Reasa's Scarf

I have fallen terribly behind on keeping track of my projects, so it's time to catch up!


This scarf was woven for my cousin Reasa. The warp is painted by Carrie May in her Autumn Harvest colorway. It is 8/2 Tencel sett at 24 epi. The weft is brown wool crepe from Habu.

The draft for this scarf was inspired by and is very similar to Jill's scarf. It is a straight threading on 12 shafts, with a plaited tie up and an advancing twill treadling. When I wove Jill's scarf (and its sample), I noticed that it had a tendency to collapse slightly. I thought that maybe I could use the same thing successfully with an overtwisted weft, and it worked! I love the way the plaited tie-up created subtle curves, rather than the straight linear pleats seen in an eight shaft 3/1/1/3 collapse piece. Bonnie Inouye's Advance! workshop really gave me the tools to design this.

Robyn Spady Fab Four Workshop

Last weekend, our guild was fortunate to have Robyn Spady present her Fab Four workshop. This was a round robin workshop of four shaft structures. It was a great workshop. Robyn was so thoughtful, organized, and generous. Everyone in our group, from beginner through advanced, got something out of the workshop. I came home wanting to try all kinds of things, especially diversified plain weave, cannele, swivel, and overshot-patterned double weave. Below are a few of the samples I wove.

Corduroy:


Cannele (with different cell sizes):
Overshot patterned double weave (top) and turned swivel (middle, light weft, and bottom, dark weft)

Swivel:

Diversified plain weave:Some ideas I'm thinking of... Diversified plainweave towels, table runner; cannele place mats; swivel, framed like needlepoint for my walls; a messenger bag with corduroy on the front... I wonder if I ought to quit my day job...

Robyn was also kind enough to go through her presentation on making jewelry from thrums. She had a lot of great ideas, and I was glad to order a copy of her new monograph on that topic. I'm thinking maybe I could invite some of my non-weaver friends to a jewelry-making party to use up some thrums!

Scarf inspired by Advance! workshop

Last year our guild hosted a workshop with Bonnie Inouye, and the topic was "Advance!". The workshop left me with so many ideas. For this project, I took an advancing points threading and wove it as overshot, to try my hand at weaving curves. The the warp and ground weft were a rayon / flax blend, and the pattern weft was a hand-painted bamboo / silk blend. I liked the idea of a shimmery pattern over a matte background. This was a lot of fun to weave; I enjoyed choosing the directions of the curves as I went. On the loom, the scarf looked very cool. After I finished it and looked at it from a distance, I wasn't as impressed. I can see that I definitely need more practice weaving the curves to make them appear smoother. In some places, they look a little abrupt to me. But I'm happy I tried it and intend to practice some more. And I will enjoy wearing my new scarf! :-)

This sideways photo shows the front of the scarf:

And this one shows the front and the back:

Scarf for Jill

It has been more than a year since I bought a 4 shaft extension kit for my Louet Spring. Life happened, and I just recently installed it, giving me 12 shafts in all. My plan is to work through "Exploring Multishaft Design", but first, I wanted to make something. I decided on a straight threading. I used a plaited tie up from Bonnie Inouye's "Advance!" workshop handout. I played with several treadlings and chose advancing points. I first tried to weave a scarf with slubby rayon, but the texture of the yarn hid the pattern. I cut off that warp and used Bambu 12 instead. I sleyed it at 30 epi. I used the color cilantro for the warp and coral for the weft. I am trying to weave scarves for all of the girls in my family, and those colors made me think of my cousin Jill.

I was a little anxious about whether I could comfortably use 14 treadles, but that was no problem at all. The loom squeaked some when I treadled, so I used a little silicone spray on the rollers. That did the trick.

I actually remembered to measure the scarf before I gave it away. It was 5 5/8" x 70 1/2" on the loom and 5 3/8" x 67 1/2" after finishing. I added some of the coral yarn to the cilantro fringe. The cilantro by itself just stood out way too much.

I had a hard time getting any good pictures of it because they yarn reflected the light so much. Here is a shot showing both sides:
And here is a picture showing the front in more detail:
I was pleased with the way it turned out, and, more importantly, so was Jill!

