As The Table Runner Grows

Here I have the 3 inches of white on white woven. The table runners I did in the past have had this part done in a straight twill weave, and the body has been done in a birds eye twill. With this one I decided to weave it in the same birds eye twill as the rest of the runner will be done. Then I put in a ladder hem stitch. This means I hem stitched with a needle and the white thread used for the warp and this part of the weft, then put in a header cord for a spacer, wove a bit of blue weft, then hem stitched it all again. I will show you later what a ladder hem stitch looks like.

Here it is starting to come along. Just over 8 inches of blue weft woven now.

A close up of the above. Unfortunately, as you can see here, there is some black marks on it. There are cords running between the shafts/harnesses full of heddles, that raise the shafts/harnesses as I step on the peddles/treadles. These cords had picked up a bunch of black "stuff" from rubbing on the metal, and I didn't realize this. So now I not only have the black here but also on the last table runner too. I didn't notice it so much on that one as it's not white, but this one really shows it. I rubbed the cords last night and got some of the black off them, so hopefully they will stop transferring it. I just hope and pray it will wash out when I get to that stage.

This is the table runner I made for my sister Marcy. It is also the table runner I entered into the Salmon Arm Fair this fall and took 1st place with it. For more on that, go to my "old blog" Born2cree8 using the link to the right. The reason I am showing this to you is so you can see what the ladder hem stitch looks like when finished. As you can see, I put a light greeny blue sheet behind the runner to show the ladder stitch better. The taupe end here was woven in straight twill and the pink/taupe body of the runner was done in birds eye twill. Though all of the table runners I'm doing are in a birds eye twill, no two are quite the same as there are many versions of birds eye twill. I wove the ends 2 inches, then folded them over 1/2 ", then over again to the base of the ladder, and hand stitched them in place. With these other two runners, I'm doing the ends 3"... to be folded over 1/2" then folded again to the base of the ladder and hand stitched in place. This will make the white (and champagne on the other runner) a bit wider than the taupe ends on this one.

To weave 3" of white on white, do the hem stitching, and weave just over 8" of blue on white took me 2 hours, 53 minutes. So that makes the total time so far: 10 hours, 16 minutes.... and there is ever so much more to do. The blue on white body will be about 56", then do the hem stitching and white on white 3" again. Any guesses as to what my total time will be on this piece??