About Studio Stories
Studio Stories is an occasional series of posts which looks at the inspiration and processes behind some of the projects I have completed over the years. As well as the article published here, there is exclusive content, including downloadable wif files, shared with my newsletter subscribers.
Lace Tiles
I originally designed this as a 16-shaft pattern, and I wasn’t sure it would work on 8 shafts. I’ve been pleasantly surprised! It is a tight fit to get the asymmetric tile pattern into 6 half-units of huck, but there is just enough room for staggered 3 x 5 rectangles with one half-unit between them.
In my design, the tiles are lace and the ‘grout’ between the tiles is plain weave, because a single half unit of lace isn’t really enough to be lacy. It is barely enough to be un-lacy in this case, but it is sufficient to suggest the zig-zagging pattern of the tessellation.
Watch out for the edge
When I have a very lacy weave overall I like to include a plain weave selvedge to bring everything together. However, because the plain weave takes up more than the lace it is a good idea to weight the edge threads separately. Don’t beam this part of the warp, but create two separate little bouts of a few threads – one for each selvedge – then, when you have threaded and sleyed as usual, hang them over the back of the loom with some weight attached to keep them taut.
And the 16 shaft draft?
There’s a story about that… If you sign up to my newsletter, you’ll get access to the archive of all Studio Stories drafts.
First posted on weavingspace.co.uk © Cally Booker
