Tambour chain and inlay in Saori weaving

I am weaving a length of fabric  to make placemats.

I am weaving it on my Saori loom, and am taking a very Saori approach to the placemat weaving.

What’s Saori?

It’s a soulful, contemplative  approach to weaving that is all about being experimental and open minded.

I’m hoping to get 8 placemats from the warp that’s on the loom, and am planning on doing lots of playful things with them.

My plan is to have each placemat be clearly part of a group, but to be unique.

Kinda like the family!

That way, everyone can choose the placemat that they want to use for that particular supper.

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

Today, I used a couple of fun techniques:

Inlay and tambour chaining.

To work inlay, open a shed, pass the weft strands through, beat, then lay in a contrasting thread or yarn, close, change sheds, beat.

Repeat until you have the shape that you want with the inlaid yarn.

I used green embroidery floss for this inlaid square.

The green embroidery floss isn’t thick enough to show up

particularly well, so thicker yarn is a good idea.

To do the tambour stitching, pass the contrasting yarn  to the back.  Hold it underneath the weaving with your non-dominant hand.

With a crochet hook, push through the fabric, pull up a loop of the contrasting yarn.

Repeat, and pull the next loop of yarn through the first loop on the hook- and keep on chaining!

Photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

This little inlaid square shows up better, as it is thicker than the green embroidery floss.

The combination of inlay and tambour chain stitching is simple, but quite effective.

You don’t have to combine them – they work well on their own, too.

Photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

Hmmm…. I wonder what I’ll do with this warp tomorrow?