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.

Autumn Yarn

I've just finished spinning some beautiful alpaca/merino/silk fiber from Yarn Hollow. It was hand painted in their chai colorway, which is just perfect for autumn. I'm still getting used to the great big bobbins on my Ladybug. I misjudged how much fiber I had left and wound up with about twice as much singles on one bobbin as I did on the other. I went ahead and plied the two together, and I Navajo plied the leftovers. The two-ply came out at about 32 - 36 wpi. The Navajo ply was about 24 - 28 wpi. I wish I would have taken the time to wind the leftover bobbin onto a ball and ply it onto itself because I really like the two-ply a lot better. Of course, maybe I just need more practice Navajo plying... :)

Here is the two-ply:

And here is the Navajo ply:

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.