Clasped Weft Beginnings

Here I am, at the start of my attempt at Clasped Weft weaving. As I am sure I have mentioned in the past couple of posts; this is something that I have been meaning to have a go at for a while. The yarn I am using, I actually purchased over a year ago at Wonderwool Wales, with the intention of doing clasped weft. I just never got round to until now.

There is surprisingly little on the web about this method of weaving. Kelly Casanova does a good YouTube tutorial, and there are one or two more. As to written guides, again very little and not much detail. Even the book I have has about half a page on the topic. So going in to this attempt, I was a little blind. Not so much in how to do it, but in getting the right yarn for the warp/weft. Should the weft be the same weight or lighter? Is it balanced weave or tabby?

In the end, I figured I should just give it a go and see how it comes out as I work it.

Now, I was planning to get started at the weekend, however life got in the way, mainly because it was sunny. Gorgeous weather where I am at the moment. I ended up mowing the lawn, washing the cars and going for a coastal walk. Here’s a pic from the walk.

Annoyingly, I have noticed that my phone camera has a shadow circle when I take pictures, as you can see on this one. Something else to get fixed one day maybe.

Anyway, I did manage to take a picture of the yarns I am using, with glorious sunshine bringing out the colours beautifully. This is Alpakka by Sandnes Garn. It’s a DK/8 ply weight, 100% alpaca in 110 metre balls.

I did a snap test with the yarn to see if it would be ok as warp as well as weft, but it failed, breaking quite easily. The test is where you wrap the yarn around your fingers then pull it apart. If it breaks with a hairy and frayed end result, then it’s only good as weft as it won’t take tension as a warp thread. And so I went to my LYS and picked up so similar yarn with some acrylic/nylon in the mix, this gives me a suitable warp in the same weight, but one that takes tension. My warp yarn is Bergère de France Ideal; a blend of 40% wool, 30% acrylic and 30% nylon.

Just as well I had to do that, as warping the loom used about 3/4 of the yarn, which would have scuppered my stashbusting plan and left me very short. Here is my lovely Alpakka yarn.

I’m undecided where the blue in the middle top row will go yet. But this is a “make it up as I go along” pattern, so we shall see. I will write it up though and post it at the end in case anyone else needs some info on how to do this method.

And this is where I am currently at. I warped the loom this morning before work and wove this little bit in a half hour this evening. The warp is half blue, half white. I think it’s coming along ok. Ignore the light blue yarn at the start. This is there to spread the warp ready for the first actual weft which is the white. This scrap yarn will be pulled out once off the loom so that I can make a fringe. I am wishing I weighed the yarn after that first bit though, as I need to replicate the white at the other end, so I need to know what I have left to weave within the pattern.

I’ll be able to get some more done tomorrow morning. And as yet, I am undecided on fringe or no fringe, so it will have a hem added before I roll it on to the beam any further. But I am liking it so far.

More pictures to come as I progress. 🙂