My Twill Be Done

Sometime early last week, I came to the end of my warp and pulled my twill fabric off the loom. Here it is spread out over the coffee table:

And here is the back side, also very pretty!

I looked over my cloth and found a couple of mistakes. One is when I repeated (or skipped?) two steps of the four-step sequence. I'm pretty sure that happened at knit night when I was talking. Later I figured out how to check myself better to confirm where I was, but I didn't know the first time. It is really hard to see when the fabric's on the loom. You can see the mistake really clearly from the back side of the fabric:

I didn't feel confident that I could fix it after the fact, so I decided to live with it. I hemmed one end, then folded up a piece to make a pocket for the pillow. This design has visible seams so I sewed a running stitch and then a special stitch that covered the exposed selvages. The real showstopper is the fancy fringe, which is secured with wraps rather than knots or beads - this makes the pillow comfortable to sit against. I used some linen/cotton thread left over from another project to work my wraps:

After all that, I gave my fabric a nice warm bath, pressed out the water, and laid it on a screen to dry overnight. Today I cut the long ends of the fringes off to make tassels, and trimmed the wrap yarn on the wrong side, securing the cut ends with a dab of Fray Check. And I took my 40% off coupon to Michael's to buy a 20" pillow form. Done!

I initially thought that my mistake rows would be hidden under the fringe, but that didn't end up happening. I'm hoping that if I don't point out the mistake to people, they won't notice. I'm okay with knowing that I learned a LOT on this project. It was my first time:

• weaving with two heddles
• using a heddle rod
• working a twill fabric
• making a wrapped fringe

Initially, I thought the fringe was a bit froo-froo, but the aesthetic has grown on me (probably due to the hours I spent making it!). I am looking forward to seeing how this Suffolk yarn wears over time. the fabric is so beautiful!