The Finished Plaited Twill Shawl

Marcy Petrini

April, 2017 

In the September 2016 blog I posted the draft of a 40-shaft plaited twill which I had hoped to weave. Eventually I did. I finished it a few weeks back and now Terry has taken some pictures. I really like the shawl. 

For warp I used sea silk, 70% silk, 30% seacell (437 yards = 3.5 oz.), color Sangria, space-dyed reds, with stripes of the color Violetta, solid red. I set it a bit openly, 12 epi so that the larger weft, 2/5 Gemstone silk (260 yards = 3.5 oz.) in color Rose Gold allows the pattern to show well. 

Here is a photo of the shawl. You can see that the plaiting, sometimes called braiding, is asymmetrical and I like that.

a close up: 

Then I wondered whether I really needed such a difference in the grist of the warp and weft for the pattern to show. So, I decided to weave it with a smaller weft.

I didn’t have enough of the sea silk for another shawl, but I had enough of the Violetta for a scarf. This time I set it at 18 epi and used 8/2 silk in gold from my stash (416 yards = 3.5 oz.). That warp is still on the loom, and the pattern does show… stay tuned, a comparison is coming up.

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