Weaving is an incredibly old skill- we have been making textiles for many thousands of years, and cloth massively shaped the development of our modern society. We take it for granted, but it is a pretty amazing feat of engineering- taking fibres and turning them into a material that has a completely new set of properties. Individual threads are a fairly weak, but the woven structure gives them incredible strength. Yarns change when woven, they create something new that is more than the sum of its parts.

It is both a scientific and artistic practice. There are some parts of it  that you can calculate and predict very precisely, and others that you have relinquish control of and allow the loom to surprise you a little. We can never fully predict how cloth will look when woven, and in all honesty we wouldn’t want to- that would take some of the fun out of it. We could use a mill that wove samples for us to choose from, or even picked the colours and designs for us, but all of that is expensive, and we find that keeping hand on in the process hones our skills enough to stop us wandering off the aesthetic path too much so that we can trust our judgement when it comes to commissioning new cloth, and not have to charge higher prices as a result of needing creative support.

Once we’ve decided on a colour combination, we get warp and weft yarn ordered and dyed, then the first time we see them combined is on the loom, or as a finished roll of fabric (by which time it is a little too late to be having second thoughts)!

With Aurora Cirrus Seafoam, we wanted something that would capture the vivid jewel tones of the clear summer sea, but softened and sun faded slightly, in that weather worn, ‘seaside’y way. We know that in our alchemy weave, the warp colour is very dominant over the weft, so the warm cream coloured warp mellows the aurora weft overall, but up close you can still get a taste of the vibrant weft colours.

It is woven using our classic weight cotton for a gsm of around 245. We use 2 ply weft cotton, giving the yarn extra strength and support without bulk.  This means that our wraps remain fluid and moulding, you can more easily tighten them snugly & evenly, so that you won’t catch pockets of slack in your wrap job that will work themselves round and lead to sagging over time.

These wraps will be stocked in our shop from Sunday 24th July.