paper. Things went much more smoothly after that.
The actual weaving is simple, but very slow. There are two folds in the shawl and I have to be careful not to pull the weft yarn too tightly as it goes around them. And, of course, each pick (weft thread) needs three separate lifts and three throws of the shuttle.
Here it is being woven. The thicker threads on the right are linen supporting the fringes, and you can see the fringe ends lying on top of the bottom layer of weaving.
It’s something I’m happy to be trying, but not something I’ll be doing again any time soon!