March 2025: Color + Texture + Pattern on 16 Shafts

Woven by Linda Kubik

As a production yardage weaver, I’ve always been interested in variations.  I started as a color/texture weaver selling mostly plain weave fabrics to home sewers.  Home sewers care more about hand, color, and texture rather than woven patterns.  This worked well for a couple of decades until I got a 16-shaft AVL production dobby loom.  Adding patterns to color and texture became even more fun. 

Almost every fabric starts with hand dyed variegated yarn.  Getting the right color combinations eventually led to dyeing my own novelty yarn, such as mohair boucle, rayon, chenille, and so on.  Variegated yarns are spaced every one-half or one inch, with approximately seven other colors in between in the warp.  I make no effort to put them in the same order when dressing except to make sure novelty yarn is on shafts 1 and 9. Using a sectional warp beam with 1” spacing makes this relatively easy. 

I wove two variations on the same warp based on drafts from Handweaving.net. The first fabric, draft #35844, is a 14-shaft draft that I really liked, but had to modify it for 16 shafts.

The second fabric, draft #7387, is a 16-shaft draft that uses a different color weft.

Look for the finished garment using fabric 1 (based on #35844) in the instructor’s showcase at the ANWG conference in Yakima.

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Yarns:
Variegated rayon chenille, light brown, beige, teal blue, coral, dark brown, pale yellow, brown every half inch.  Wool yarn is Brown Sheep 3/15 fingering.

Sett:
16 epi, 8-dent reed. Balanced ppi one-shuttle weave with one of the weft colors.

Finishing:
Both pieces were washed separately in a front load washer on cold water, delicate cycle, and laid flat to dry. 

Shrinkage:
42” in reed.  36” fulled and pressed on both sides, approximately 3-4 yards each.

#7387 fabric (LEFT), #35844 fabric (RIGHT) (click to enlarge)

original draft (click to enlarge)

#35844 original draft with sample (click to enlarge)

#7387 modified draft (click to enlarge)

Bio:

Linda Kubik is a designer and sewing educator who also weaves.  She has taught weavers to sew since 1991 and originated many of the handwoven sewing techniques now frequently used.  She’s provided countless home sewers the opportunity and joy of sewing handwoven fabric. Linda wrote Sew Something Special, sewing with handwoven fabric, in 1996.  She completely revised and updated it in 2007 and again in 2015.   She currently has 17 designs in her pattern line, Elements.