In 2023, I attended a week-long course in weaving double cloth fabric with Margo Selby, at an Association of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers Summer School. We warped our looms in advance of the class, and spent the week sampling different patterns and colours. I especially liked the checkerboard patterns I wove that week and decided to rewarp my loom and weave a cushion once I got home, to put the techniques I’d learned to use. As a sidenote, after a week of sampling I was so glad to bin the remaining warp from the summer school course and warp again with a project in mind. I’m not someone who enjoys much sampling for the sake of it and would much rather dive headfirst into a specific project. Hence, I’m also bad at toiles and swatches.
I’ve knitted a few cushions (and a rug) using wool and find that it attracts too much dust and dirt, so I decided that this cushion would be a perfect opportunity to use up some leftover Gist Mallo cotton slub yarn (in colours aster and frost), which I purchased to make a scarf for a friend. Inevitably, the leftover yarn didn’t stretch far enough, so I had to buy more and have leftovers once again.
As a fairly simple design, there wasn’t a pattern involved for this cushion. I worked out the finished cushion measurements I wanted (16″ x 16″), and worked back from that to decide how to prepare the warp (width at reed: 20″; EPI 15; ends: 300; woven length: 39.2″; warp length: 70″).
After weaving, I cut the cotton fabric to size, stitched it together and added a cushion insert, before stitching it closed. Double cloth fabric is double sided and I used alternate sides of the fabric for the two sides of the cushion, to alter the placement of the coloured squares.
