Maple leaves, woven

I have finished weaving up samples of both maple leaf drafts:

I love the sample at bottom!  It’s exactly what I wanted, except that the maple leaves are too big for what I have in mind.  I want the colors of the background to dominate visually, with the leaves only showing closer up; this looks like nearly equal parts maple leaf and background, so I will shrink the maple leaves a bit for this particular project.  (If I didn’t want the background to dominate, it would be just fine.)

The sample up top doesn’t appeal to me; I think the diamonds impose a stiff, stilted look on the maple leaves.  It would probably look better with a more geometric pattern, one more compatible with the straight lines of the diamonds.

Next step is to knit up blanks in 40/2 cotton and 2/60 nm wool, dye them, and see how they unravel.  If I can get them  to work, then I’ll work out the exact equivalencies between rows of knitting and shots of weft, and dye a “real” blank, to see how well my dyeing strategy works.  If I can’t get them to work, then I’ll need to use 60/2 silk, which will force me to rethink my colors and dyeing process.

Off to redesign the maple leaves!