Sharing the Fiber Fever

Tunis Preparations

2012-02-10T15:00:00.000-05:00

This bundle of fluff is some Tunis wool. The tip ends were a bit matted, so I flick carded the locks (both the tip and the cut end) and then hand carded them into rolags for woolen spinning.

Here are my flick carded piles ready for hand carding into rolags. Unfortunately, I forgot to snap a photo of the rolags. I made two different types--the first was from the flick carded locks and they were very even and clean. The second type was from the waste off the flick carder (see the messy pile at the lower left corner of the photo?). The second type of rolag was more irregular, with odds and ends to pick out.

Here's the resulting yarn. It is a fine (32-45 WPI) woolen single. It's pretty and it is soft and cushy. The white card at the top is information for the Handweavers Guild of America (HGA)'s Certificate of Excellence program. I have 40 or so 1-ounce skeins to spin for the program. I am learning "gobs" as I go. My only hope at this point is that I don't get to the end, look back at my early work (like this skein) and say, "yuck! I can't turn that in!" and have to respin a bunch of these!

Rambouillet Wool

2012-01-25T20:26:00.001-05:00

This morning I finished carding my washed Rambouillet wool. The stuff is springing and fine. The cotton handcards were just the right tool. Two hours later, my bobbin was no longer empty, but my rolag bag sure was!
I was spinning a medium weight woolen yarn. The rambouillet was smooth and easy to spin! I can't wait to do some more!

Holey Yarn

2012-01-25T20:15:00.001-05:00

Check out the hole I discovered in my yarn! The hole is huge--3/16" across! This is yarn that was balled years ago and has been stored in the open in my craft room. When did some bug eat its way in --or out--of this ball? Your guess is as good as mine!

As soon as I discovered the hole, I put the ball in a ziploc bag and put it outside in the freezing weather. After a day or two I brought it inside and started unwinding the ball to see what I could salvage. It turned out that the hole was about a 1/4" deep. I unwound from the center of the ball and had a lot of usable yarn. I'm saving the external wraps (the ones that have been chewed) and may be able to use them as texture in some handspun yarn.

Color Block Vest

2012-01-21T09:46:00.001-05:00

The last issue of Spin Off Magazine had the pattern for Susan Douglas' "Color Block Vest". The idea behind the vest was that Susan often spun only bits and pieces and never had enough handspun yarn for a sweater. Rather than change her spinning habits, she designed a sweater vest to use bits and pieces. Pretty cool!

I was feeling extremely selfish over the holidays and cast on a project for me. The sides and edges are a purple; the back and fronts are a variegated purple & green yarn.

The back (which isn't visible in this photo) is beautiful! The color repeats in the yarn change nicely with the variations in the stitch pattern. The front, well, I don't like it. The color changes are ok, but the overall effect doesn't have the slim, trim image of the original. Right. My body is not the same as the mini dressform used for the original photo at the top. My color choices are not as well chosen as the original either. I think the dark stripes on the front provide accents in in-opportune places.

On the other hand, the vest blocked nicely on my duct-tape dummy. It's the first time I've used the dummy. It was nice to have it!

And, a last, interesting note...This vest weighs a ton! The yarn must have been spun in my typical, dense, worsted style. It has given me a good reason to practice spinning lofty woolen yarns!

Fleece Blanket

2012-01-06T20:14:00.001-05:00

After our wonderfully warm and cuddly Christmas blanket got put away for the season, my husband requested a warm and cuddly replacement blanket.

I just happened to have some fleece in my stash and in a few days pieced together this sunshine blanket. It has been a hit! It's warm, it's fuzzy....and if it falls to the floor I don't complain (as opposed to my nice, handwoven blanket that I dislike finding on the floor!).

We love sunshine!

The yellow rays are machine stitched to the red background. The last piece was the central yellow disc. The back is plain (no rays) with a second yellow disc. The red fleece started life as a poncho for my father-in-law. Apparently it didn't work right for him and it was given to me (with neck hole nicely finished). The sun does a great job of covering the neck hole (I did cut off the finished edging) and no one is the wiser--except you and me. :)

Color Inspiration & Blending on a Drum Carder

2012-01-01T15:17:00.004-05:00

I stumbled across a new-to-me website where four dyers have created a "Color Co-op". Each of the four artists use the same photo as inspiration and interpret the photo with dyes on fiber and yarn. Members of the co-op receive yarn or fiber from the different artists over time. It sounded really cool!

The top photo is the inspiration for their Jan.2012 colorways. It inspired me! In fact, I was already to hit the dyepots when I remembered that I had some blue wool in my stash. "Some" turned out to be an understatement! I had number of batches of blue in my stash! The two main colors were "brilliant blue" and an "aqua/turquoise" blue. Instead of the dye pots, I pulled out the drum carder.

My first step was to identify some of the colors from the photo. I used photoshop and the "eyedropper tool" to pick five colors from the photo. Then I made a swatch where the amounts of each color were proportional to the amount of each color in the photo. I created another swatch where I added a few more colors in the light range and then started my blending.

The basic blends are:

Sky blue: pale pink; aqua & brilliant blue, white.
Med. blue: aqua & brilliant blue & some white.
Mountains blue: magenta, brilliant blue, and dark grey
Black: dark grey plus a bit of magenta & brilliant blue for visual depth
Water blue: aqua & brilliant blue, dark grey

Each roving was carded to open it up and make blending easier. The weight of the wool for each color was calculated and the component colors were weighed. Then the colors were blended (big sections like the sky and water were separated into multiple batts to fit on the carder).

The direct comparison between the original photo and the photo of my carded wool shows a marked difference in overall color. The photo is much more uniform, almost monochromatic, purple/blue than my wools. Aside from that, I am pleased with the variation in colors that blending produced. I can easily imagine sky, mountains, something dark (a road perhaps) and then water from the wools.

December Quilt Block

2012-01-01T14:48:00.002-05:00

December's quilt block is the "Ohio Star". I snuck in some of the fabric left over from the original quilt for the points of the stars.

Here are the twelve blocks together (in no particular order). I will be working on finishing the tops in 2012--I plan on setting the blocks on point and adding some sashing between them--and maybe, just maybe I'll start some quilting too!

Evolutions

2011-12-19T21:41:00.001-05:00

I came across these "evolutions" at Twisted Fiber Art's website the other day. I love the transitions from one color to the next and I love how the overall color progresses without returning to the original color. This particular colorway reminds me of the blue sky over sand hills.

I'm not sure how I want to use this ideas in my own dyeing. I usually dye rovings (which Twisted Fiber Art will also dye into evolutions), but I'm not sure if I really need to put all those colors on the same roving to get this type of end result. In theory, I could just spin light blue and then purple and then dark brown and then tan and then yellow without having to have dyed them together.

Sarracenia leucophylla hybrid (aka Pitcher Plant)

While I think about that, here is a photo from KathyW's Web Space. Check out the color evolution/gradation in the flower petals!

Alpaca Scarf

2011-12-16T12:40:00.001-05:00

This looks like the start of a weaving project. Technically, it is the middle of a much larger project. You see, a friend of mine owns alpacas. Black, white, tan, beautiful alpacas! A year or two ago I talked her into giving me a bag of fiber so I could show her what could be done with the soft, wonderful stuff! So I did. I combed and carded and spun and knit and wove and gave her an idea of what could be done with her fibers. This year, she sent the fibers off for processing. The roving is luscious! I spun 4oz of the tan and roughly 2oz each of the black and the white for this project.

The scarf wove up quickly and I am pleased with how it turned out. The tan yarn was set at 14 epi and the black and white together at 12 epi. The structure is a simple 2/2 twill. The ends have a twisted fringe, but no hemstitching.

I tried the scarf on and discovered a problem. It was scratchy! See the culprit in the photo? There are thicker hairs in the alpaca that I hadn't paid much attention to while I spun. I should have paid attention! I was able to pull many of them out of the finished scarf--which is a little disconcerting....can the whole thing be pulled apart fiber by fiber? I think that these thicker hairs were easier to pull out because they were thicker and less tightly twisted into the yarn. I hope so!