Organic Cotton Towels - M's and O's

I've fallen behind on my record keeping, so now it's time to catch up! A couple of months ago, I wove a set of kitchen towels in M's and O's, using a 10/2 organic cotton sampler from Chamomile Connection. I needed to make some gift towels, so I wove a set of four. Two were for me to give as (another!) wedding gift. Another was for my grandma to give to her cleaning lady. Grandma is quite fond of her, and she has admired a couple of towels that I have made for Grandma. The last, I kept for myself.
I was inspired to weave these some scarves in a recent issue of Handwoven. They were M's and O's with different stripes in the warp. I thought that would be a good way to use the little bits of different colors that were in the sampler.

Here is a shot of the towels on the loom. The colors are really subtle.

And here are a couple of the towels after washing in hot water, detergent, and washing soda. The colors are much more vibrant. I used a different color of weft on each towel.

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!

"It is more blessed to give than to receive"

It's the time of year in which many of us think about helping those in need. This year, in my town, where the local economy depends heavily on Chrysler and GM, there is no shortage of opportunities to give. I was afraid that this year, having taken a cut in pay, I wouldn't be able to help much, but when I received a list of needs for some local senior citizens, I was inspired. The list included the normal socks, puzzle books, sweatshirts, and... knitting supplies! I immediately thought of my stash of handspun. Over the past couple of years, I have accumulated quite a few skeins for which I had no particular project in mind. So I washed the skeins that looked useable (not my beginnery handspun), wound them into balls, and took them to work to be included in the gift bags for the seniors. I can't tell you how good it felt! After hearing the stories of some of these seniors, many of whom have no family or friends to care for them, I was amazed to think that something I made could touch them.

Earlier this year, I decided to play with echo weave. I wove two scarves on one warp using Mora yan. They turned out pretty well. Since I'm getting to the point where I have more scarves than I can wear, I decided to donate them to a local charity auction, and they were sold this weekend. Those scarves are pictured below:

I was hesitant to write this post because I don't want to pat myself on the back and talk about how good and generous I am. But my hope is that someone may read this and be inspired to use their own talents to reach out to others in their own, individual way. If you aren't sure where to start, I would suggest contacting a local church or the United Way in your area. They can surely direct you to someone who would be encouraged by your gift of fiber (or whatever else). If you have any other ideas for giving, please leave a comment!

Guild Challenge

This year, our guild's design challenge consisted of drawing three cards. Each one gave instructions with respect to weave structure, color, or fiber. We all had to weave something based on the cards we drew. I had to do plainweave, no more than two colors, and weft heavier than the warp. My first thought after I drew those cards was, "yuck, how boring!" I decided that to make it a little more interesting, I would bend the rules a little, and use several values of one color. Since I have very little experience dying, I consulted "Hands on Dying" and decided to follow the instructions for the first project in that book, which should yield four values of the same color, using Rit or Cushing dye. I thought it would be fun to do some clasped weft weaving with the light and dark colors of weft.

To meet the grist requirements for the warp and weft, I chose some natural 10/2 cotton as warp and some worsted weight cotton as weft. I figured with a heavier weft, I would make some placemats or a table runner. I bought Hobby Lobby brand worsted weight cotton, and I was pretty impressed with it. It is much softer (and I think nicer) than sugar 'n cream cotton, and on sale, it cost less for me to buy several skeins of the Hobby Lobby cotton than it would bave cost to buy a cone of the same weight of sugarn 'n cream. For the dye, I chose Rit in Apple Green.

Anyway, I took the heavy cotton, skeined it, and dyed it according to the instructions in the book. I left the warp cotton natural. A couple of things happened when I did the dying, and, please, keep in mind that I am a very inexperienced dyer. First, the difference in value of each skein was barely discernable. I suspect that this was because the dye I chose to use had a relatively light value to begin with. Since I needed to get moving on the project to meet the due date, I decided just to use what I had and weave something a little plainer without the clasped weft.

The other thing that happened during the dyeing was that when I skeined the yarn, I tied the choke ties too tight. This left some very light spots throughout the skein. Even though this was a mistake, it worked to my advantage. Since the idea of using light and dark yarns to do clasped weft was out, the light spots in the yarn added some interest.

