So here we are - another Great Northeastern War, another elevation to make stuff for! This time it's a rectangular wrap for a Slavic persona. The research into the rest of the kit was wonderful, and I loved being able to participate in this small way. My original plan was to weave a 3/1 twill at about 30-36 epi. Then I saw the amazing pin being made. The shaft was on the larger side and would not have been a good match to the delicate summer weight wool I was planning. So regroup.
I had this jar of madder sitting around waiting to be used. My original yarn colors in the 20/2 wool reminded me of a sugar maple - well madder should do that no problem! I did a ton of digging into the various shades madder can produce. I didn't want a true red - so I aimed for an acidic dye vat and used my tap water. I know my water has a pretty high copper content (likely due to the pipes) - but that should help get the orangey red I wanted. Miraculously, the dye cooperated. It's a typical natural dye in that the saturation in the bath does not hold up to rinsing. But the color turned out exactly as I wanted for this person. I also tossed in my weft yarn to the exhaust bath, so the whole thing would be dyed with madder.
And because this process took longer than I had allotted, I opted for a familiar weave structure: herringbone twill. There is lots of evidence for this pattern, not usually with such high contrast, but I did not have enough dye stuff to get any more color out of the dye bath. This was a 15 epi sett, something that would have been considered "coarse" in period, but I have a few extant examples that are this thread count.
These 2 photos show the "mistakes" in the project. The first photo shows a broken warp thread less than 10 inches from starting. It's an easy fix and I only took a photo to send to some friends who are just starting to weave as an encouragement that this happens to everyone. The right photo shows a row that skipped a couple threads. I caught it about 3 picks later, and decided that instead of backing it out, I this would be the imperfection that stayed in. I had managed to thread both the heddles and reed for this 500+ thread project correctly the first try after all - some flaw needed to be included!
It was a fun project - my take aways are that madder is fussy, wool is still my favorite, and it's ok to work something familiar, not everything has to be new every time.
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