The alpaca scarf has gone to its new home where it will be loved by a mutual friend of both the alpaca owner and the weaver/spinner.

The Emperor's New Clothes

2011-12-04T20:53:00.001-05:00

I feel like I am weaving the emperor's new clothes. There is a pattern in this piece, but I can't see it! More realistically, I can see that there is something there, but I can't see the pattern I was expecting to see. After trying two different packing densities, I gave up, checked my draft on the computer and went to bed. I'm debating cutting this off the loom and seeing if wet finishing will make the huck lace patterns show.

Check out this photo of me threading the heddles. As I sat down to work at the mighty wolf, I realized that the reed was going to be in my way. So I unscrewed the top bar and took the reed out. Now why didn't I think of that long ago with my baby wolf? It worked great to reach forward without reaching over the reed!

Mighty Wolf 8H loom

2011-12-03T15:13:00.001-05:00

Thursday night as I was looking at various things on-line I checked the classifieds at Weaving Indiana. Lo and behold, a friend of mine was looking to trade looms--her 36" wide Mighty Wolf for a 26" wide Baby Wolf.

A few emails later and my Baby got packed up for moving and was replaced with this beautiful 8H Might Wolf!

I am thrilled! In fact, I'm off to my books to decide which project goes on the loom first! :)

Skeinsgiving -Strauch Petite

2011-12-02T09:06:00.001-05:00

This "red, white, & blue" batt was my favorite. The main fiber is a super soft wool. It came out of Beth's huge fiber baskets and I didn't ask what was in it. It is soft enough to be merino and I wonder if it has some angora in it. I blended it with a tiny bit of white silk and added a touch of a blue wool and a touch of a pink/maroon wool. It was so pretty!

The carder that I used was my favorite too: a Strauch Petite. It was easy to crank, easy to clean, and made lovely batts (I fed the blue and pink through prior to adding them to the blend). Ahhh. It was very nice. Guess what I've added to my wish list?

Thanks again to Beth at the Spinning Loft in Howell, MI for "Skeinsgiving" and the "Batt Bar". It was great fun!

Darn

2011-11-30T12:02:00.001-05:00

Today I tackled the collection of handknit socks that were in need of repair. Darn. Darning isn't hard. It isn't exciting either, but it takes less time to darn my socks than to spin and knit a new pair. So, here's to darning.

This sock got two repairs: a knit-like stitch up near the toes and a replacement flap knit to cover a gaping hole at the heel. I didn't have any more of the original yarn, so I used a chain-ply (3-ply) sample in bright yellow and orange. The flap was knit on 6 stitches that I picked up from the heel, increased to cover the hole and then sewn to the sock. We'll see how well this works.

The knit-like stitch is basically a duplicate stitch where I used a needle and the yarn to re-create the knit stitches. The 3-ply patch yarn is bigger than the original yarn and it looks a bit odd.

Here is the same type of repair on a different sock. (Did I mention that I had a stack of these to do?) This repair was done with the same yarn as the original and hides nicely. The photo to the left shows how the original knitting was hanging together by a thread. It's easiest to do the duplicate stitch repair on holes like this.

There was a big hole in the heel of these socks too, but I wasn't willing to do another knit flap so these socks got the "weave across the hole" type of patch. Yarn was sewn across the hole and then woven the other direction to cover the hole. --These are my acrylic house slippers. I don't really care about them as long as they keep my feet warm. If they were handspun, I might have knit another flap.

And here is the trio of non-holey socks (well, except for the hole for my foot!) Ready to be returned to use! Whew!

Skeinsgiving-Fancy Kitty Drum Carder

2011-11-30T08:34:00.001-05:00

These photos are from the batt I carded on the Fancy Kitty drum carder up at The Spinning Loft at Beth's "Batt Bar". The dark green fiber is bamboo. The glitter is firestar and there is a tiny bit of pink wool. The bamboo behaved very differently than the wool that day. When I pulled off pieces of the bamboo roving the ends splayed out away from each other (like fine hair with tons of static electricity). The wools didn't do that!

I used the Fancy Kitty drum carder at the table. It wasn't my favorite of the three drum carders, but it worked just fine. (Sorry. I know that's not a great endorsement....but, it worked. It didn't wow me. It just worked.--Go to Beth's and try it out. And then check out the Ravelry Fancy Kitty Lovers group because they are having a drawing for one of their carders for Christmas.)

This is how the mini-skein and tiny bit of reserve batt looked on Monday after I finished spinning.

This snarl is what it looked like today (Wed) when I found it to take more pictures! What happened? I think the fiber and the skein got pushed aside together and the staticky bamboo fibers had a party. (I also think I got a lesson about the importance of putting things away and not leaving them out on the desk to be pushed aside by the next person who needs the desk.)

The skein is now wound up nicely and the bit of batt tucked into a tiny ball. One more fluffy batt to spin! (Thanks again, Beth. The batt bar was loads of fun!)

Skeinsgiving Batt--Cotton Blend-Louet

2011-11-26T21:48:00.001-05:00

The day after Thanksgiving, Beth at "The Spinning Loft" in Howell, Michigan had a sale on fibers and a "batt bar". At the bar were three different drum carders and four huge (bigger than bushel size!) baskets of fiber to play with. The name "Skeinsgiving" is what Beth called the day.

This batt was my third dip into the baskets. It is mostly cotton--a blue turquoise and a darker blue turquoise--with some dark green bamboo and a bit of firestar/nylon and pink wool. I carded it on the Louet carder that Beth had out.

I played around with the batt a bit as I spun it. The cotton was not well carded prior to my blending everything else with it. I tried putting it through the carder first (so it got at least two passes) but it is so short that it didn't get carded very well!

The Louet carder did have a very nice adjustment knob for the licker in drum that made it very easy to adjust!

I ended up just attenuating or pulling on the batt to make it spinable. Spinning it without attenuating left too much texture for my taste. Hand carding it blended the colors too much for me. When I spin dyed cotton slivers I usually do this same sort of attenuation. Pinch the fibers with the pinching fingers about 2" apart and pull gently. Do this along the length of the fiber prep.

Here is my very pretty, very nicely textured three ply yarn. I like this! It does a good job of showing color and texture and looking like a solid yarn.

Here is the two ply yarn. I ran out of one spool of singles before the other two, so I made a two ply. I don't like it as much as the three ply. It looks scrawny--kind of underfed--compared to the three ply. The bumps in the singles stand out more in the two ply than in the three.

It's too late to spin any more tonight....but I have two more batts to play with...Thanks for the Skeinsgiving, Beth!

Quilt Blocks--November

2011-11-22T19:49:00.001-05:00

Two blocks of one orientation; one of another. Guess who goofed. Yup. Me.

I was considering making the blocks different by changing the orientation of the green hour-glasses, but this change was entirely by accident (shh! Don't tell anyone!). At least it will help make the three quilts distinguishable!

Scherenschnitte aka "Chicken Soup"

2011-11-18T20:22:00.001-05:00

My good friend Marybeth called this morning. "I've got some chicken soup for you. It will help you feel better. Will you be home this morning and I'll bring it over?"

Now, I'm not sick, but we've been dealing with a whole slew of interesting challenges and I have been a bit under the weather. And, I know Marybeth enough that when she has something to bring over, the correct answer is "sure! come on over."

Today was no exception. I didn't need any soup, but Marybeth is a wonderful cook and an excellent canner....and I really expected soup.

Instead of soup, I received three beautiful, framed scherenschnitte or paper cuttings. Where Marybeth finds the patience and the steadiness to make these beautiful things I will never know, but I am so awed!

Before she had even left I was staring at my walls trying to decide what to take down to make room for these when she said, "They are for your shop."

I don't have a shop....yet. Maybe someday. I'm seriously thinking about a shop. Wouldn't it be fun? Do you think anyone would drive to Crawfordsville to take weaving, spinning, & dyeing classes or to buy yarn?

Until my "real" shop is open I'm going to have to find a place for these three bowls of chicken soup. I feel very loved!

