"Tree twill" detail. Photo by Brandon Sapp
There are only a couple of days left before Christmas, and as I’m beginning to shift into holiday mode, I’ve come out of my self-imposed blogging exile to write a holiday post. I had a hard time choosing a weave to feature this time because I have done a fair number of Christmas-themed designs and had several to choose from. The “tree twill” design shown in close-up above comes from a collection that I created for a garment-center company I once worked for, and I picked it as my holiday weave because the trees are my favorite part of Christmas.
The macro shot above (taken by my photography mentor, Brandon Sapp) shows every thread of the design 1/3 larger than life-size (16 epi instead of 25 epi), including the gold glitter outline picks. Below is a smaller than life-size swatch that shows the design in repeat. I used the company’s 4,800 ypp acrylic yarn for the project.
“Tree twill” is an 8-harness pointed twill that I found in Hand Weaving Patterns From Finland by Pyysalo and Merisalo, translated by Needham and Marsh. It’s a slender book with an amazing number of interesting drafts (it was published in 1960 but can still be found on Amazon).
Christmas is not part of my Russian/Polish-American/Jewish heritage, but I have guiltily craved its sparkle and colors since my first awed childhood glimpse of Rockefeller Center at Christmastime. My own home’s Christmas tree has gradually evolved, from:
the 1970s (Squirt, a much-loved Christmas visitor, resting under a vase of pine branches), to
the 1980s (Puffy ignoring a tabletop tree), to
2004 (Full-size tree . . .
. . . with one of my favorite ornaments).
Last year we bought a slightly smaller tree so I could have more space to weave in (that’s a back corner of one of my looms on the left edge of the tree image). With only a couple of days left, we still haven’t bought our tree, and I just noticed that it has started to snow, so we’d better get going.
May you have a fabulous holiday season and a bright 2010!
Buy-a-thread 