Marcy Petrini 

April, 2025 

I wear my scarves and shawls at various gatherings and often someone will ask me: how did you do that?

For the scarf below, if it’s a weaver who is asking, I will say: it’s an advancing twill woven on 40 shafts with Tencel™.

That’s true, but the answer doesn’t tell the whole story of how I got there

When I plan a project, I may start with a yarn or with a structure, or both. I usually use 20/2 silk or 10/2 Tencel™, sometimes adding 10/2 mercerized cotton or other reflective yarn. These yarns have the drape that I like, as can be seen in the above picture.

For this scarf I wanted to further explore advancing twills. A while back I designed an advancing twill on 8 shafts, drawdown shown below, which I never wove, but I used as an example in my twill monograph.

I didn’t like the angle of the warp-dominant and weft-dominant stripes. I tried to expand it to forty shafts, but the angle was still too horizontal.

I decided to thread a straight twill on forty shafts and use an advancing twill in the treadling steps. I tried it a few years back, I liked the vertical angle, it reflects the light better. Now it was time to return to it.

This was my first drawdown:

It has a treadling sequence of 228 picks; the tie-up is: 3/2/2/3/3/2/1/1/1/1/1/3/3/2/2/3/2/1/1/3

I arrive at tie-ups visually, trying to obtain stripes that I like, mixing plain weave areas with stripes of different widths and spacing. I liked the vertical stripes of this design, but I prefer for the light to move with different angles.

Perhaps a pointed twill threading would move the light in different directions. I tried it, as shown in the drawdown below:

I didn’t like the resulting arrow-like design that formed with the pointed twill threading. Back to the straight twill.

I thought I could introduce a twill line going in the opposite direction by adding it to the tie-up, similar to what I do for plaited twills. This is the next drawdown I tried.

The straight tie-up was broken by a partial line. It still wasn’t quite right to me. So, I extended the line across the straight tie-up, I tweaked a couple of places to avoid long floats, and I had a design to weave!

Meanwhile I had been thinking about the yarn. I had bought several skeins of Tencel™ dyed for Convergence® in Reno because I loved it, and I thought it would be great for this twill.

I have known Teresa for a long time, and I love her sense of color. The yarn has purples, rusts and a touch of yellow.

The warping and dressing the loom went uneventfully. Next it was time to weave.

I had selected as weft a 10/2 Tencel™ in light purple, thinking that the difference in intensity would showcase the twill. It was too washout. I had done an after image to figure out wefts, but there are so many colors in the yarn that I obtained a very pale beigy color. I tried a couple of other solid colors in light shades: a cinnamon color Tencel™ and a light blue 20/2 silk. None worked.

Not only didn’t the colors work, but I also noticed that I had trouble with the beat: using my normal beat, the fabric was too stiff; if I tried to open up the beat, it became inconsistent.

At the last Convergence® in Wichita, I had a conversation with Teresa about using 5/2 Tencel™, which she was selling, with the 10/2. She said she used it, usually with the 5/2 as warp.

I didn’t have any solid color 5/2 Tencel™, but I have lots of 5/2 mercerized cotton, the entire set of colors from the Lunatic Fringe. First I tried grey; no, same problem as before, too washout. I tried the off-white, thinking of the beigy after image, too stark.

I have had success in the past using as weft one of the colors from a variegated yarn. I tried a red purple and a rust – too dark, they disappeared. I tried yellow, way too yellow!

Next I decided to try a variegated weft, one of Teresa’s 5/2 Tencel™.

Voila! The muted pink and cinnamon reminded me of the after-image color and the yellow intermingled with the yellow in the warp, adding light, but not overbearing the other colors.

The picture below shows how the scarf captures the light.

Most projects that I do require some trial and error with the drawdown. After all, there aren’t any “Strickler’s” for forty shafts! Usually, the weft color is easier to pick after I do an after-image, I don’t generally need to adjust the yarn size, but if I do, the difference is not that large. But it happens!

Most of all, it takes patience! I prefer trying things out until I am totally satisfied rather than “make do”.

Happy Weaving!

Marcy