Making Waves Runner

This runner brings honeycomb cells wrapped in fabric strips to your table. Designer Andrea Williams includes suggestions for successfully choosing and combining fabrics.

About this Project

Thinking about the large container of fabrics in her studio, Andrea wondered whether narrow fabric strips would work for outlining the honeycomb cells and decided to give them a try. What a disaster! She had cut half-inch strips on the grain, and, of course, the sides and ends raveled like mad. She switched to cutting on the bias and had a better result, but then she noticed that the fabric strips were becoming thin and weak at the selvedges after washing. After experimenting with fiber content, cutting style, and strip size, she determined that medium-weight, long-staple cotton yardage cut on the bias into 1-inch strips worked well. With only 130 ends, warping is quick—and once the strips are prepared, weaving is a real delight because the strips bend and twist to reveal something different on each pass.

Contents

• Making Waves Runner Project Instructions PDF
• Runner WIF

Details

Structure
Honeycomb

Equipment
4-shaft loom, 14" weaving width; 10-dent reed; 1 shuttle.

Yarns
Warp: 5/2 pearl cotton (2,100 yd/lb; UKI Supreme; Yarn Barn of Kansas), #79 Natural, 162 yd; #17 Wine, 90 yd; #105 Paradise and #115 Peach, 23 yd each.
Weft: 8/4 carpet warp (100% cotton; 1,600 yd/lb; Maysville; Yarn Barn of Kansas), #14 White, 250 yd.

Fabric 44" wide 100% cotton fabric, medium-weight, about 1 yd. (Andrea used Free Spirit Fabrics Mon Jardin by Nathalie Lete for Conservatory Craft, PWNL 032 Beautiful Bunch.)

Dimensions
Width in the reed: 13²⁄₁₀".
Woven length: (measured under tension on the loom) 47".
Finished size: (after wet-finishing and hemming) 11" × 33" plus ½" side rag fringe.

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