Friday, January 18, 2008

Honeycomb fabric

Over the holidays, I found a design in Laura Fry's "Magic in the Water" book that I want to do. Project 5 - cotton chenille jacket. I will use fine bamboo yarn and cotton chenille. However, there's been a lot of buzz on the weaving at yahoogroups list about how difficult chenille can be so I was hesitant. Also, it's a structure I haven't worked with before, so I thought it might be a good idea to use a shorter warp as a test. Then I ran across a honeycomb fabric project in "The Best of Weavers: Fabrics that Go Bump" and realized the structures are the same, just implemented a bit differently. One uses cotton chenille yarn and the other uses fabric strips. So gave it a try.


From this....
Half-inch strips of yellow dot fabric




To this...

Honeycomb fabric of yellow dot strips and white bamboo yarnThe fabric hasn't been wet finished yet. It'll probably pull up even more afterwards.


Likes: I love the texture this fabric has as a result of the draft. I like how it tones down the brightness of the fabric but still is quite colorful.


Dislikes: I feel like I wasted my precious bamboo yarn. This project would have been just as nice with a cotton yarn. I should have gone with the chenille instead of the fabric strips for this warp.


I'm not sure how I'll use the fabric. It's almost too heavy to be used in a garment. If the white yarn were cotton, I'd jump at turning it into a bag but the fact that it's bamboo is leaving me hesitant. Not that I don't think it'll hold up - just that it feels like I'm wasting it.


We learn by doing. I did. And I learned.