Handspun, Handknit Mittens

2011-11-16T16:48:00.001-05:00

Just about the time I finished his new green striped hat, my son lost his mittens. That was after we discovered that the hat was just a bit too short and added earflaps. What were the chances that I would have enough handspun left to make two (matching) mittens? The mittens are the "Kennebunk Wooly Bear Mittens" by Robin Hansen from the 1987 edition of Homespun Handknit. I like the pattern (this is the third pair I've made) and usually make it without the loops of yarn inside. And, yes, I did just have enough yarn!

Here's my "ninja" mitten man--he says they are ninja mittens because it's hard to make a fist when he has them on, so his hands are in ninja form.

Matchless

2011-11-11T15:01:00.001-05:00

It followed me home, Mom. Can I keep it? Please?

My Mother-in-Law tells the story of watching my husband half carry, half drag a cat up the walk and into the house. He may have been four or five. Once the cat was inside, he turned to his mom and said, "It followed me home. Can I keep it?"

Well, I went to my local weaving store and test drove a Matchless. Then I placed an order for one. Then I drove out to pick up the wheel. "It followed me home." I think I'll keep it!

Cotton Intensive

2011-11-11T14:58:00.001-05:00

This is my last set of samples for the cotton presentation next week. The lower three samples are plain weave; the upper three are twills (it's hard to see that in this photo). Each sample has a different thread density or sett. My favorite? Upper right--it's the twill at the closest sett (36 epi for 10/2 cotton). I love how it shows the warp colors!

Wool Preparation for Spinning

2011-11-07T09:06:00.001-05:00

Preparing wool for spinning

This started out as an experiment to see how well I liked Judith Mackenzie McCuin's methods for washing fleece (from Teach Yourself Visually Handspinning). It turned out to be an exercise in what not to do with fibers of multiple lengths!

The wool is from a sheep named "Lambert". I believe he was a Cotswold lamb. His wool, being just a lamb, has a short staple--about 2" long--and there are lots of shorter bits in the fleece.

After soaking and washing the wool per Judith's technique, I let it dry and then started to prepare it for spinning.

Here is what you should NOT do with a fleece like this: Don't put it through the drumcarder and expect a nice, smooth, fluffy batt. What I got was a very textured batt. The little pieces didn't get carded smooth. I think there were just too short to get caught properly on the teeth.

I ended up taking the very textured batts and combing them with my Louet mini combs. There was a lot of waste, but the resulting fiber is smooth and looks like it will spin well. It doesn't have much luster, but at least it is not full of bumps and unexpected stuff.

In the photo, counter clockwise starting at the bottom right corner are (1) drumcarded batts, (2)-in the yellow tub--combed fiber, and (3) -to the upper left--the waste from combing the drumcarded batts.

I think I learned a lesson. Don't try to card a mix of fiber lengths and expect a smooth result. (This might be a great technique for making a textured yarn!)

Conner Prairie Textile Studio

2011-11-07T08:41:00.000-05:00

Glimakra loom at Conner Prairie

I have been doing some new things lately. I started volunteering at the Conner Prairie Textile Studio. This isn't one of the areas open to the public, but rather a building tucked off to one side of the property and filled to the gills with looms, spinning wheels, quilting frames, etc.

I just finished weaving some linen yardage, intended for towels, on a Glimakra loom. Compared to my Baby Wolf this loom is huge! It has been a treat to learn to weave on it, though!

The toweling is in 20/2 linen and is a 2-2 twill/basket weave pattern.

Linen toweling --2/2 twill & basket weave

Handspun Alpaca Lace Scarfette

2011-10-11T20:37:00.000-04:00

blocking the scarfette

After a few weeks of work, most recently while listening to "My Antonia" by Willa Cather, the last of my raw alpaca fibers were transformed into yarn. Last year I had processed the better part of a grocery sack of fiber into yarn and made scarves for a friend. She owns the alpacas and (gasp!) just had the fiber languishing in her living room! Most of that fiber was prepared with a dog comb or my mini combs (it's been long enough that I don't remember which!) and this fiber was the stuff that was too short from that original processing. I carded this and made a sport-weight two-ply yarn.

Once the yarn was spun & wet finished, I started knitting lace. The first pattern I tried had four or five pattern rows. By row three or four I had made a mistake, and found a one-pattern-row lace. Whew. I can do one row of lace patterning!

Alpaca scarfette

Here it is, carded, spun, knit, blocked and ready to be worn. The little pin is a handcarved do-dad that I whittled just to have something to hold the scarf together. Alpaca is a wonderful fiber--so soft!

Applesauce Spoons

2011-10-09T15:52:00.000-04:00

It's applesauce season at my house. Each year we make as much applesauce as we can. We love to eat the stuff!

The last few years as we have stirred the gloriously hot, sweet applesauce we have burned our fingers. We have learned to use the glass lids to our big pots as face shields so the applesauce volcanoes don't get us, but with our little spoons we have not been able to protect our fingers.

New spoons and old spoons together.

Check out our new applesauce spoons! These new spoons are bamboo, just like the other spoons we like, but are at least 8" longer. They work wonderfully! Lots of leverage for stirring the full apple pots plus lots of extra,outside-of-the-pot space to hold the spoon.

Hooray for wonderful utensils! (And for a wonderful Ace Hardware store that stocks "oddities" like these!)

September Quilt Squares

2011-09-29T13:33:00.000-04:00

September is almost done, but I did it! I got my three quilt squares cut out and sewn together. The two on the left are made the way the pattern is written. The one on the right is my error. I sewed it wrong and decided I liked it enough to leave it the way it is.

There are a few squares like this one "odd" one that I think will help personalize these quilts. I need a way to distinguish between the three quilts, and I think my children will appreciate having unique things in their quilts.

I am again thinking about when I will finish these and give them to my children. By December all the squares should be done, but then the sashing and quilting will need to happen. The kids may not get these this year!

Scarf Contest

2011-09-24T15:16:00.000-04:00

The Indiana Sheep Association held a scarf contest in conjunction with their recent meeting.

As judge for the event, I got to handle the scarves. It's one of the things a fiber addict loves to do--touch the fibers!

There were three categories: knit scarves, crocheted scarves, and 100% Indiana wool scarves.

Picking Wool-Cotswold Lamb

2011-09-22T14:57:00.001-04:00

Most people know that wool doesn't grow on a plant and that to harvest wool it must be sheared from the sheep. However, after the sheep has been sheared and the wool washed, it helps to "pick" the wool --essentially tease the locks of fibers open--to make it easier to card or comb.

This is wool from a Cotswold lamb sheared in 2006 and washed this last week.

The first half or so of the fibers were easy. I spent about an hour on my back porch picking open these locks.

The unpicked locks are on the right.

My piles are getting bigger. Unpicked locks on the right; a small pile of very short wool and trash right next to it near the top of the newspaper. The picked locks pile is growing. Off to the left are piles of locks that need more washing.

Oh do my shoulders ache. The original pile was just under 4 ounces. Will it ever be done?

And, finally, from one unpicked pile to three piles--trash on the right, picked locks in the middle, and locks that need more washing on the left.

Start to finish required approximately 3 hours of work.

On & Off the Loom

2011-09-18T13:35:00.001-04:00

This little roll of fabric just came off the loom yesterday. The bulk of it is 10/2 cotton, but the two sections with multicolored stripes are 100% wool (merino, I think!). I wove and cut off a sample from this warp and the wool shrank beautifully creating soft ruffles of the cotton. I have yet to wash these. One scarf is the plaid you see here. The other is all the darker red/magenta in the weft.

The weave structure is plain weave for most of the width and basket weave for the wool stripes.

This card represents one of the many little steps I hope to take in the next few months. I have begun working on the Handweaving Guild of America's "Certificate of Excellence in Handspinning" (aka COE or COE-H).

worsted spinning on left; woolen on right.

The COE requires 40 skeins of handspun and each skein is to be labeled with a card that specifies, among other things, the "type of spinning". I tend to spin a "semi-worsted" style of yarn and not think about spinning type much, so I sat down and read some reference books about types of spinning and then got to work on spinning some "worsted" yarn and then some "woolen" yarn.

