Seamless Poncho

 My cloth study group decided to do ponchos.  I never thought of myself as a poncho person, but found a fascinating article in "Shuttle, Spindle and Dyepot" on weaving a SEAMLESS poncho.

Half expecting a doubleweave structure, I was impressed by the author's persistance to create a seamless poncho as an extension of the V-Shawl. I was familiar with a V-Shawl so cutting off warp and using that as weft was OK.  Closing the loop required reading the article multiple times and re-tensioning the V-Shawl onto the front apron using clamps ...

 

 Being a small person, I always need to make sizing mods.  Before the poncho was on the loom, staring at me, as I stared at it, I reduced the size of the shoulder sections.  Once I saw the poncho on the loom, and after the first shoulder was already woven, I saw my error ... the neck opening was going to be way too small.  I was able to fix my error by weaving the second shoulder at the suggested width.  (see photo at left) The result is an asymetric opening that works for me!


The poncho can be worn fringe to front/back or fringe on the sides.  And, even though I have not worn a poncho in many years, it has been the perfect layer a number of times this winter!

I used some leftover wools sett at 8 EPI. The wide sett helped make the joins less stressful since there was room for threads to move.  The poncho was wet finished using delicate cycle on my front-loader.