Then I started weaving a placemat in plainweave. It was just OK. The worst part was the selvedges. I don't normally weave with such heavy yarns, and had a horrible time getting nice selvedges. I decided that one placemat of this was enough to fulfill the guild challenge requirements and that I would weave a runner in a different structure. At that point, I wished that I had threaded for rosepath instead of 1, 2, 3, 4. I really didn't want to rethread, so I consulted Davison's book to see what else I could do with that threading. I wove a couple of samples and settled on Joseph France's "Ribs Three & One" on page 7. This was like a plainweave, except three of the warp ends acted as one. I liked the way this looked a lot better, and for some reason, the selvedges looked a lot better with this structure. I'm sure I didn't do anything differently, so I'm not sure what made the difference.

The runner looked fine, but I don't see myself doing much more like that. I'm looking forward to getting back to weaving with some finer yarns. I do think, though, that something similar might be nice for some hand towels since it's nice and soft. I may have to try drying my hands on the runner to see if it's absorment enough. :)

Here are the four skeins after being dyed. You can see a little difference in value, but not much.

Here is the finished placemat, yucky selvedges, and all.

Here is the runner on the loom.

And here is the finished runner.

Slow Weaving

I keep hearing about how hot slow art is right now. I think that just about any handweaving and handspinning could be considered slow, but what I'm working on now is ultra-slow! I'm weaving summer and winter bookmarks with 20/2 cotton warp and tabby weft and 10/2 cotton pattern weft on a table loom. It is sett at 36 epi. I chose the table loom for a couple of reasons. First, it's a louet, so it has a raddle that's suited to very fine warp. Second, I like the texsolve heddles for fine warps. If I were to weave this on a floor loom, I would need to use a skeleton tie-up, which would slow down my weaving rhythm considerably, anyway.

This is my first experience with weaving summer and winter. I wanted to make some Christmas gifts, so I designed a draft with little pine trees. I'm thankful to a member of our guild, who put on a program last year about designing with blocks. I had read about this before and vaguely understood how to do it, but to see it explained in person made it much clearer to me. After I had settled on my final design, I was perusing WeaveZine and found a draft there with Christmas trees. I'm glad I found it after I made my own design. While it would have saved me time to use an existing draft, it was good to go through the exercise of designing my own. Besides, I like mine a little better :)

So far, I have one bookmark woven, shown below. It is in the "singles" treadling order, as described by Strickler in her 8-shaft pattern book. My plan is to weave at least one bookmark each in singles, x's, o's, and dukagang-fashion.

Advance! warp samples

After Bonnie Inouye's Advance! workshop, I had plenty of warp left on the loom. I had a lot of breaking ends because, I believe, the tencel warp wasn't getting along with the flat steel heddles on my Baby Wolf. I'd had that issue in the past, but it had been a while, so I kind of forgot about it. Anyway, I didn't want to fight the warp to make a scarf or anything, but it was perfect for weaving more samples.

The warp was 8/2 tencel sleyed at 28 epi. Each of us in the workshop was assinged a different threading. Mine was an extended advancing twill: 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 2, 3, 4, 5, 2, 3, 4, 5, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc... I enjoyed this threading because each pattern had a large scale. That was one of the points that Bonnie tried to make, that it's nice to be able to see that a textile is interesting from across the room. Below I'll show the samples that I wove, both during the workshop and at home.

The first sample, below, is tromp as writ, with wide bands of color moving diagonally across the sample.

The next sample, below, starts out with a regular 5 pick advancing treadling. Then I moved to an extended advancing treadling, and you can see the slope of the lines change. Then I reversed the treadling, and you can see mirror symmetry at those points.

The next sample below shows an advancing and descending treadling. Here, you can see the slope of the lines reverse, but the twill continues without the mirror symmetry seen above.

The next sample below shows an advancing point treadling. This one was a lot of fun. It was really easy to change the slope and the direction of the lines.

This sample shows an overshot treadling. For the tabby weft, I used Bambu12 in a color that blended with the warp. The pattern weft was 8/2 tencel. Here I played a little, trying to get some curves. I had my for the other samples, I had the treadles tied in a walking format, so I decided to re-tie the treadles for this overshot sample so that the tabby treadles would be next to each other. After I was done with this sample, I figured out that one of my pattern treadles was tied up wrong.
This sample is the last one I wove during the workshop. It has a network treadling. At the beginning of the sample (the left in this picture), I used the treadling that Bonnie gave us in her workbook. Toward the right, I treadled freestyle, using a technique that Bonnie explained in her lecture. I started to get the hang of it, but to be able to create curves that really look good, I'll definitely need some practice.

