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!

Baby Blanket

Finally, I finished the baby blanket I began in September. It's been off the loom for a while, but I wasn't too excited about finishing it. Well, my friend's baby is due in less than a week, so I had some motivation to get it done. It's a block twill in bambu 7 warp and weft. I'm not too thrilled with the finished product. It's nice, but it doesn't really excite me. It does feel nice and have a nice drape. Maybe blankets just aren't my thing. I am mostly glad that it's done, so I can move on to the next project.

So what's on the looms now? The Spring is half-way dressed with a lace-weight alpaca warp for a shawl for me. It's only half dressed because I realized last week, rather suddenly, how close Christmas is. So I hurried and wove off the warp that was on the Baby Wolf, a scarf that will be a Christmas present, and dressed it with the warp to make the last three rayon scarves for my grandma. I really am getting bored of the variegated rayon warps. I think it will be a while before I do any more. But, it was a good way to quickly make nine scarves. I don't think my grandma realizes quite how much time is involved in doing these, but her excitement definitely makes up for it. She is so excited to give these scarves to her sisters!

Guild Exchange

Yesterday we completed our guild's yarn exchange. Each participant had brought a bag of yarn to exchange. Then we had to weave something for whoever supplied the yarn we used. I got Nancy's huge grocery bag full of yarn. It was hard to decide which to pick, but some brightly colored variegated slubby rayon silk blend kept calling out to me. There was also a cone of purple zephyr that looked nice with the slubby yarn. I really liked the results I got when I used an advancing twill with a slubby rayon earlier this year, so I decided to use the same draft. It didn't work with these yarns.

In the sample above, I wove sections of twill and plainweave with a single strand of weft and a double strand of weft. There was so much going on with color, texture, and pattern in the twill areas that I didn't really like them. I wound up choosing the plainweave with a single strand of weft. It turned out OK, and Nancy seemed happy with it.

I had brought some bambu 12 and some 20/2 handpainted silk for the exchange, and Sue wove them into a beautiful scarf. Here is the front:

And the back:

Both sides are lovely, but I think I prefer the back. The scarf has such a nice drape and hand. I'm looking forward to wearing it.

Silk + Bambu Scarf

The silk warp bambu weft scarf is complete. It feels awesome. Enough said.

Welcome

Hello, and welcome to my new blog. Here I'll primarily be talking about what I'm weaving and spinning, but I'll probably also include other things I want to share.

Right now, I'm weaving a scarf in twill, draft 202 in the Strickler book. The warp is handpainted 20/2 silk in Fresia from Claudia Handpainted Yarns, and the weft is Bambu 12 in fig. So far, it's going well - the silk is soooo nice! I just need to be conscious about keeping an even beat.