And such a long process it is… Remember that cone of yarn (well, really thread) I was working on?
It’s all about the process
Can you count to 1221?
It’s always good to have several projects going at once. Currently I have two weaving projects and two spinning projects! Here’s what I’m weaving…
Progress on my current big loom project is slow. I’m weaving fabric for sewing – about 40 inches wide and 5 yards long. The thread (remember that blue cone in my earlier post?) will be woven at 30 ends per inch. 40 x 30 = 1200! Well, actually there are 1221 warp ends (to accommodate the width of my pattern). The fabric will be huck lace in solid blue.
Continue reading “Can you count to 1221?”Bring on 2024
Well, 2023 has been in the books for a week now, and it’s time to start looking forward to 2024. In this post, a quick review of the highlights of 2023 and some plans for 2024.
In 2023 I finished ten weaving projects and 29(!) skeins of handspun yarn ranging from 100g to 220g. I’m powering my way through my fibre stash by combining hand-dyed colourways to make huge skeins. There’s always a spinning project on my Aura, and often one on the Joy and one on the EEW Nano as well. Is three spinning wheels enough?
Continue reading “Bring on 2024”Catching up…
Gosh, it’s been well over a year since my last post. It’s not that I’ve stopped weaving – I just haven’t been writing posts. Clearly, I’m not doing a good job of keeping up the way I originally conceived this blog. So time for a bit of a re-focus. Rather than making each post such a big thing (completed project, pretty pictures, etc.), I’ll try to post more regularly about work in progress and stuff.
Continue reading “Catching up…”Seeing Double
Throws and blankets have been among the more useful items I’ve woven. But a reasonable size throw is a meter or more in width. Double weave allows you to weave fabric that is wider than your loom, by weaving two layers at once.
For this throw, I bought a kit from Jane Stafford Textiles for a double weave shawl made from Harrisville Shetland yarn in shades of green and blue with the draft from Season 3 Episode 7.
Continue reading “Seeing Double”Colourful!
Simple supplementary warp scarves.
These three scarves are part of my ongoing journey with Jane Stafford’s School of Weaving. This project, from Season 3 on extending plain weave, took me out of my comfort zone by adding a supplementary warp thread that could either be incorporated in the fabric or float on top or behind.
Project Specs: Warp: Maurice Brassard 16/2 cotton with hand dyed 20/2 silk as the supplementary thread. Sett: Selvages (Fuschia) 40epi; Centre 20epi. Weft: same as warp, with Maurice Brassard 16/2 bamboo in yellow for the third scarf. Loom: Spring II Started 22 Jan 2022, cut off loom 31 Jan 2022 - a nice quick project.
I had a lot of fun playing with the various possibilities. Here, the supplementary warp is combined with the same silk in the weft to create offsetting “bricks”.
And here I’m playing with stripes in the cotton weft (using a light blue cotton that’s quite similar in colour to the silk) and floating the supplementary warp on top of the fabric for two picks, then behind the fabric for two picks – sort of like a running stitch.
Rigid Heddle Table Runner
I’ve seen many weavers start with a rigid heddle loom because it seems simple. But even a simple loom has lots of design potential. In this project I was inspired by a page in Jane Patrick’s The Weaver’s Idea Book: Creative Cloth on a Rigid Heddle Loom. The idea was to combine log cabin with weft-float pickup. I warped the loom with 8/4 cotton in a 12.5 epi heddle.
Continue reading “Rigid Heddle Table Runner”Adding the Dye Dimension
At a Weavers Interest meeting late last year I received a 1998 issue of Weavers magazine with an article by Kay Faulkner about woven shibori. I regret that I was not able to take Kay’s class on woven shibori as I learned so much in the two classes I was able to take with her.
So, what is woven shibori? Shibori is a Japanese resist dyeing technique where cloth is stitched or tied in intricate patterns, the stitching drawn tight, and the fabric dyed resulting in resist patterns where the tight gathering threads kept the dye away. Tie-dyed T-shirts are an example of shibori. With woven shibori, the gathering threads are woven into the fabric, gathered once the fabric is off the loom, then the fabric is dyed.
Continue reading “Adding the Dye Dimension”Simple Collapse Weave
I’m sure many have had the experience of washing a delicate item and finding that it had shrunken substantially. This is no fun when it’s an accident. But, what if you could do it on purpose? That’s exactly the theory behind this project. By using two fibres that shrink differently, the finished fabric has depth and texture.
Continue reading “Simple Collapse Weave”Warp-faced placemats
The previous project was weft-faced — the warp disappeared under the weft. This project is the exact opposite. The warp threads are threaded so close together that the weft disappears (except where it peeks out at the selvages).
Continue reading “Warp-faced placemats”