This sample, I wove at home after the workshop. I wove all of this freestyle, using the techniques that Bonnie taught. The far left, light blue, is a combination of advancing and extended advancing treadlings, which changes the slope of the diagonal lines. The middle sample, dark blue, is an overshot treadling. The tabby weft in this sample is rayon chennile, and the pattern weft is the Bambu 12 that I used as tabby weft in the overshot above. The effect was very subtle, and the sample looks nicer from a distance than it does close-up, which is shown in the next photo.

The sample below shows overshot with Bambu 12 tabby weft and 8/2 tencel as pattern weft. To the right, I played some more with advancing and decending treadling. I need to study this a little more since I understand the basics, but something about it hasn't quite clicked. I think I'll understand it more if I continue to play with it.

Finally, the last sample, on the right, shows network treadling. I'm starting to get a better feel for this, but, again, it will take some more practice to really get the hang of it and create some nice curves while I'm at the loom.

At our guild meeting this weekend, we all brought our samples from the workshop for show-and-tell for the other members. One thing that stuck out to me after our discussion was how many of the samples (mine and others) looked better from across the room than they did close-up. As people across the room would hold up their samples, I thought, wow! Then, as they were passed around and came to me, I thought, well, that's interesting, but I don't love it. That wasn't the case for all of the samples, but for some. This is something I'm definitely going to play with more and practice, to see what I like best, and how to use it best.

Weekend Workshop

Last weekend, our guild hosted Bonnie Inouye, who presented her Advance! workshop. This was an amazing workshop. In it, Bonnie gave us tools for using advancing twills, network twills, advancing points, overshot, etc. By advancing these units, we have the ability to control scale and to use curves in our weaving. Bonnie is a great teacher, very clear and encouraging. This workshop was challenging and inspiring, and it left me full of new ideas. One question I have been considering since then is: How can I best use these tools to create something in my own style? In other words, how do I keep it from looking like a copy of Bonnie Inouye's work? I think the answer is just through practice. I think it will take time to develop my own style. I think it will be a slow, challenging, and enjoyable journey to take just one project at a time.


Below are a few pictures of the samples we wove in the workshop. I still have some of this warp left on my loom, and I'm looking forward to just playing with it and weaving more samples.

Weaving With Kids

A friend invited me to Bethlehem Days at her church last weekend to demonstrate weaving. I have to admit that I don't know much about weaving in a historical context, but since no one was too concerned with historical authenticity, I just brought my Kombo. I dressed it in natural cotton for plain weave, and wound several bobbins in bright colors for weft. I wanted to let the kids do most of the weaving. The day went really well. Lots of kids wanted to try, and a few were hooked. A couple were really interested in what we were doing but not quite brave enough to give it a try.

This little boy came to visit me several times and really got into it. His grandma got a little irritated with him because he wouldn't leave the loom when she said it was time to go.

I got a kick out of this little girl. She never really got the hang of it, but she had such a good time. She told me she wanted to learn to weave, so she could do it for a living. I had to ask her a couple of times to let the other kids have a turn at the loom. :)

This is my friend's little sister, Faith. She was a natural at the loom and caugh on very quickly. At the end of the day, when I went to change out of my bible costume, I came back to find Faith weaving away, all on her own. She later told her mom that she wanted a "weaver" of her own. Her grandmother used to weave rugs, so it may be in her blood. :)

Here is a bit of the finished piece. It was beautiful, with lots of long floats and crazy selvedges. After finishing it, I gave it to my friend to use as a wall-hanging in the children's room at the church. A couple of the kids were disappointed that they didn't get to keep what they had woven, so hopefully the wall-hanging will be a good memory for them.

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:

Spring Serendipity Scarves

Last summer I used part of my economic stimulus check to buy the Earthues natural dye kit in the colors collection. I've always been drawn to the warm, soft colors from natural dyes. I had also been wanting to try my hand at warp painting, so the natural dye extracts seemed to be the way to go. Last summer, I painted a bunch of silk hankies and two silk warps. I finall got around to weaving one of the warps. It is a 20/2 silk noile, and I wove it in a 4-shaft huck. I do like the colors, and the noile yarn along with the huck weave structure gave the scarves a nice, airy feel. It was a lot of fun to see the colors change as I wove, and I am happy with the end results.