My next weaving project will be a tartan pattern, but it will be woven with 8/2 cotton rather than wool. It occurred to me that in 50-plus years of weaving, I had never done a twill with this thread, so in order to make it a 50-50 weave (the same number of weft throws per inch as the warp sett), I was going to have to do a twill test whether I wanted to or not (good excuse to use up some more of that hideous pink thread). I made a guess (educated, or so I thought) at 22 ends per inch, considering that when I weave a tabby structure, I sett it at 15 epi, but the resultant twill went off at an angle somewhere between 50-55 degrees rather than a tidy 45. I counted threads. Yeah, there were 23 ends to an inch (hmmm...that reed must be 12.5 epi rather than 12), but I had 28 throws opposing them. Some quick mental math advised upping the ends per inch to 26 for the next trial. This is a balancing act, more or less. And to further complicate the issue, there is always some elongation in the length of fabric due to being held under tension. I wouldn't know if I'd hit the magic combination until I washed, dried and ironed my test swatch. Well, as you can see, I nailed it. Next pictures and story will be winding 18' of warp with a total of 578 ends, fingers crossed that I can keep track of the colour changes. The final outcome will be a light spring/summer ruana in the official (registered!) Warped Weavers tartan.
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