Spinning, weaving, knitting, travel, and whatever…
It’s a rainy day here, so a perfect day to get busy at the loom. This is a Shadow Weave scarf in 16/2 cotton at 24 ends per inch. Now that the scarf is done, I have a bit over a meter of warp to play with to see what other patterns/motifs I can get from this warp.
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?”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.
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”
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”
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”
Now that I have the new loom, I’m off and running. The first project was from Season 3, Episode 1 – Denting of Jane Stafford’s Online Weaving School in brown and rust 16/2 cotton. I showed a bit of the warping process in my previous post about the loom. The idea is to add some interest to plain weave by considering the spaces as well as the fabric. The warp was arranged in 1/2″ segments – 1/2″ of warp at 24 ends per inch (12 warp threads), then a 1/2″ gap. The colours started at rust on the edge, moving through browns to a light ivory then reversing. There are 14 of the 1/2″ segments of warp and 13 empty gaps between.
Continue reading “The Power of Negative Space”
A while back I posted about some natural coloured handspun cotton. The tan coloured cotton was marketed as “green” – but it didn’t really look green. Then I found out what I was missing – the cotton needed to be treated to bring out the natural green colour. The trick was to soak the cotton in ammonia!
Continue reading “Green Cotton”
Spinning is an activity that I usually enjoy in the evening – so each project moves slowly. Several months ago I purchased about 800 grams of natural coloured combed cotton sliver in “green” and “cinnamon”.
Continue reading “Spinning Cotton”