Clasped Weft Weaving

This is a weft-faced or weft-dominant technique, with a doubled pick - 2 strands in each pick so choose your yarn weights accordingly.

Work with one yarn on a shuttle, and one on the other side in a centre-pull ball. Pass the shuttle through, place the other yarn over your shuttle to catch it, then pass the shuttle back - don’t change the shed and don’t beat. Then, use the yarn on the shuttle to pull some of the other yarn into the shed - this can be random, precisely halfway or whatever you want. Then beat, change the shed and repeat.

Watch extra carefully on both edges that your edges aren’t being drawn in.

I think this could be a nice way of using a small amount of really exciting yarn against a ground of something more plain. You could maybe use it for data visualisation, like for sun times or sleep tracking or something.

You could even use a different colour section of warp to mark out a boundary of where your colour change goes in each pick, for extra emphasis on that section

You can get really cool effects using 2 skeins/shuttles of gradient yarn, starting at really different points in the gradient.

Further Reading

• You can do this with 3 colours and even 4 colours!
• and there’s a related technique clasped warp to let you have warp strands changing colour part way along a piece
• A pattern for a cushion cover from schacht that uses this technique
• Clasped Weft Weaving with Conductive Thread and LEDs from WeaveZine uses this technique to insert lights into cloth
• Curious Weaver has some nice jagged patterns

Sources

• Kelly Casanova article and associated video