Wear It With Verve
Designed and woven by Mackenzie Keller
When our custom dyed yarn arrived and we started to plan a project to celebrate Barry Schacht's 80th birthday, all of us at Schacht were struck by the color changes in the yarn and wondered how they might look if pooled in the warp of a scarf. Direct warping made lining up the colors easy. The simple pick up pattern in the scarf allows the warp colors to float to the surface, while not being cumbersome to weave on a rigid heddle loom. Using the same yarn in the weft but not attempting to pool the colors softens the transitions between red, black, and gold in the warp. The finished project is a light yet weighty extra-long scarf that feels great to wear, and captivates through color and texture.
Project Specs
Finished size: 13" wide x 92" long (excluding fringe)
Weave structure: plain weave with 3/1 warp floats
Number of warp ends: 181
Warp length: 128"
Width in reed: 15"
EPI:12
PPI: 10 to 12
What You'll Need
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Warp and weft yarn: 1145 yards of Alexandra The Art of Yarn fingering weight yarn (60% superwash merino, 20% nylon, 20% silk; 465 yds/100 g), in colorway Verve, dyed exclusively for Schacht Spindle Company. I used 3 skeins: 645 yards for the warp and 500 yards for weft.
- rigid heddle loom with at least 15" weaving width—I used a 20" Flip loom
- 12 dent reed
- shuttle—I used an 11" regular boat shuttle
- pick up stick—I used a 20" x 1-1/2"
- fringe twister
Materials
Equipment
Directions
Warping
Set up the warping peg 128" from the back apron bar.
Tie the color you'd like the ends of your scarf to be on the apron bar. I tied on in the center of the gold section so there would be gold at both ends.
Wind the warp for 15" in the reed. To finish with an odd number of ends, tie off at the peg instead of the apron bar.
Bonus Tip: You can line up the colors of any space-dyed yarn. To do so, measure the skein so you know the full circumference. Use multiples of this number as your total length. In this case, the skein was 64" in circumference, and I doubled that number to get the full length.
Weaving
Leave space for at least 12" of fringe, including the knots on the front apron bar.
Before weaving your first pick, leave a tail for hemstitching that is 5 times the width of the weaving. Weave 1" of plain weave.
Hemstitch in groups of 2 warps and 2 wefts (you'll have 1 group with 3 warp ends—I hid mine in the middle).
Set the heddle in down position. Pick up across the warp, 1 up and 1 down. Transfer the pick-up pattern behind the heddle.
Weave the 4 rows of the pick-up pattern until you have about 13" of warp left from the fell of the fabric to the apron bar.
Weave 1" of plain weave.
Trim the weft tail to be 5 times the width of the weaving, and hemstitch in groups of 2 warps and 2 wefts (you'll have 1 group with 3 warp ends—I hid mine in the middle).
Cut off the loom as close to the back as possible and untie the knots at the front.
Finishing
Weave in all ends and fix any mistakes.
Twist a 3-strand fringe from 3 hemstitching groups (6 total ends, 7 in one group).
Wet-finish the scarf in slightly warm water with 2 drops of dish soap. Let soak for 10 minutes without agitation. Roll in a towel to remove excess moisture, and hang or lay flat to dry.
Trim ends to an even length.
