Fabric Weaving: Play with Color & Pattern; 12 Projects, 12 Designs to Mix & Match

INTRODUCTION TO FABRIC WEAVING

Fabric weaving appeals to the do-it-yourselfer, the sewist who is drawn to creating her or his own textiles. It is a way of building your own cut of fabric. Fabric weaving also appeals to the fabric lover, the sewist who lives for the touch and feel of fabric just as much as the color and prints. Throughout the weaving process, you are working the fabric with your hands, and the tactile dimension weaving adds to a project is truly special to experience. Woven pieces are as much fun to hold as they are to display!

A woven panel can be used like any other cut of fabric and worked into almost every kind of pattern. Fabric weaving looks great as a bag accent, couch pillow, or dress pocket. You can make wall art, table mats, storage baskets, or travel cases out of your weaving.

types of fabric weaving

In traditional weaving, the warp is the fiber that is strung onto the loom and held with tension. The weft is the fiber that is woven over and under the warp to create cloth. For the purposes of this book, we have divided weaving up into two types of weaving: biaxial and triaxial.

Biaxial means two axes and is created using two layers of strips woven into one another. The weft can be woven into the warp at either a 90- or 45-degree (90° or 45°) angle. Biaxial weaving includes designs as basic as basket weave, and as complex as houndstooth. These weaves often need securing with quilting in order to stay together.

Triaxial means three axes and is achieved by weaving two weft layers into the warp for a total of three layers. These weft layers are woven in at a 30 degree (30°) angle. A triaxial weave is the most secure weave and requires less quilting to keep the strips in place.

basic tools

BIAS TAPE MAKER OR SASHER

A tool for making bias tape can be helpful but is optional. It’s possible to use your fingers to fold the strip while pressing. Bias tape makers can be fiddly and troublesome, but once you get the hang of them, they save time and fingertips. The Dressmaker Sasher by Pauline’s Quilters World is intuitive, and the sharp edges of the acrylic give each fabric strip an extra crisp edge.

IRON AND STARCH

An iron in good working order is a necessity for preparing your strips for weaving. You may also use a bit of light starch, such as Mary Ellen’s Best Press, to help with this task.

FOAM CORE BOARD

Elmer’s has ½˝ foam core available in 20˝ × 30˝ pre-cut sheets. You will want ½˝ thick because you will be holding your strips in place with sharp pins, inserted into the board. Though you will insert them at an angle, the thickness of the board can help ensure that pins won’t be poking out of the back of the board and into a tabletop, or worse, your lap!

LIGHTWEIGHT WOVEN FUSIBLE INTERFACING

Fusible interfacing is required and will be used to secure your woven panel. Using a lightweight product will help mitigate bulk. You will want to use woven interfacing as opposed to non-woven because it will move, look, and feel like fabric. Pellon makes a nice lightweight woven fusible interfacing called Shape-Flex 101 (SF101).

PINS

You’ll need to use lots of pins, and many of them will get bent. Keep a separate set of pins just for weaving (the bent pins can be reused for weaving). Make sure your pins have a nice sized head on them, because you will be pushing them in and removing them multiple times before, during, and after weaving. Dritz Quilting Pins size 28 work well for weaving. They come in a large box of 500, have a nice sized head on them, and are relatively inexpensive.

WEFTY NEEDLE

The WEFTY Needle is the only tool on the market designed specifically for weaving with fabric strips. The size, shape, and design are all intended to help the weaver produce tighter weaves while reducing wear and tear on the hands. Its tapered end was made specifically for gliding through the multiple layers of raw edges in a triaxial weave. While you can make do with something else, all our weaving is done using a WEFTY Needle.

THAT PURPLE THANG

A guide needle to hold up strips while weaving is very helpful. While That Purple Thang is the perfect tool for this task, you could also try a butter knife, awl, or skewer.

PAINTER’S TAPE

We will also be using painter’s tape to secure our weaves. We use painter’s tape as opposed to masking tape because it stays put but with less chance of leaving adhesive residue.

RULER, MARKERS, AND SCISSORS

A basic acrylic ruler, a dark colored marker, a heat erasable pen, and good fabric scissors are indispensable in fabric weaving projects.

fabric selection

When selecting fabric for weaving, the preference is for substrates that are lightweight and tightly woven. We prefer something lightweight because a woven panel can become heavy with all the layers. For example, when creating a triaxial weave, you will be working with six layers of fabric and a layer of interfacing! Some loose threads are inevitable when weaving raw edged strips together. A loose weave, such as homespun fabric, can fray considerably, adding frustration to the process. Quilting cottons, shot cottons, and batiks lend themselves very well for weaving.

Solids, blenders, and prints that read as solid all work very well for weaving. Small scale prints are best, as the surface area of the fabric showing is very small. The design in your weave will be easiest to appreciate if the fabrics contrast nicely. Keep this in mind when looking for gradients—you will want your light, medium, and dark to be obvious.

PREWASHING FABRIC

You may be a prewasher of fabric, in which case you’ve already washed, dried, pressed, and put away your fabric anyway. You can go ahead and skip to the next section on quilting.

For those who are unsure, or are anti-prewashing, let’s discuss when it’s helpful and when it isn’t. For projects that will not be quilted, and will be washed eventually, prewashing is a must. You don’t want to work hard on prepping and weaving strips only to have shrinkage or bleeding dye ruin the look of your piece after the first wash. If you are mixing substrates (for example mixing denim and quilting cotton), you will also want to prewash. If you are planning to spot clean your finished item (such as a purse or wall hanging) or if you plan to densely quilt it, prewashing may not be necessary.

to quilt or not, that is the question

Quilting is not always necessary to keep strips in place after weaving. When Tara created pockets for a dress using small triaxial weaves in ½˝ strips, for instance, the woven parts stayed together after washing with no quilting at all. However, if the weave you are creating has fewer layers, or the strips could easily catch on something while in use, you will want to add some quilting. We have provided a couple of quilted projects in this book for inspiration.

binding

You may use these general instructions for most of the projects in this book that require binding.

1. Join binding fabric strips, right sides together at a 45° angle. Trim the excess at ¼˝. Press seam open and trim dog ear triangles. fig A

2. Fold in half lengthwise with wrong sides together and press.

3. Lay your project down, right side up. Align the raw edge of one end of your binding strip against the middle of a raw edge of one side of your project. Making sure to backstitch, begin sewing 4 inches from the end of the binding strip (so that there is an unattached tail of binding that is at least four inches long).