Making plans...

Many times before starting a new project, I have attempted to draw or paint what was in my head, as a way to think it through first and to get all the various facets coalesced into a visual whole for my own satisfaction. Usually I give up halfway through, muttering something about how 2-dimensional portrayals of 3-dimensional woven fabrics are pointless since they are essentially different animals. This time, I persevered, and voila! I am happy with the result. I wanted to capture the colors and dye plan for the two warps - with all natural dyes, of course as well as the ikat technique I'm trying to achieve.  As a doublewoven tabby structure, a visual pattern emerges only if there is a light-colored layer exchanging places with a darker one.  I am planning to play with this "rule" by occasionally lining up the layers in such a way that some places are weaving same colored layers.  This effectively causes invisibility or transparency, as one reader observed, of the pattern in those areas as the light/dark effect is cancelled out.  I call it an ikat effect because in dyeing the sections of warp, there is a good bit of bleeding of color from one section of color to another much like what happens in the making of a traditional ikat textile.  Lastly, I wanted to lay out the overall pattern flow and development, or in this case, disentegration, of the Sun/Moon/Stars pattern.  I want to gradually remove pattern elements as I weave. 

So on now to winding and dyeing. The finished product may not look anything like this when I'm done, but at least now I won't be able to kick myself for not having thought it through first.