Experimenting with ribbon and art yarns

I've been playing with "art" yarns - those that aren't conventional but have interesting texture, like ribbon yarns, eyelash yarns, boucle, and a mill-end that has a narrow filament with tiny flags every half inch.

I've been wanting to find a way to effectively showcase these yarns. Partly because I used the mill-end with the flags as a stripe in a warp - which worked fine as warp (strong and not stretchy), but it just disappeared into the warp - I will have to use twice as much for it to have the impact that I want. (Have used eyelash yarn as warp and won't do that again any time soon - it looks good, but. Every. Single. Shed. has to be cleared for Every. Single. Pick. Arggh!)

I had seen images of weft sticking out to the side to create a side fringe, and then saw it again in a book which brought the idea back to the surface(Woven to Wear). I've been fascinated with warp loops ever since I saw a video of an ancient Scandinavian loom which was initially warped by the creation of long weft loops. (First, a tape is created using a backstrap style loom, but as the weft is woven, a long loop is added on one side with each pass; the tape is then hung at the top of a wall loom and the weft loops in the tape become the warp to be woven on the wall loom.)

Anyway, I've found these loops interesting for a long time. Tried out a couple of different things. First, I wanted to see how the different "yarns" would look sticking out to the side. Also, I was curious to see how far out the weft should stick out, so I made it two inches on one side and one inch on the other.

I wanted a plain weft to alternate with the "art" yarn to 1) help it stand out, and 2) help lock it in, so the weft loops don't pull out. I experimented with thicker and thinner alternate wefts - decided that this will take more sampling, because it depends on the "art" yarn. Some get lost next to a thicker weft while others are enhanced by it.

It's a good idea to have a guide to help you keep the loops consistent, so you have a guide line of sorts on the loom that's just for the loops; the guide line is off to the side of the regular warp separated by the number of inches wide you want the loop to be. You weave the loops around the guide lines. First I tried guide lines made out of warp. I thought these were a bit stretchy, and I hated wasting the warp. Then I tried monofilament line (fishing line), since it doesn't stretch. But it's 1) not visible, and 2) doesn't stay where it's needed. I've decided I need the guide lines since they help me keep the loops consistent, and help me keep the two wefts managed, but no more monofilament. I may add extra weight just for these warp threads, like with a floating selvedge.

This is more time-consuming than conventional weaving. You need to manage two shuttles (and carefully make sure one doesn't get wrapped around the guide lines while the other one does), but you also need to manage going over (and under) the guide lines at the right times. You also have to lock in the "art" weft, so the selvedges take extra work, too. Once you develop a rhythm it's fine, but it's still quite a bit slower. Here's a scarf I wove with the "art" yarn with the multi-colored flags.

The eyelash yarn looks wonderful, both in the loops and with the other weft. The ribbon yarn - which I was expecting to be great - looked terrible. The loops were very ordinary-looking, some were so slippery that they didn't stay locked in, and the ribbon didn't look good with the other weft next to it. The ribbons are spectacular as warp, I know from other projects, so perhaps that's where I'll use them.

My mind is buzzing with ideas for scarves now.