Testing

E L A S T I C 

Its the day before the last day of weaving and I have been experimenting using a cotton lycra, which acts as an elastic when steamed. For some of my samples I wanted to think about the idea of movement and ripples seeing as thats what I was looking at at the beginning of my project. 

One of the tutors informed me that some yarns once steamed crinkle up, which I had no knowledge of and so after learning this I took a small selection of different elastics and put them on the steam bed. I them sampled them and decided that the one which gave the most movement was cotton lycra. 

I didn't know what affect the cotton lycra would have on each of my patterns and so I decided to weave each of my sequences on the loom using the elastic in some way. I then cut off these samples into individual strips and put them on to the steam bed one by one. 

The results were really interesting and I was actually a little shocked at how much some of the strips changed after steaming. Below are my results.  Going from top to bottom:

1- Floats of cotton lycra 

2- Plain weave and cotton lycra

3- Sateen and Satin with cotton lycra

4- Sateen block with cotton lycra

My favourite of these affects were number 1 and 4 and so in my sampling tomorrow I am going to try both of these.