Weave Structure--Cannele

Last year in the "Fab Four" workshop with Robyn Spady I was introduced to the weave structure "cannele". On four shafts it is a plain weave fabric with warp and weft floats, much like the photo to the left. This year, in Charka 201 with Eileen Hallman, Eileen suggested trying a cannele weave structure with a twill background (for improved drape). My hope is to use some of my handspun cottons to weave a fabric that I can use for a top of some sort. Cannele is a reasonable option for showcasing a special yarn without having to use tons of it!

Eileen shared a 10 or 12 shaft cannele draft with me and I went to work to modify it for my 8 shaft loom. After lots of tweaking, I got a draft that I liked (after weaving my sample I can laugh at some of the mistakes in my draft...I should have done a short sampler earlier in the drafting process!) I finally put on a short and narrow warp--two yards long, 5-6" on loom. I used 10/2 cotton (unmercerized) as the main warp with a handspun 2-ply pinkish/red cotton as the warp float yarn.

Here are a few of the things I tried:
(at the top) 10/2 cotton weft with wool/tencel weft floats. I like the thicker yarn for the weft floats

After a while I discovered that I didn't have to weave the weft floats. Here is a piece with the pinkish/red warp float yarn used as weft. No weft floats.


I tried a couple of different colors of 10/2 cotton as weft. Then I tried some handspun cotton singles as weft. This single was from a two color roving that we used in Eileen's class to practice using our spinning to make color changes. The thin singles make the fabric seem so much softer than the commercial 10/2. I wonder if this will change after wet finishing?