I used some commercially prepared Romney wool roving and first combed some of it with my single row mini combs. The combed wool was pulled through a diz (holes punched in an old yogurt lid!) and pulled into a prepared top. The resulting yarn is smooth and dense and has a nice sheen to it. Next I took the short bits from the combing process and carded them with my cotton cards. After one or two passes on the cards, I rolled the wool into a fluffy rolag and began to spin with a long draw and attenuated the fibers to a narrow yarn. The result, a poofy, slightly irregular yarn (something for me to work on!) that has more loft than the worsted yarn and much less sheen.

Learning is so cool!

Deflected Doubleweave

2011-09-11T19:02:00.000-04:00

This is one of those projects that surprised me. I have had some worsted weight handspun yarns for a while and have been trying to come up with a way to use them. One is a light pink and the other a dark. The trick is that they are both irregular--and some of the dark spots in the light pink are very similar to the light spots in the dark pink. Argh!

I had tried to use these in a shadow weave, but that didn't fly. Looking through my Handwoven Magazines, I came across the "black & white" issue (J/F 2007) and realized that I could try some of these scarves. The deflected double weave scarves by Madelyn Van Der Hoogt and Stephanie Meisel caught my eye. They both use blocks of color (less of a chance for me to loose track of which thread is light and which is dark) and have nice geometric patterns.

I went with Madelyn's pattern, p.68-71, and have now woven my first bit of deflected double weave. Is it perfect, awesome, exactly what I wanted? ....no.... But it is a GREAT sample and a good introduction to deflected doubleweave.

And, I remember thinking that I would "never" weave one of these black and white pieces! Dear me! This isn't the first time this has happened!

I have two more skeins of yarn like this, but in greens....I wonder what they will become.

Dye Day

2011-09-04T21:29:00.002-04:00

Here are my solar dye pots on the front walk to my home. The weather has been hot (90 F) and sunny. Perfect for dyeing.

The colors are turkey red, black, yellow, two little pots of greens, brillant blue, and a big pot of green.

And, just so I remember, this dyeing day was the day we took our Heart Kitty to the shelter to be put down. He was not well, but it's still hard to let him go.

August Quilt Blocks

2011-08-18T14:32:00.002-04:00

Here are my quilt blocks for August. I think they design is called "Martha's Star". I tried two color combinations, one with a green & white center and one with red & white. I prefer the green & white, but am amazed at the change of focus that comes with changing the colors.

This is the stitch length knob for my sewing machine. I took a picture of it to remind me to look at it! These blocks were all sewn with the longest stitch length-4! I usually sew blocks with a 3 or 3.5 stitch length.

T-shirt neck Ribbing Removal

2011-08-13T15:47:00.003-04:00

My great aunt loves t-shirts, but hates the ribbing around the neck. It used to be that she would take her shirts to a seamstress who would do the work for her. This week she brought her new shirt to me.

In theory, I knew that this job could be done. --Remove the ribbing. Turn the neck fabric under twice and sew.--But, I had never done this before and I was full of trepidation! After all, this was my great aunt's recorder orchestra t-shirt and I didn't want to mess it up!

A quick google search was unfruitful. Lots of people showed how to add a contrasting neck after removing the ribbing, but I didn't find any that just turned the t-shirt fabric under.

Out came one of my old and almost dead t-shirt--the '93-'94 MHC physics t-shirt that features "Fred the scary grad student" on the back. I used it as my test. I was pleased to see that there was enough stretch in the shirt fabric that the job was pretty straight forward. I took a deep breath and proceeded to cut and sew my aunt's shirt. And it worked! Now to get it back to her so she can wear it! :)

The details: I cut the ribbing off close to the stitching on the back of the neck. At the front center I cut ~3/8" below the lowest line of stitching and curved it to meet the cut at the back. I then used pins to mark the fold line, 3/8" from the cut edge, and ironed the fold. From the inside, I made the second fold to hide the cut edge and pinned it roughly every inch or inch and a half. The blind-stitch foot with its center vertical part made it easy to keep the stitching straight. I used a long stitch--3.5-- on my wonderful, old elna supermatic.

And, I finished the hat for my son. I think that his choice of using the dark green and variegated green yarns in an alternating pattern worked great! I love how these worsted weight yarns knit up so quickly! This hat was on and off the needles in less than a week. That is amazingly fast compared to the months of sock knitting for my husband's size 13 feet!

A little bit of this...

2011-08-09T21:16:00.002-04:00

A little bit of this...a little bit of that...

One of the discussion groups I follow recently touched on the topic of French Spindles. A few youtube videos later and I went off and whittled myself a spindle. This particular spindle is very light weight and doesn't spin very well. Maybe I should invest in better tools!

With my husband's socks finished, I have started (and finished) some other knitting projects. This one, in worsted weight acrylic, went on and off the needles last week. It's a "slouch" hat for my oldest daughter. She loves yellow. She hates wool. I had this yarn in my stash--it's leftover from my niece's Harry Potter scarf years ago!--viola! One hat ready for winter!

Here's the hat on my head. I think it looks better on my daughter, but she was already in bed by the time I took this photo!

And here's the next hat. This one is a simple k3, p2 ribbed hat for my son. The neat thing is his choice of colors. He told me he wanted a turquoise colored hat. I had him point to things that were in the right color range and then went to my stash to see what I could find. After a few false starts, he chose this very dark green and very light variegated green. When I started talking about how to use the yarns, ie. what kind of striping he wanted in the hat, he very clearly told me how he wanted the two colors woven together one after the other. I was skeptical, but knit a little color swatch. It looked great! Now the hat is underway! Hooray!

Creativity Exercise

2011-07-27T20:58:00.004-04:00

Robin at Rurification posted a creativity exercise. Find 10 beautiful things in your home. Photograph them or describe them.

Here's a mosaic of my ten things for tonight:
A photo of my grandparents in their old age. A peach from my friend's tree.

Grainlines on the faux floor. Oregano blooms salvaged from today's trimming by my five year old.

A print of a woman sheaving (?) grain in a field. A toy dino--check out the details!

Paintbrushes--indicators of a job now done. Etched glass.

A tiny turtle that used to sit in my great aunt's office. Now it cuddles up with one of my plants. Some clay creations from my son.

Sometimes the trick of looking for beauty is seeing what is already here. Thanks Robin!

Miscellaneous Collection of Stuff

2011-07-26T20:25:00.002-04:00

My great aunts are wonderful. Every time one of them travels this way by car I receive gifts. This time, I got a new (to me) sewing desk and a new (to me) old sewing machine. Here's the new desk all set up. It looks nice at this point.

This photo is of my old desk. The blue blob is covering my sewing machine to protect it from the lint from the wool yarn I've been rewinding. The pile of stuff to the left of the machine--see the pink fabric?--well, that's my pile of stuff. It's something of an archeological monument....the deeper you dig, you unearth projects from further back in time. Periodically, I do try and clean my desk. It's pretty bad right now. The wooden structure in front of the desk is one of my spinning wheels. It's only there because I was setting up the new desk and needed space to move.

Even though my sewing desk is piled high with past projects, I managed to sew my three quilt squares for July. Again, I am amazed at how quickly these blocks with "big" pieces go together.

And here's a piece of weaving. It's a small piece, only 2" wide, but I think it's pretty cool.

It is a combination of balanced plain weave, huck lace and warp faced weaving. It's like weaving an inkle band in the middle of a bit of lace.

I came across the idea in a collection of old weaving newsletters with swatches. I bought the papers at The Fiber Event a few years ago. Every now and then I pull out the binder where I store them and peruse the samples. I love having woven samples to examine! My mind hasn't quite figured out the jump from 2D drafts to 3D fabrics, and samples really help.

The inspiration for this piece was from "Pinellas Weaving News, January 18, 1969, page 3. The source cited is a "Weavers Seminar at Amherst, Mass., 1967 by Grace C. Reed, weaving teacher and co-designer of Macomber Looms" and the yardage was woven by Eva L.E. Quinn. The original piece won Best in Show at the Pinellas County Fair in 1968.

I ran into a few tension issues with this piece--the warp faced band in the center builds a ridge on the front beam, which lowers the tension on the other areas of the fabric. Next time I'll have to put some sort of filler on the front beam to help even out the tension.

