The third batch of cloth for the project is done, and it turned out just beautifully. Here's the cloth in its raw state:
After a little soak and a bit of a wash, it looked like this:
And then I took a little walk on it, and after about one hour, I had this end result:
I find it totally fascinating how the fabric changed - especially its hand, which went from stiff and coarse in the raw fabric to firm, but still somehow soft and fluffy in the fulled version. And I can't imagine a more beautiful tracking effect than the one apparent in the fulled fabric - it looks splendidly like diagonal lines even though it's plain weave throughout.
Comments 2
Wow, your weaver is a gem. That was fast work. I guess she had the warp on the loom already? Can we get more details on size before and after washing and fulling?
I see that this fabric has more warp ends than wefts per cm. Is that because the original fabric also had this set?
I love the tracking. It's such a nice extra in plain weave.
The fabric was actually intended to be balanced, but it is really a game of chance whether that gets hit or not in the first try. One of the things really driven home by this project: If you're aiming to make an exact replica of a given cloth, calculate to need at least two or three preliminary tries/test weaves. (Good thing we were only going for cloth types!)