School of Weaving Kit – s02e06 Plaid

Plaids have been identified in archaeological digs dating back 3000 years.  In Scotland, a plaid is a length of woolen cloth slung over the shoulder that can be used as a blanket.  It is usually called a tartan but in North America, we use the word plaid to describe a fabric woven in plain weave or twill made of stripes and squares. In India, these types of patterns are woven in cloth in plain weave and are called Madras.

We are weaving this simple pattern made up of 2 different sized squares with a striping sequence in a very traditional layout.  When you watch episode 6 you will start out in a very traditional way playing with the squares and the stripes but by the time we finish, you won’t even recognize this warp as having anything remotely to do with traditional tartan or plaid.

The bottom sample in the picture is the base sample for the warp. The folded piece on top is the base sample woven with colours left over from “Parrot”, using the striping sequence from “Asymmetry”. How cool is that?

Things we will learn:

• yet another way to use Fibonacci
• working with complementary colours
• challenging our ideas around value
• creating more complex colour by mixing values….one in the warp….one in the weft.

This sample has a few small stripes of fuchsia.  If you purchased kit #3 you should have plenty of fuchsia left over for this sample, if not, we have included an option to purchase kit #3 with a cone of fuchsia.

Kit includes the following 8/2 Cotton:

• 2 – Red
• 1 – Olive
• 1 – Gold
• 1 – Purple
• 1 – Fuchsia (optional)

In this episode Jane uses the following 20/2 Bombyx Silk as the weft for the scarf:

• Ariel’s Voice
• Buddha Berry
• Tiger Lily
• Dragon Fruit