Weave Structure--Cannele

2011-06-16T19:51:00.003-04:00

Last year in the "Fab Four" workshop with Robyn Spady I was introduced to the weave structure "cannele". On four shafts it is a plain weave fabric with warp and weft floats, much like the photo to the left. This year, in Charka 201 with Eileen Hallman, Eileen suggested trying a cannele weave structure with a twill background (for improved drape). My hope is to use some of my handspun cottons to weave a fabric that I can use for a top of some sort. Cannele is a reasonable option for showcasing a special yarn without having to use tons of it!

Eileen shared a 10 or 12 shaft cannele draft with me and I went to work to modify it for my 8 shaft loom. After lots of tweaking, I got a draft that I liked (after weaving my sample I can laugh at some of the mistakes in my draft...I should have done a short sampler earlier in the drafting process!) I finally put on a short and narrow warp--two yards long, 5-6" on loom. I used 10/2 cotton (unmercerized) as the main warp with a handspun 2-ply pinkish/red cotton as the warp float yarn.

Here are a few of the things I tried:
(at the top) 10/2 cotton weft with wool/tencel weft floats. I like the thicker yarn for the weft floats

After a while I discovered that I didn't have to weave the weft floats. Here is a piece with the pinkish/red warp float yarn used as weft. No weft floats.

I tried a couple of different colors of 10/2 cotton as weft. Then I tried some handspun cotton singles as weft. This single was from a two color roving that we used in Eileen's class to practice using our spinning to make color changes. The thin singles make the fabric seem so much softer than the commercial 10/2. I wonder if this will change after wet finishing?

June Quilt Block

2011-06-03T14:50:00.003-04:00

Here's the quilt block for June. I love how quickly these smaller blocks with big sub-blocks can go together!

Six times 3 blocks down; six times 3 blocks to go!

Silk Hankies

2011-05-27T12:44:00.003-04:00

I discovered some silk hankies at The Fiber Event this year and decided that it was time to learn to play with this amazing form of silk.

The hankies are roughly the size of a hankerchief--10"x10" and consist of many layers of silk cocoons that have been stretched on a frame.

Each gossamer layer of silk can be separated from the rest of the hankies, stretched and used as an unspun yarn or be spun.

To start, I peel off one layer of silk hanky, poke a hole in the center and then start to stretch the hole to make it larger.

Soon, I have a large circle of silk. These fiber can be pulled pretty fine. I pulled mine a little more than what I show in the photo.

After attenuating the fibers to the desired thickness, I break the circle open and wind the fibers into little nests that are ready to use for knitting or spinning.

I love the way the colors blend as the hankies are stretched!

May Quilt Block

2011-05-27T12:42:00.003-04:00

Here's May's quilt block for my three Christmas quilts. All three are identical this time.

Dye Discharge

2011-05-27T12:28:00.004-04:00

I saw some beautiful scarves last week that had been woven from a warp dipped in bleach. It lead to some experiments here at home to see if I could do some dye discharge with a cone of cotton yarn.

And the results are in.

Bleach, followed with a peroxide bath to neutralize the process, works great at removing the "mint" green dye from this yarn.

From left to right across the page the samples are:
(1) soaked in water --this was my standard. Soaking it in water let me know that the dye didn't bleed.

(2) soaked in a 50/50 bleach/water solution.
(3) soaked in a 75/25 bleach/water solution.
(4) soaked in a cream of tartar solution. This idea came up at our guild meeting. I used 1 tsp of cream of tartar in 120 mL of water.
(5) soaked in 3% hydrogen peroxide.

The only changes to the color were seen in the samples that were in the bleach. There was no perceptible difference in effectiveness between the two bleach solutions.

A note about neutralizing: While searching for information on dye discharging, I came across Paula Burch's site "All About Hand Dyeing". She has lots of great information there, including a bit about neutralizing bleach. From what Paula presents, bleach does not stop chewing on the textile with a water rinse. It needs something to stop the reaction. Hence the neutralizing dip in the hydrogen peroxide. I haven't done enough with bleach and textiles to know how critical it is to do this step. But, I don't want my textiles falling apart on me either!

Color and Beads

2011-05-17T20:38:00.004-04:00

Working with Laura Bryant's "A Fiber Artist's Guide to Color" I need to work on sorting colors by weight. I tried this recently with sewing thread. Here is another take using perler beads. (What can you say when your little one wants you to play with her? You say "yes" and make the play an exercise with color! :)

To the left is my finished sorting. The heavy colors are on the left; the light colors on the right.

I must admit that I used the camera as a crutch for this exercise. I took black & white photos of my work at various stages, looking through the lens of the camera to see which bead colors were registering closer to black and therefore "heavier".

Here is the purple board with only black beads on it. There are some very dark beads on the lid/bead tray, but they are not black. I think they are mostly dark brown, grey, and dark purple.

Here is the purple board with lots of beads on it. At one point I discovered that I had too many "heavy" colors on the board and took out three rows of beads and scooted the lighter colors to the left. I don't remember if that was before or after this photo.

This arrangement of colors was just for play. The colors are still in a heavy (left edge) to light (right edge) order, but I have grouped them so that the beads of each hue are together. I like the colors all mixed together, as in my first photo, better.

I'm still not sure where I will take this color work. I'm unsure of how it translates to weaving. --It's nice to have more to learn! :)

Color!

2011-05-17T20:18:00.005-04:00

My family got me some videos for Mother's Day. I've been contemplating purchasing Laura Bryant's video for some time now. It was easy to put it on the list of things I wanted for Mother's Day.

The Deb Menz video came out just a short time before Mother's Day. It was a complete and utter "drool! I'd like that!" entry on my list.

And now, they are both in my library.

I watched some of Laura Bryant's video for the second time today. She spends a lot of time explain how to group yarns by color "weight". This is similar to value with grey scale, but a little more involved. The trick is that I'm still trying to grasp how to use the weight-grouped yarns most effectively. Laura talks about this in the video, I just haven't gotten the key points clear in my head yet. One of the challenges seems to be whether the goal is a color effect or a structure effect. The two things require different uses of the yarns. (I think I need to go watch the video again!)

Color Works for Spinners is by Deb Menz and I loved it! I have had a copy of her book Color in Spinning for a few years and enjoy it. This video is like a live action addendum to the book. Deb is fun to listen to, she is encouraging, and she blends fiber to create amazing colors. It has been very hard to not drag out the drum carder! I want to blend colors! I want to make pretty batts!

I'm enjoying my new videos!

Handwoven Baby Blanket

2011-05-17T19:21:00.005-04:00

A friend is expecting a baby any day now. I took some yardage that I had woven last year and sewed it into a blanket.

My fears of making mistakes with my handwoven fabric resurfaced. It took me a few days to decide that I really could piece my handwovens together!

There were a few new-to-me tricks--mostly flat felled seams--so I'll show you some pictures of the process.

First off, this is how I marked, sewed, and cut my yardage. The chalk line was the finished size of the piece. I sewed a small zig-zag stitch on each side of the chalk line, then cut the piece.

The flat felled seams are a way of enclosing the raw edges. With right sides together, I sewed a ~5/8" seam. I trimmed the white side of the seam allowance to ~1/4", turned the brown side of the seam allowance under 1/4", then folded the brown (folded) edge over the white (trimmed) edge.

From the back side (where I could see the folded seam allowance) I stitched the folded edge of the brown seam allowance. No more raw edges!

Just a note: I was uncomfortable using a new technique on my handwoven fabrics, so I made a mini blanket to test things out. I piece the nine sections into three strips of three, then connected the strips of three to make the nine square blanket. I discovered that the flat felled seams the the strips of three needed to be offset or else they got too bulky to turn. Check out the direction of the flat felled seams where the white square and the black square meet. The are folded opposite directions.

Also, I didn't like the way my binding worked. I tried to use the "fold it in half, sew to blanket, fold over and handsew to the other side of blanket" technique. (Can you tell I'm not really a sew-er? I'm just a wanna-be!) The binding (same fabric as the solid brown corner squares) was not wide enough to do that easily. It was feeling stiff like piping and was a bear to handle. I got brave. I turned on all my lights and made use of a sunny morning and ripped out the binding seam! It was a bit of a challenge. My brown thread matched the brown fabric really well! But, I succeeded and only needed the magnifying glass a few times. The final binding was machine sewn on one side, folded over, seam allowance tucked up and attached by hand.

