Sunshine Table Runner

Sunshine Table Runner - Taqueté (unturned)
The piece on the right is a swatch exploring border possibilities

Although this winter has been mild, it has been unusually dark and rainy -  altogether gloomy. At last a few daffodils are blooming as are some of the early flowering trees. Seeing color return to the garden lifts my spirits. Weaving with happy colors does the same.

Today at a guild meeting my friend Linda said, “You haven’t posted on your blog for a while.” No, I haven’t. Why? I needed to take photos (Isn’t that a silly excuse?). Someone I care about noticed my silence. Talk about motivation.

After my Weave Structures Study Group looked at crepe weaves we turned our attention to Taqueté, actually Turned Taqueté. But I couldn’t bring myself to turn this structure. Turning it locks one into using the same pattern color order for the entire warp. So I threaded my loom in the usual way for Taqueté: 1,3,2,3 – 1,4,2,4 – for two blocks. You might recognize this as a Summer & Winter threading. The threading doesn’t delineate Taqueté from Summer and Winter. It is the way wefts are thrown that makes the difference. In Taqueté tie-down wefts are eliminated and only pattern wefts are thrown. The result is a weft-dominant cloth with vast design possibilities.

Taqueté Sunshine Runner - Detail

Sunshine & Taqueté Detail
Pattern wefts are orange and 
three shades of yellow

The warp here is 20/2 perle cotton sett at 30 e.p.i., combined with 10/2 perle cotton pattern wefts. I designed this little runner while weaving it and am happy with the result. It is a happy little table runner. The middle section worked out particularly well with two very close shades of yellow wefts. The pattern through the center is subtle but still effective.

This is a fun structure to weave with lots of possibilities. I have read Taqueté is a good structure for hand woven rugs so it will go on my “to do” list. The list is rather long though, so don’t hold your breath. In the meantime, Spring is nearly here!

Warp On/Weave Off,

RepWeaver