Weaving Fabrics
It’s no surprise that twill has a special place in my heart and my closet. Not only is it one of the most woven fabrics in the world, there are so many variations that it occupies its own field of fabric. The big three are Plain Weave, Satin and Twill. From silk twill to lightweight shirting to wool suiting and heavyweight denim, twill occupies the space where durability and movement intersect.
Woven fabrics have a warp yarn under high tension parallel to the selvedge and weft yarn(s) that wrap back and forth horizontally from one selvedge to the other. With a plain weave, there is generally a one-to-one over under pattern that the weft yarn intersects with the warp. In this case I’m using just one reed that moves up and down with every pass of the weft yarn.
PLAIN WEAVE
The weft (horizontal yarn) moves over, then under each warp thread, wraps around the last warp, then returns the other way offset by one.
plain weave
My warp threads here are doubled up, and my weft is just a single strand of yarn so everything is exaggeratedly offset. If I was to use a doubled up weft, it would look like squares instead of rectangles.
In weaving twill, the weft thread is woven over one or more warp threads and then under one or more warp threads. Each row is offset from the one above, which creates the diagonal pattern. Twill weaves are labeled via fractions 2/1, 3/1, 4/1 etc. to identify how they were woven. For example, a twill labeled as 3/1 means that the weft is woven over three warp threads and under one warp thread. When I made my kitchen towels (further below), I used a 2/1 twill weave.
TWILL WEAVE
You might be tempted to focus on the blue threads (the warp) in this image, but we’re looking at the grey weft threads moving under 3, then over 1 warp thread. This is a 3/1 twill.
twill weave
You’ll notice that my white yarns have extra gaps where both the warp and weft are white. That’s because the colours I purchased were thicker yarn! Oops!
Twill weave is both extremely durable (due to the thickness and number of threads in each inch), but also can have a lot of movement or rigidity depending on how tightly packed the threads are.
You’ll see in this photo that I’m using two reeds (the wooden/plastic bits that all my warp yarns go through). Weaving twill is a three step repeat process. First, front reed goes into the top position (back one neutral), then the back reed goes in the top position (front one neutral), then they both go into the bottom slot. As the warp yarn moves in and out of the fabric, these different positions allow the yarn to intersect with the warp to make a diagonal pattern. In this, my first, towel, I didn’t realize how different it would look with thicker and thinner yarn sizes, so whoops, there are a lot of holes going on!
In my own experience now of weaving each of these, my twill towels have more drape than my plain weave. These towels are super soft and the cotton fulled (fluffed up) beautifully once washed and dried. It still took 4 full cycles of laundry to get them to absorb water properly. Kinda makes me wonder what was on that “100% cotton” yarn.
Not that you need another craft in your life, but weaving is a really cool way to interact with fabric in a new way!
switching directions
Okay, this was a mistake in warping my loom, but I managed to reverse the direction of the diagonal! Herringbone would be a simple matter of threading your loom differently, so that’s next on my list!
I first got the Sample It Loom from Ashford Looms, and then upgraded to a secondhand knitters loom. I used 100% cotton yarn from both Wolseley Wool and Walmart. The organic cotton from WW was beautiful to work with and fluffed up so much! Don’t get me wrong, these would be some hella expensive kitchen towels if you were to count up the time and money used to make them, but it’s so fun!
I’ve been flirting with the idea of a weaving class using Sample It looms, so we can weave a piece of fabric and then sew it into something. I’m super loving Amber Jensen’s beautiful backpacks and think it would be so cool to make a little pouch or patch pocket or something! I’d love to do this at the Summer camp, it would be so cool to get kids interacting with fabric in a new way (plus it would help pay off all those looms haha).