The hand of the blanket is wonderful. It's just right for a simple summer cover for a new little one!

Rep Weave Sampler

2011-05-17T19:04:00.004-04:00

My rep weave sampler has been off the loom and wet finished. Here is a collection of photos from the piece.

This section of the piece has a bumpy white yarn octupled (is that a word? Eight strands used together). Unfortunately, the bumps poke through the warp yarns. I've been calling this segment "patriotic"--red, white, & blue.

I wound the warp from multiple balls of knitting yarn and I didn't stop to check the dye lots. Can you see the dark-light-dark-light stripes of blue? I am used to using large cones of yarn for my weaving. I forgot that smaller balls of yarn have dye lots. I hope this will help me remember to check next time!

This is a similar pattern to the first photo. The red side is up (as opposed to the blue in the first photo). The thick weft in this section is four strands of the dark blue warp yarn. The thin weft in all of the piece is a fine (20/2 ish) dark blue mystery yarn.

For a first piece in a new structure, this one worked just fine, even with all its challenges!

Silk Spinning

2011-05-17T18:42:00.004-04:00

It all started with a trip to visit family in Bloomington. Of course, it's not wise to go on a trip without checking to see if there will be fiber shops in the vicinity! Yarns Unlimited had fibers dyed by Robin Edmundson in both silk and cotton. This is the silk roving I purchased. The colors are brilliant. The fiber was so soft.

The colors spun up beautifully! I don't usually spin silk--cotton & Romney wool are my staples--but it was easy to adjust to my spinning to work with the silk. When I first learned to spin, tussah silk was recommended as having more tooth than other silks and being easier to spin. I didn't notice this silk as being particularly slippery. I don't know what variety of silk it is, but it was great to spin!

Here's the final three-ply yarn. I used the "Navajo"/chain plying method to keep the colors as distinct as possible.

Now the hard part: how am I going to use this pretty yarn?

Rep Warp Challenges

2011-05-03T14:15:00.002-04:00

This poor photograph is of the page in my notebook that was the start of my errors in my first ever bit of rep weaving. I was planning on doing a simple 4-shaft sampler by Rosalie Neilson. I calculated the number of ends necessary and then the warp yardage required for a three yard warp.

Then I turned the page, did some more work, and that night returned to wind my warp.

Unfortunately, I used the "warp yardage required" number and wound 3x the number of ends I needed! Arrgh! It only goes to show you that late at night is NOT a good time for me to work! Arrgh!

On the positive side, making mistakes like this is good. I spent more time in weaving texts and online to figure out how rep works, and now I'm weaving a pretty piece that I wouldn't have tried otherwise!

This is a rep pattern from Strickler (#309) with a modification to the borders. My heavy weft is an 8-ply yarn that I wound together from a yarn in my stash. It's an odd, boucle-esq yarn and some of the loops poke up through the warp. I'm pretending that it's ok and am calling the piece "red, white, & blue". My next sample on this warp will be with smooth yarns.

And just so I don't forget: There were challenges getting this warp wound on the back beam. The warp advanced so slowly through the lease sticks! At first I thought it was due to the high density of threads since this is a rep warp (24 epi....the yarn measured 14 wpi).

However, that wasn't the case. Check out the angle of the lease sticks relative to each other. I tied the lease sticks to the loom by wrapping the tie around both sticks. The right side of the sticks are close together and slightly pinching the warp threads. I'm calling it the "chopsticks effect". Deep sigh. I have learned another thing to avoid!

Basket Weaving & Quilting Progress

2011-04-30T14:59:00.003-04:00

My husband made a "shakuhachi" for his instrument building class (it's a recorder-like flute...in the photo he's playing an tenor recorder). Two days before he presented his instrument to the class, he commented that the shakuhachi is traditionally played with a basket over the head, effectively isolating the player from the outside world. He then suggested that a pillow case would be an ok substitute, and I cringed. So, I offered to make him a basket instead.

I have made two baskets in my life (previous to this). Both of them are a modification of a pattern by Elaine Webbeking from the March/April 1994 issue of Handwoven. For my first attempt at this big basket, I used 3.5" wide strips of paper grocery bags. The basket turned out to be too small for the end use.

The second attempt at a big basket was done with 3.5" wide strips of unprinted newsprint. The strips were 1.5x as long as the paper bag strips and we used 8 strips per side. My husband cut and folded all the strips. I didn't have enough hand strength to fold a second basket worth of strips in one day! (It's tiring!) Once the strips were all folded we wove the basket together and viola! One shakuhachi basket ready for use. (And he apparently stole the show when he did his presentation! The basket and instrument are on display this week at Wabash College along with all the other instruments created for the course.)

Here's a shot of the weaving in process. The newsprint does not have as much structural strength as the brown paper bags. The finished basket does stand like a basket should and is able to support its own weight, it's just more floppy than the brown paper bag version.

Here's the brown paper bag version. It's big enough to fit over my head. Right now it is holding the next warp for my loom.

And, last, but not least, the April installment of my quilt project. This square is called "Churn Dash" and I did three variations on the simple pattern--one all green, one all red, and one red & green. This simple nine square block, where each square is made of a maximum of two pieces, went together so much faster than last month's blocks where there were 16 'half-square triangle' squares per block.

On and Off Again

2011-04-22T20:24:00.002-04:00

I have a trio of items that have been "on" and "off" again. Two have been on and off the loom; one has been on and off the spindle.

The spindle project was an ounce of shetland wool from Fall Creek Farm. It was easy to spin and even easier to ply. Now I have to decide how I am going to use~60 yards of shetland wool 2-ply.

The two weaving projects are in preparation for a presentation that I will be doing for the Weaving Indiana Guild in November. Donna H. and I are going to focus on cotton for our "fiber intensive". The top collection (dark blue with light blue stripes) is 10/2 cotton in a balanced plain weave. I wove three pieces and then did different finishing treatments on them. It is easy for me to distinguish between the unwashed sample and the other two, but the difference between the handwashed and the machine washed piece is not so obvious.

The second woven set is a collection of pieces woven with Sugar 'n Cream, a 4-ply worsted weight knitting yarn. The yarn was a "hand-me-over" from my great aunt (great story here...my craft room is full and overflowing. Why does it never get emptied out? Because my friends and relatives all know that I use "stuff". I do occasionally say "no", but more often than not, I encourage the odd & random replenishing of my stash!) . I hadn't used this yarn for weaving before, but it was just the right sort of thing to try! I started by measuring the wraps per inch, then divided by 2 to get an estimate of the "ideal" sett (7 epi) for tabby. Then I ran through a series of calculations to determine the size of the final piece if I sett it wider (4 epi) and closer (9 epi). I warped the loom and rethreaded the reed for each sett. The changes in the fabric are phenomenal!

Here are two of the pieces: 4 epi & 6 epi. Can you guess which is which?

(6 epi)

(4 epi)

And, just because I played around with the twill, here is a two color twill (left edge of photo), a single color twill (middle), and a tabby with a fine weft all at 9 epi. The warp is the same two color warp from above.

When the student is ready...

2011-04-09T18:07:00.004-04:00

My children aren't much interested in my fiber pursuits. It's just one of those things that "mom does". So this week when we stopped in at a friends' weaving classroom, I was not at all surprised that my two youngest asked to go play outside the room.

The oldest (10) chose to hang out with me and my friend. She is growing up....it was fun to see her hanging out with the grownups!

And, as a result of the conversation of the grownups, my ten year old chose to weave a placemat! I was thrilled!

She helped me warp the Emilia rigid heddle loom ("This takes a long time, Mom"); she helped tear the fabric into strips; and she wove the entire placemat ("My arms are tired."). Afterwards, she helped me wet finish the piece and sew the headers.

And, you should have seen my friend's face when she received the placemat! It was a sweet moment.

[And the rest of the quote from the title..."When the student is ready, a teacher will appear."]

