Diamond Twill - done!

Yesterday I thought I only had about 1/2 yard left to weave on the diamond twill. No problem I thought. I started in the morning and ended up finishing by mid-afternoon. Obviously, I had a lot more than 1/2 yard left on the loom. When I took it off the loom, it was horrible. A twill like that should drape and be soft. This one was hard, stiff and crunchy! It practically stood up on end - yes, almost 9 yards of it standing by itself was pretty scary.
However, what comes off the loom isn't necessarily the finished product. I wasn't panicking quite yet. First you need to wet finish the fabric. That may mean soaking gently or in this case, popping it in the washer on the handwash cycle with a good glop of laundry soap and letting her go for 15 minutes. I took the fabric out of the washer and the smell of wet wool was wonderful. I'm guessing my wool/silk blend, didn't have alot of silk by the looks of the fulling process. The fabric though is wonderful. It is soft and drapey. It is really what I had hoped for with this project. There is about 8.5 yards of it right now. I took it from the washer to the ironing board and ironed it mainly dry. Funny thing that ironing the wool yardage will really finish the process.
This is all good since I had a bit of a scare when my ancient loom literally fell apart while weaving. Seems a couple of internal screws fell out. I found one and hubby the other so we had a quick repair session which very nicely put the loom back to square. This was after the screw holding the treadles fell off as well. It was an adventure to say the least but the outcome is good. Now the only problem is what to do with all this yummy yardage?

The next project is chevron twill wicklebander for hubby. I don't know that it will be any faster a project, except for dressing the loom as I'll have to use a small shuttle for this one. I hope I didn't pack them all! The yarn will be 12/2 merino in a commercially dyed madder rusy orange colour. 7 yards of 3 inch wide chevron twill coming up!