When I weave or knit, the first thing I do is to make yarn wrappings. Because I love this process I usually forget about time and just keep making many of these.
Yarn wrapping is a piece of card with threads wound around. It helps play with different colours and proportions when you design multi-coloured warp or weft. It also works for creating multi-colour stripes on knit fabric. Making this card wind saves you your precious materials and time.
Basic method of making this yarn wrapping is obviously easy – you place a strip of double-sided tape along the back of a piece of card which is about 4cm (1.5″) wide.
But I found it tricky when I use an oiled yarn. Because of the grease on the thread, it doesn’t stick to the tape well. So instead, I’ve tried it in my own way and furthermore, you don’t need the double-sided tape (it might be too easy to explain… but I do anyway).
By the way, I wind every thread of yarns I have on a wooden chopstick. So that it’s easier to try as many as yarns on a small table rather than taking out large cones of yarn off the shelf each time I want to try a new yarns. And I like to place those sticks in order and spread them around like I do with coloured pencils.
How to make yarn wrappings
Make a strip of card about 4cm (1.5″) wide.
Hold the end the thread on the back of the card.
Wind it around the card once then on the thread held at the edge of the card.
Keep winding.
When you change yarn repeat just as the first yarn.
At the end, cut the card like 3mm (1/8 in.) and slide the thread in the cut.
The point is to hold the end of a thread diagonally with the thumb then fix and fasten it with the winding thread.
It’s fun to make a lot of these card winds and experiment combining them as warp and/or weft. You’ll find a design that works and it might be unexpectedly pleasing and original.
I hope more people enjoy playing with colours and find their own beautiful colourways.
As an English weaver Janet Philips put it, “One of the main purposes of spending time twisting, plating and playing with yarn colours and then eventually weaving a sample is to give me time to become emotional about the design I am planning to weave. Taking this time allows the design to emerge from within me, which will therefore create an individual, finished, woven cloth.”
[amazonjs asin=”B012HVJVBI” locale=”US” title=”Designing Woven Fabrics by Janet Phillips (7-Nov-2009) Paperback”]