Color Exercises

2011-04-07T13:30:00.004-04:00

Interweave Press recently release the DVD "A Fiber Artist's Guide to Color" with Laura Bryant. They've posted a teaser on their site (http://www.interweavestore.com/Weaving/DVDs-Videos/A-Fiber-Artists-Guide-to-Color-DVD.html).

It's a good teaser. I watched it and was really excited about it. But, I'm not sure yet about fiber art instruction via videos. It turns out I love books. I devour books. I slurp them up and then go back and nibble on the good parts. And the good parts change from day to day or month to month.

After I got excited about this video, I started some research. Who is Laura Bryant? What else has she made/produced/written? It turns out that she is a fiber artist--she weaves & knits & dyes--and one of her specialties is color. My library is part of a fantastic interlibrary loan system. Today I picked up two of Laura's books "The Yarn Stash Workbook" and "Knitting with Novelty Yarns" (by Laura & Barry Klein). Page 6 of the workbook has photos similar to the dvd trailer. She discusses taking a crazy mix of color and making some order out of it.

So, I tried it.

I have a collection of my grandmother's sewing thread (I use it...slowly, but I use it). Here is a random tray of yarns:

Then, I tried getting all the light colors to the left and all the "heavy" (dark) colors to the right:

I realized that I was tending to group the threads by color as well as light/heavy, so I intentionally tried to group them in lines of color.

It was a good exercise. Laura comments, "Artists spend years training their eyes to detect fine nuances in weight between colors..." I'm not trained yet, but I'm getting started! :)

Seed Paper

2011-03-27T15:21:00.003-04:00

In the middle of this paper making project, the phone rang. It was my great-aunt. "What are you doing?" she asked. "Making paper" was my reply. There was a pause at the other end of the line. "I'm crazy...I know" I commented, and we both laughed.

The closeup photo of blue-grey paper shows the little specks of seeds, parsley seeds, that I've put in the paper.

Assuming that the paper dries well (and the seeds don't sprout prematurely), I'll use it for thank you notes for the Master Gardeners' Garden Show that just finished.

Here are shots of the tools and results from my first foray into papermaking:
(tutorial from Gracious Rain)

I filled the blender ~2/3 full with paper from my shredder basket, added a bit (~1/4 C.) of blue lint from my drier, and filled the blender with water.

I poured the resulting oatmeal-like slurry into a rectangular plastic tub and used the plastic needlepoint canvas as a screen to create the paper. One screen was used to collect the pulp; the other was placed on top to help squeeze out some of the water.

The wet paper was laid on a hand towel, the canvas screen removed, and was allowed to dry. Technically, it is still drying. Maybe by bedtime I can take flip the papers over to allow the bottom side to dry better...maybe I can get them off the wet towel too.

Finishing

2011-03-11T21:49:00.003-05:00

Well, some of my things are done. The hankerchiefs have all been hemmed and pressed. They are very pretty. A friend thought they were dinner napkins...so , perhaps they are a bit heavy for "real" hankies, but I still like them.

Here's some of the detail from the center.

And, it took me a few days, but I finally wound the plied dusty rose yarns off the bobbins for storage. I don't know what I'm going to do with them (any suggestions?). The recent Spin-Off magazine had a ruffled scarf in it that looked easy to knit. I could do a scarf in each color and have them be "sister scarves". Don't hold your breath on that!

The dark and medium shades are barely distinguishable (dark is the outer 1/2" of the top ball; medium the inner portion of the top ball. The bottom ball is all light.).

Spoiled (or Multi-Shuttle Weaves are Slow)

2011-03-09T11:26:00.004-05:00

I'm spoiled. I've been weaving lots of single shuttle plainweave recently and I love how fast it weaves.

Now, I'm weaving multi-shuttle weaves. Progress. Is. Very. Slow.

My crackle scarf (oh, dear! I didn't get the test warp samples posted!...Well, I'm weaving a scarf with 8/2 tencel for a Weaving Indiana guild project. Crackle is a new weaving structure for me. It is a cousin to overshot and summer & winter. It uses both a pattern and a tabby weft.)

I am pleased with the way the scarf turned out. In fact, it is not only visually pleasing, but texturally as well. The crackle gives the fabric areas of plain weave plus blocks of various twills. The different areas feel different! I love it!

Unfortunately, I find two shuttle weaving a bit slow. It's not horrible, but slow, and I had to pay attention to keep track of my place in the pattern and the need to use the tabby picks.

Now for the really slow part. My plan is to do another scarf in the same yarns with a clasped weft technique using three colors. This may technically be tapestry weaving, but I still think of it as clasped weft. I tried it on my test warp. I know it can be done.

But, it takes so long!!!

I'm not sure if I can use this technique for a 60" scarf!

The mid-section of this photo show the "clasped weft" weaving (teal on the left, pale green in the middle, black on the right).

The upper section is a plain weave inlay technique where the pale green weft is laid in on top of the background tabby shot (I'm alternating black & teal). The good news is that the green can be seen from both sides of the piece. The bad news is that the black weft really tones down the green.

I may be un-weaving all this by tomorrow morning and doing something else! I can't go this slow--not today!

Quilting Frame to Warping Reel

2011-02-28T17:25:00.004-05:00

**This post is very late. The work shown here was done in 2008. I went searching for a post about it, and discovered I never wrote one. Dooh!**

Years ago, my mom gave me an old quilting stand with a hoop.

I do quilt, and, until recently, only did handquilting. However, I have never used this hoop and stand for quilting.

Rather, I turned the stand into a home made warping reel!

The ends of the reel are plywood triangles with their corners cut off and notched to hold a slender piece of wood (~1" x 3/8"). A steel rod goes through the center of each plywood triangle and rests on the notches in the stand that originally held the support bolts for the hoop.

Three dowels stick out on the right to make a warping cross. They are in a piece of 2x2 that has been grooved to rest on the plywood. On the left, there are holes drilled in the 1x3/8 boards for dowels for the end of the warp.

The strings around the reel in the photo are two separate warp measuring strings. I use the light colored one for warps 4 yds or less; the blue for longer warps. I think I can wind up to a 7 yd warp on this reel (it has been a while since I have wound a warp that long...I tend to do short warps).

The reel was constructed in October or November of 2008. It has seen almost all my warps since it was made. It works great for me!

A word of thanks--my husband is the woodworker at our house. I drew up the plans and he made them a reality. Many thanks for this and other projects!

Updates

2011-02-15T16:38:00.002-05:00

From the loom: "sunburst" in 20/2 tencel (warp & weft), 45 epi. I love how this is weaving! I wrote out the threading by shaft number because my printout was too small to easily read. I've been using for my treadling sequence too --held to my floor lamp by a magnet! The design is from Twill Thrills p.56.

From the dye pot: This is Romney wool roving dyed "dusty rose". It is a beautiful color, one of my favorites! The roving was only briefly wet prior to entering the dye pot and irregular dye take-up resulted. I've separated the roving into dark, medium, and light bundles and am aiming to spin a variegated yarn--dark at one end, light at the other.

The first two colors (dark on top, medium on bottom) have been spun. Light is next.

And from the sewing room: This is my latest project--a duct tape dress form. I have high hopes of sewing with my handwoven cloth. I also happen to have huge fears and feelings of inadequacy about my ability to turn cloth into clothing for myself. I believe in conquering fears by working on the underlying skills needed...so I read & skimmed Warch's "Illustrated Guide to Sewing" yesterday afternoon. The book belonged to my grandmother who was an amazing woman and could work some amazing tricks with cloth. Then I stumbled upon "Vintage Sewing Info" and read "Modern Pattern Design" by Pepin (c. circa 1942).

The two things combined made it clear that I need to experiment with line and drape...and it would be great if I could do this at small scale. (Warch encourages the creation of a mini-dress to practice skills without using great expanses of cloth.)

The duct tape dress form was made following the directions here. Basically, plastic bags were worn like a dress and layers of duct tape were carefully placed over that. It took almost two hours, start to finish, for the taping. It took less than two rolls of 60 yd heavy-duty duct tape. Right now it is hanging on a hanger with a padded cardboard insert across the shoulders. I would like to put it on a stand, but this works for now.

