Weaving Technique || Wrapping Yarn & Adding It to a Weave

As you know, I’m always looking for new-to-me things to try with my weaving. And one of those techniques I’ve been admiring lately is the look of wrapped yarn. It adds a lot of texture and there is something really lovely about a mess of yarn spilling out of a structured wrap. You can see a lot of wrapped yarn in the works of many fiber artists, including the iconic Sheila Hicks. Wrapped yarn looks so lovely and can be a really great compliment to a weave. Today I’m sharing the steps to how I wrapped some yarn and added it to my weave, so you can try this out too!

step 1| gather a group of yarn that you want to wrap. Keep in mind that the amount of yarn you use will determine how thick your wrapped yarn is, so if you want the wrapped yarn to be really large then use a lot of fiber.

step 2| loop the thread you’ll be wrapping your yarn with and place the loop next to your grouping of yarn, leaving a long thread tail. Start wrapping the thread around the yarn group. You want to keep the thread loop open at the top while you wrap around the thread’s tail, but do not wrap the full thread tail.

Note: I’m using embroidery thread as my wrapping thread because it has such a gorgeous sheen to it, but you can use whatever thread you like.

step 3| once you have wrapped your yarn grouping as much as you wanted, bring the thread end through the loop you made at the beginning. Next pull that end tail you left under the wrap until it pulls in the second end tail.

step 4| trim both end tails close to the wrap.

step 5| using your tapestry needle pull a new thread through the wrap carefully. You’ll use to secure your wrapped yarn to your weave, so I selected a thin thread that matched my weave background.

step 6| pull both ends of that new thread through the front of your weave to the back, placing it where you want the wrapped thread to go.

step 7| next weave the ends of the new thread through the back warp threads of the weave until they are next to each other and tie them off in a knot. I make sure to tie the knot around a warp thread. This will help secure the heavy wrapped thread to your weave, without creating puckering. Tuck in the ends of the new thread and trim.

If you wrap a larger area then make sure to secure the threads in a couple of spots. The wrapped threads will be heavy on your weave so you want to make sure there is enough support.

Ok so who loves the look of this and is going to try it out? Or if you’ve already tried it, what did you think? I’d love to hear from you.

Happy Weaving!

Kate

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