This was sitting in draft, not sure for how long, but I’m determined to catch up on my posts!

2 years ago, for NEWS, our guild did a memory project. Each one of us would weave something that was either inspired by a memory and/or evoked a memory.

I love those kind of challenges.  It helps push my creativity.

I decided to weave a scarf in memory of my father, Ed.  He had several loves in life, but two that stood out for me were his love of Irises and of Bach.  So, I decided to weave something using the colors of Irises and the pattern was going to use the score from a piece of music from Johann Sebastian Bach.

Being a fledgling dyer and having taken an Ikat dyeing workshop I was ready to go.

In the front of the house I have a stand of Japanese Irises (my personal favorite).  That was my inspiration for the color.

Japanese Iris in front yard

I dyed white 10/2 mercerized cotton a purple color and for the leaves and stems, dyed them a dark sage.  The weft I dyed a deep dark teal.

Dye pot, and Romeo is helping!

After I took it out of the dye bath,

The dyed warp with the Ikat ties still on it

I undid the ties and used this yellow:

A bit of yellow

to lightly dye some of the white spots with yellow.

I thread the loom interspersing the green among the purple warp threads.  Here are two views of the warp on the loom (sorry about them being out of focus – what can I say?)

Back of loom, looking at the warp

Warp in the lease sticks

Below is the piece of music I used for the pattern – I used the part highlighted in pink- and the resulting draw down (the treadling sequence is based on the notes):

I had to play around with it until I eliminated the huge floats, but I really love the texture.

Here is a close up of the finished scarf: