Weaving with Knitting Yarn

Marcy Petrini

August, 2018

A friend gave me a ball of a DYS Homespun Yarns in color way “Hot Pink Grape”; this is a 4-ply unmercerized cotton with a gradient from hot pink through purples; the gradient is made by starting with 4 plies of the same pink and then exchanging one ply at the time until the other end of the yarn is 4 plies of purple.

 I have seen the nice results from friends who have knitted with this yarn, but what about weaving with it? Wouldn’t it make a fun shawl starting from one color and ending up with the other? I thought it would show best as weft.

Because a four-ply cotton can be dense, I decided that the warp should be lighter; silk is my go-to yarn to lighten up fabrics and I have lots of colors in my stash.

The cotton ball has 500 yards and wraps at 18 epi; with it, I figured I could make a 60” shawl about 18” wide, so my warp needed to be 20” and 97” long. I ended up winding 3 yards, to have some room to sample.

I chose a 20/2 purple silk; normally I would sett it at 24 epi for a twill (and this shawl needed to be a twill for drape), but because the 4-ply cotton is fatter, I calculated the sett to be 18 epi.

I wound about 5” of the solid purple; then I thought the warp needed sprucing up, so I wound 10” with a 20/2 purple and pink variegated silk for the middle and another 5” of solid purple for the other edge.

Next, the pattern: I wanted a twill for drape, I didn’t want a pattern to detract from the color changes and I wanted a twill I had not woven before (or at least that I remembered). That also meant that I could add it to the Pictionary! I browsed through Davison’s book and came across a crepe twill. Perfect!

Here is the shawl. I love the gradation!

The drawdown and a close up of the fabric are in the Crepe Twill Pictionary page . If you have a Pictionary already, the Crepe Twill is new.

Pictionary update: in addition to the Crepe, all 21 additional twills are in the Pictionary now; 8 files for the finger manipulated weaves have also been added. They are located on this website under Pictionary; download all or those you are interested in.

I hope you enjoy your Pictionary. I welcome questions, corrections and additions any time.

Happy weaving! 

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