Florence, Italy 2017

When I had gotten it into my head that I wanted to learn to weave velvet I hit the internet to find someone who could teach me. I really only found one place, the Lisio Foundation. Now I know of other places to learn but this was the first that I had found and well, it was in Italy! Of course I would welcome an opportunity to learn to weave velvet in the seat of silk velvet weaving.

Not knowing very much at all about velvet weaving when I arrived, the tour that I was given of their looms and other machines and tools was quite impressive and honestly a little bit daunting! The looms that are used at Lisio to create their beautiful velvets are old jacquard looms, nothing like the Swedish handlooms that I am accustomed to.

The loom that I wove on, looking at it from the back. You can see where the ground warp is beamed separately from the supplemental warp threads below it.

Close up of the creel, where each supplemental warp thread is individually wound on its own bobbin and weighed individually.

The pattern that I chose to weave needed to be put their weaving software and printed out on graph paper.

This is my design on graph paper before my cards get punched. The differences in colors will the the uncut velvet vs. the cut velvet.

Next, I took my punched cards over to another machine that laced the cards together.