Inspired by a placemat of mum’s that uses randomly placed thick warps among a thin warp and is then woven with the thick yarn.

The samples: Small-ish placemats

I’m using Stylecraft ReCreate DK in combo with the Chunky version, both in Ecru, both 100% recycled yarn.

In lieu of a small sample, I’m testing the idea with a set of four 15x15cm placemats. 30 slots warped. I start and finish the weaving with 10 picks of the DK - both to frame it but also to allow for neater hemstitching.

Learnings: The thick warps cause a bit of wonkiness at first, but it evens out more or less. The angle at which I’m placing the DK weft into the shed is twice (40 degrees) that of the chunky weft (20 degrees) because the chunky isn’t supposed to up and down much - the thin warp is supposed to do that. It works well and looks good. Thankfully, the chunky weft doesn’t lay higher or lower depending on whether the heddle was up or down, it’s pretty even. The chunky weft leaves more gaps in between the picks than in my mum’s placemat, but hers was probably woven on a much higher tensioned loom - I quite like the airy look of my version. The chunky yarn sticks a little in the tight 10dpi slots, so it’d be better to thread them as much as possible through the holes. The chunky weft helps to minimise draw-in, especially after hemstitching. To make the weft tails less obvious, I split and cut them at differing points (imitating a torn thread) and thus they blend in nicely with the weaving.

I really enjoyed weaving this - the chunky yarn is nice to weave with and the texture from the uneven warp is fun. I may very well make bigger items with this setup, and/or switch up the colours (avocado or teal or dijon). I think single colour is the best way to go, I’d only consider 2 colours if they were very similar to each other (e.g. cherry and aubergine, or dijon and avocado).

The project: 2 large-ish placemats

I decided to take the plunge and make two larger placemats - 45 x 90cm and 45 x 70cm! Started warping on 13 Nov and spread it over a few days. Excited!

200 ends, 10dpi still, 2.3m total warp lenth and 50cm wide. Same yarns again, most of the warp consisting of the DK again and the singular chunkies are this time threaded right through the holes while warping - hopefully this will result in cleaner sheds.

Started weaving and hmm… for some reason the DK doesn’t weave as tightly (leaning towards weft-facing, with no gaps between picks) as the samples. It still looks nice though so I’ll accept it. I won’t force my poor heddle to beat harder than it’s comfortable with.

I also noticed that the cloth was showing some ripples alongside the warp, but when I decreased the angle of weft vs fell line further, the issue disappeared. It was really satisfying to weave with the chunky and see the fun texture emerge!

I ran a bit short of warp in the end - I’m guessing because it was all up to the warp to bend around the weft while the weft is quite straight, but I’m nonetheless happy with the sizes. The first one turned out 50 x 74cm and the second 49 x 82cm, fresh off the loom.

The second mat will have short simple 2cm fringes (both are hemstitched) while the first will get short-ish twisted fringes.