Making another set of these placemats and table runner. This time I am going to run the pattern weft up the back, instead of the sides.

ETA: I didn’t think very hard about how it would look carrying the pattern weft up the back, I just did it. Turns out it looks awesome! The pattern weft ends up looking like an extra pattern warp end at each side. And because I did 6½ pattern repeats and threw the first pattern pick from right to left, these fake pattern warp ends actually follow the overall pattern. A very happy accident.

ETA²: This turned out to be quite the ordeal! When you do sashiko-ori on one warp beam, you run into the problem that the pattern warp threads have much less interlacement and take-up than the base warp threads. After the first placemat, the pattern ends became too loose and floppy to weave with; so I hung weights on them (see photo).

After the weaving and hem-stitching was done, I cut up the cloth into pieces and wet finished them in my washer and dryer. I noticed a major problem with the fabric: the sashiko threads were loose and wiggly. Looking closer, I saw that the weft threads were OK, only the warp threads were wiggly. I hadn’t put enough weight on the pattern warp ends. I had enough weight to permit weaving, but they had much less tension than the base warp.

Fortunately, all was not lost. The reduced interlacement of the pattern warp ends allowed me to get a tapestry needle under the warp floats and bubble the excess warp thread down to the end of the placemats. Then I was able to pull the excess into the fringe, where it could be trimmed off. Another project where the finishing takes as long as the weaving.

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