Linen Huck Lace Runner

I recently wove a gift for another wedding. This bride is very feminine and traditional. She and her new husband love antiques and have a home that he restored. So, I naturally chose a lace weave for them. I used Bockens 16/2 linen sett at 18 epi. I chose to weave it on my Baby Wolf. I have two reeds that will fit that loom: 8 dpi and 12 dpi. With the 8 dpi, I could sley 2/2/2/3 for 18 epi, and with the 12 dpi, I could sley 1/2 for 18 epi. Thinking it looked more even overall, I chose the 8 dpi reed. In retrospect, I see that this was the wrong choice. I could see reed marks after finishing the runner. I'm sure they weren't noticeable to the bride and groom, but I could see them. I see now that sleying 1/2 would have allowed the warp ends to move more evenly during finishing than the 2/2/2/3 allowed the one odd end en every fourth dent to move. The draft is from page 12 of The best of Weaver's Huck Lace.

I wove a sample as well, and used part of it to make a card to go with the gift:

This was my first experience in weaving with linen. After hearing horror stories about it, I was a little apprehensive, but the apprehension was unnecessary. It behaved very well. I didn't spray the warp with water or soak the bobbins. The weft did have a tendency to jump off the bobbin when it was full. I think either soaking the bobbin or using an EFS would have taken care of that. I should also note that we had a humidifier running in the next room, as we normally do in the winter.

Canvas weave wedding gift

A friend of mine got married a couple of weeks ago. Her engagement was very short, and she didn't give us much notice before the wedding. I'm glad the reception was a week after the wedding, so I had a chance to finish the towels I was making her. There wasn't much time to spend designing the towels as I would have liked, so I just chose a draft from Davison that I had used for towels before. I had woven it before and liked it. It had an interesting pattern and used just one shuttle, so I went with it. It was a canvas weave, Swarthmore Check, on page 69. I used 8/2 unmercerized cotton in green and beige. The label says "KARDED COT 8/2POE". The yarn was pretty friendly to use. The only thing I noticed about it was in the semi-plainweave hems, there was a ton of tracking. That might be fun to play with another time. The towels shrunk noticeably after I washed them, but, of course, I forgot to measure them before I gave them away. I took a piece from the sample and made a card similar to the ones here, but with a heart-shaped opening. I forgot to take a picture of the card, too! I did manage to snap a couple of pics of the towels, so I will leave you with them.

Christmas Cards

I turned those summer & winter bookmarks I was making into Christmas cards. I only finished seven before Christmas, just enough to send to the board members of our guild and to my weaving teacher.

I just stuck the bookmark to the front of a card with some double sided tape and rubber stamped "Peace on Earth" next to it. I thought they turned out fairly well, and a couple of recipients told me how pleased they were. :)

I learned a couple of things. First, I'm glad I used a loom with texsolve heddles because I still several warp ends break. Second, I found out that I didn't really do my research on S&W very well before I started. I had mentioned that I planned to try treadling in x's, o's, singles, and duckagang-fashion. Well, it turns out that real S&W has vertical "blocks" that consist of four picks, ABAB. I designed these with vertical "blocks" that consisted of just two picks, AB. So I just treadled as singles and went with it. If I had more time, I might have played around with it some more, but that darn calendar kept me moving. I think if I weave Christmas cards again, I will weave something that goes a little faster!

Greencastle and Greeting Cards

On Good Friday we went to Greencastle. I was thinking I wanted some nice, natural fibers, and that's just what I came home with.

A Romeldale-Merino fleece

Cormo, Cormo-X roving

Natural Bluefaced Leicester roving

Dyed Coopworth, Silk roving

Wow, I have a lot of spinning to do!

This weekend, the program at our guild meeting was about making greeting cards with handwoven fabric. Eleanor and Sue gave a lot of practical advice about making cards and showed their impressive collections of cards they had made and recieved over the years. Then we all got to make cards with scraps of fabric that we had brought. Here is what I came home with:

It was a fun program, and the ladies did such a nice job!