Monday, June 29, 2009

Dragonfly Dreams

For our guild's entry at Midwest Weavers' Conference, we all wove baby blankets to donate to a local hospital. The hospital suggested that blankets in deep and bright colors were welcome, as many would be going to African American and Hispanic families. To me, that sounded like an invitation to step outside of my box and have some fun. So I went to my local weaving shop, bought three cones of cotton in some of the brightest colors I could find, and played with some design ideas on the computer. I was delighted when I realized that using two of the colors (Pacific Blue and Caribbean) in the warp and the other (Magenta) in the weft resulted in iridescence. I took a draft from the Strickler book, turned it, and took out a few ends to come up with a heart shaped twill because the theme of the conference was Weaving in the Heart-land. I called the blanket "Dragonfly Dreams" because of the iridescence and because I love alliterations. Here are a couple of views of the blanket on the loom and one of the finished blanket:

5 comments:

charlotte said...

This is fantastic, the colors and the heart pattern are simply beautiful! How many shafts did you need to weave this?

Alison said...

Thanks Charlotte, I had a lot of fun with this blanket! It took seven shafts and was a point threading. The pattern is really all in the tieup, so threading and treadling were very simple.

Evelyn said...

Such a beautiful blanket and such a beautiful idea. My mother's quilting group does the same with pieced quilts for the local old folks homes, they make lap blankets for them. Evelyn

bspinner said...

Thanks for stopping by my blog.
I love the colors in your blanket!!! Beautiful.

Interesting inforamtion on the Ladybug.

Alison said...

Thanks Evelyn and Bspinner! This project was such fun, and I look forward to doing others like it!