Discovery of the month - Halvdräll - Petra Marciniak

A new catégorie for my blog: Discovery of the month!

Want to present once per month something I found around weaving that aroused my curiosity: that could be a new technique, a designer or a single piece.

This month I decided to show off a weaving technique I explored in February and that has become immediately a new favourite: Halvdräll!

I discovered this technique due to Arianna E. Funk and her recent works for GIST: Yarn & Fiber.

She designed for them, among other things, a pair of dishtowels in Halvdräll (free pattern download) and I’m fallen in love.

I used this technique to weave some cushion covers and as I’m really, really happy with the outcome, I thought I might share this technique here.

1. Introduction

I have fallen in love with Halvdräll due to this three characteristics:

it’s a technique that allows me to weave what I love most: blocks!
it’s a quite easy, 4 shaft technique, that permits nevertheless endless possibilities to play around with just by changing colours
I find the end result quite modern looking!

2. Basics

As I’ve just discovered this technique, I can only share my first impressions and things I learned and read so far:

The name indicates that it’s a Swedish weaving technique and I haven’t found much written about it in English. I suppose that it has another name in English books, but until today I’m not sure which is the corresponding technique in English. (any suggestion would be appreciated!!)
Arianna describes it as a “simplified overshot technique“
On 4 shafts you get two blocks with short weft pattern floats and two blocks with small spots at the same time
The weft floats are short and secure because they are tied down.

2. How-to

You need 4 shafts and treadles.
As a derivate of overshot the technique is built on the rhythm of every other pick tabby, every other pick pattern

This means:

Yarnchoice:

You need two different yarns thicknesses to create this pattern

– one, finer yarn for the warp and the tabby picks

– a thicker yarn (at least two times thicker than the first one) for the pattern picks

Sett/ Density:

I used the sett for a tabby weave, as I do for overshot.

Threading, Tie-up and Treadling:

The draft below shows the very easy to memorize draft. Nothing fancy, the treadling is so easy you really can concentrate on you colour play . The block width and height is easily adaptable, you can add one or two colors in the warp etc. A lot to explore I think.

3. Realisations

Below some photos of my cushion cover experiments.

Warp: I worked with Cottolin from Venne, sett of 8 ends per cm and four different colours.

Weft: the weft is completely mixed. This was an experiment and I used every rest of yarn I found in my stash, cotton as well as wool.

4. Variante

Below a variante of Halvdräll I found in the book “Simple Weaves” by Birgitta Bengtsson Björk et Tina Ignell.

The technique shown here ties down a floating white weft to make small stars.

Hope my “Discovery of the month – Halvdräll” was an inspiration for you to give this technique a trial, it’s really worth exploration!