While looking through issues of Handwoven Magazine, my friend came across a project woven in halvdrall that she wanted to try. She is a brand new weaver and this would be her very first project. When I teach my friends to weave I often will have them look through magazines to get an idea of what style speaks to them. Of course, I often steer them to structures such as plain weave and twill, but this was an interesting choice. Having not woven halvdrall before I thought I should give it a try before teaching my friend. Around the same time, my weaving guild put out a challenge. The challenge was to randomly choose a picture from a brown paper bag and design a project around the picture. Well, I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone and weave a project in halvdrall inspired by the picture. Here’s the picture I picked from the bag.
The first thing I do when thinking about a project is to pull colors. I really wanted my placemats to have a sheen to them so I first chose to use tencel as my warp and mercerized cotton as my weft.
I have a love-hate relationship with using tencel as the warp. When I’ve woven with a tencel warp before I dealt with ends breaking all the time. What I did was put on a short warp first with the tencel and wove a table runner to see what would happen. Well…. this is what happened.
Ugg. This won’t work for a longer warp so I switched to 8/2 cotton.
What is Halvdrall?
Halvdrall is a block weave structure that is related to overshot and monk’s belt. Blocks can vary in size, but in the center you need a “tie down”. So in this four shaft pattern a 9 end block A is threaded: 121232121 and a B block: 434323434. If you have two of the same blocks together, such a two Block A’s together, you have to add a tie down between them. Blocks can be larger than 9 ends as you can repeat the 12 or 43 multiple times before adding the tie down before reversing. Blocks can also be smaller. In my draft I used both a 5 end block (12321) and 9 end blocks. To add interest, I often used a different color yarn for the tie downs.
The tie up and treadling is super simple. Shafts one and two are threaded for plain weave and shafts 3 and 4 are the blocks. This weaving requires two shuttles: one weaves the plain weave (I used 10/2 mercerized cotton) and the other the pattern or blocks (I used 5/2 mercerized cotton). So to weave an A block, just choose a color and weave 13231323… for as long as you want and then change to a B block. The simplicity of the treadling really let me focus on the colors.
My Halvdrall Placemats
Again I switched to using 8/2 cotton as my warp. My sett was 18 epi and I had 265 ends so my warp was approximately 14 1/2 inches in the reed. I wove a 2 1/2 inch hem using 10/2 natural cotton and then began weaving by blocks playing with block size and colors along the way. To get the size I wanted when finished, I knew I needed to weave 21 inches so I’d wove a little over 10 inches and then flipped my pattern for a symmetrical pattern. Each placemat was different and it was so much fun to weave! Here’s the draft I designed for the warp:
In both the warp and weft I used my old friend Fibonacci to help with the division of space. The larger space in the middle mirrors the birch tree in the picture. The three bands on the side within the birch area are threaded with charcoal as in the stripes of the tree. Within this area I alternated light gray and natural. There are two green bands on either side of the birch area. I alternated a dark and light green. The edges of the placemats contain two brown stripes with a gold tie down. I used a five end block A for these. I started and ended the edges of the placemat with a dark green plain weave (14, 41) to add interest. After washing and finishing, the placemats ended up to be 12 1/2 inches high and 17 1/2 inches wide.
