February 02, 2010

Weaving Experimentation - Soumak Weave

I'm working on a belated birthday/Christmas present for my brother, whose birthday is the day after Christmas. I'm attempting to weave designs into the fabric in support of his favorite team, the University of Louisville cardinals. After planning out the lettering on some grid paper (well, homemade grid paper... I really should buy some of that stuff; making your own grids is needlessly time consuming) similar to a cross stitch pattern, I went about weaving them into the fabric using what's known as a soumak weave. For you embroiderers, this is basically a stem stitch. Which I realized after painstakingly weaving this in between each plain weave row. I think for the image part, I will just embroider the design.


At any rate, I'm pretty pleased with how the UofL part came out. Very simple, striking, and not too fancy looking for a dude to wear even though making it feels very fancy. I should have photos once the whole thing is done.

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