Discover a New World of Design with Inlay

What if I told you there was an easy technique that not only lets you add visual interest in your rigid-heddle weaving, but also gives you complete control of the size, shape, and location? It’s true—but for some reason, this technique is also one I don’t see used nearly as often as I’d like. I’m talking about inlay.

How Inlay Works

So how is it that you can add in bits of design anywhere in your weaving with inlay? Let’s talk about different types of wefts! When we think about how the weft works in weaving, we think of it as stabilizing the warp—it’s what locks the warp into place to create cloth. However, some weave structures and techniques use two types of weft:

• A ground or tabby weft to lock the warp in place and give the cloth stability.
• A pattern or supplemental weft to add areas of patterning that are not needed for the structure of the cloth.

Most weave structures that use pattern wefts, such as overshot, have them go from selvedge to selvedge. Inlay, on the other hand, lets you put bits of pattern weft anywhere.

Michele Marshall used inlay to add small areas of overshot to her otherwise plain-weave scarf. Photo by Matt Graves

Designing with Inlay

With inlay, you can open up a whole new world of design options. Using inlay can be as simple as cutting small bits of a textured yarn and adding them into a plain-weave shed alongside your regular weft, or it can be as complex as needle weaving areas of overshot between picks of plain weave. You can follow a pattern for your inlay or weave it in a freeform manner.