The next thing I would like to do is make a miniature version of this dress form. I'm thinking that 1/4 scale would be good (~16" doll size). I found a site that makes dress forms for dolls. I'd love to have one like that for me! If nothing else, I'll be taking measurements from my duct tape form and approximating "my" shape in a smaller size.

Then I'll begin to play around with some of the clothing designs in some of my "clothes for weavers to make" books.

Dyeing on Snow Days

2011-02-03T20:29:00.003-05:00

This is what I do on snow days.

8+ ounces of olive green roving

8+ ounces of what I'm calling "candy apple" red.

A series of blue roving. The dark ones were the first in and out of the dye pot. The light blues were an attempt to make use of the leftover dye in the pot after the dark set came out.

And, this photo is the recycled chenille scarf. :)

--We got 1" of pellet ice by Tuesday morning. We had another 2-3" of pellet ice and snow by Wednesday afternoon. We never lost power--and I am so grateful for that! I couldn't have dyed so much without running water and heat!

Quick Weaving

2011-01-22T12:18:00.003-05:00

It didn't take long for this project to get on and off the loom. It is a "thick and thin" four-harness weave structure. It was easy to put on and easy to weave...and it's done--wet finished, pressed, and awaiting final decisions on the bag it's going to become.

The thin yarn is a 10/2 cotton; the thick is a 4/2 cotton.

I ran into challenges with my "new" method of warping back to front. When I warp with one color of yarn, it is easy enough to put the lease sticks through the cross, thread a rod through the end of the warp cross, lash on to the back beam and wind the warp. Color changes every few threads is not easy on my warping reel, so I wound two warps--one thick, one thin--and then needed to combine them and get them on the back beam and then threaded without making a mess of the order of the threads.

I ended up using a set of lease sticks for each warp and then carefully picked up threads from each lease stick with my rod to get them lashed to the back beam. It was a little challenging getting the threads picked off the lease sticks and onto the rod, but it did work. Whew!

I found this pretty piece in the kids' dress up box this week. It is (was) a chenille poncho for my then three year old son made by my cousin, Ruthie. Over the years it has been worn as intended, worn as a costume accessory, and played with in countless ways. The yarns are beautiful. When I saw it languishing in the costume box, I couldn't handle it anymore. Such beautiful yarns need to be used!

So, I carefully frogged the knitted poncho and now have some chenille yarn to play with. What am I going to do with it? I'm not sure yet! I know that chenille is not good for warp, so I've got to go digging through my library for ideas on how to show case these yarns (there were two yarns knit together). Stay tuned for future developments!

(edited to add: I may be wrong about chenille in the warp. A quick search on Weavolution showed that it gets used as a warp lots...just keep the tension gentle on the warp and sett it for the core yarn, not the pile. Now to dream of how to use this chenille! :)

All Because of Ellen....

2011-01-14T14:43:00.002-05:00

I'm going to blame this pretty piece on my friend Ellen. She is a felter, as well as a very accomplished weaver and she loves reds.

I've been reading a number of different things about felting knitting and weaving and came across the idea of starting the felting process by hand (hot water w/soap, followed by a cold water plunge--repeated a few times as desired) then putting the piece in the dryer to finish it off.

I tried it. I liked it!

The piece in the photo was handspun Romney wool that I dyed (a two-ply yarn) alternating with a commercial wool that I had dyed Turkey red in a dyeing class. It was woven in plain weave with the yarns sett at 6 epi and the weft at 6 ppi. It was kind of lacy and open when I took it off the loom! I did two hot water/cold water washes with it then put it in the dryer! Voila! The open plain weave piece turned into a beautiful piece of felt (30% shrinkage in both directions) ! I am so pleased! I'm so pleased that I've been spinning and spinning to make more yarn so I can weave and felt more!

Tactile Projects

2011-01-08T16:12:00.003-05:00

This is one of those moments when I wish photos allowed for tactile experiences. This terry cloth/pile sample has been washed and I love how it feels!

And this is my latest, finished knitting project: "The Proverbial Cap" by Meg Swansen. It is an exercise in twisted stitch knitting where the knit stitches are knit backwards or twisted and there are many single stitch cable-type crossovers. I've wanted to try this for some time and finally got a copy of Interweave Knits Fall 2010 magazine which has the pattern for this cap and a number of different suggestions for working this type of knitting. The yarn is Cascade 220...I know, I know...it's a commercial yarn! However, I really wanted a solid color yarn to show off the texture of the patterns and I needed a yarn that I didn't care about ruining in case I had to rip it out multiple times. It took me about 10 rows to try a non-cable-needle assisted cable, but I did it and enjoyed it!

Bits and Pieces

2011-01-02T14:38:00.002-05:00

I did a bit of quilting. The frog is from one of my daughter's favorite t-shirts and is set in remnants from my first quilting project. The ducky flannel back was my daughter's choice. The blanket is small--just right for her newest babydoll.

This was my first attempt at shoemaking. I've borrowed a copy of "Crafting Handmade Shoes" by Sharon Raymond and am hoping to make some shoes for me and my family. This pair of doll shoes (in felt) was a start. I've been given some leather and leather working tools to help me in this project. I'm a bit clueless, but I'm getting started!

This collection of fabric is the start of a three year quilting project. The fabric will get turned into three stacks of 9" quilt blocks this year, and then over the next few years (maybe it will take four or five years!) get turned into Christmas quilts for my children. In 2004 (I checked the date!) I participated in a Quilt Block of the Month Club organized by The Quilt Patch in Tecumseh, Michigan. For $5, I bought my first pattern and fabric and for the next 11 months, returned to the store with my finished block and punch card to get my next pattern and fabric free. The blocks eventually got put together and quilted and have become our Christmas Quilt. Every year it gets pulled out and snuggled under for the entire month of December. We love it!

The challenge is that my children have grown. The two I had back when I made the quilt have grown considerably, and the one that arrived after the quilt was made has gotten bigger too! I have decided that they each need their own quilt. Wish me luck!

Slow Cloth--Terry cloth Pile

2010-12-29T16:39:00.003-05:00

The November/December 2010 issue of Handwoven Magazine focused on "Slow Cloth" and included a piece by Rita Buchanan on weaving terry cloth. I got bit by the "I wanna try it" bug and decided to give it a go.

To the left is a piece of a sampler that is in progress. The ground warp (light blue) is 10/2 cotton, as is the pile warp (purple). The weft is a 100% cotton sewing thread that I had on hand. My "dowels" that I am using to raise the pile into loops are really bamboo skewers from my kitchen.

It took a bit of sampling to figure out how to get the pile dense enough to feel like a towel. My first few attempts looked like a forest with too few trees!

My husband helped me design and make a second back beam for my Baby Wolf. I wasn't willing to spend a lot of money on the nice second back beams that Schacht makes for this loom just to try terry cloth pile. I run into this fairly regularly...I want to try things, but I'm not sure that I will do them often, so it's hard to spend a lot of money on the equipment to try the technique. This back beam is held on with c-clamps, making it very temporary, and only cost $10 for wood. There is no brake on the beam and I'm using a live weight tension on it. I'm really pleased how it is working!

A Plethora of Projects

2010-12-26T14:09:00.003-05:00

My blog posts have dwindled due to the nature of much of my projects lately. There was a pair of pants for my son (a Christmas present), a set of Barbie clothes for my daughter (a Christmas present), a wall hanging made of t-shirts and machine quilted for my husband (a Christmas present), and a pair of socks for me (a Stocking stuffer)....There seems to be a theme here!

I'll start with the socks because I have a photo of them. This is yarn that I dyed in the workshop with Rita Petteys back in May. It is a 100% merino wool, lace weight yarn. I'm not used to knitting with lace weight yarns, and these socks had almost 100 stitches per round! Needles to say, it has taken a long time to get these done! The socks were knit with two different patterns from Sensational Knitted Socks by Schurch. I knit the lace pattern first. After I got it done, I paused my sock knitting to work on my mittens for Alia (that eventually got frogged and sewn out of non-itchy polyeseter fleece) and I got a lesson in color/pattern combinations. So, by the time I came back to knit sock #2, I tried a different pattern (the basket-weave pattern in the top left sock in the photo). I liked the effect of the basket-weave pattern better than the lace. I thought that it showed the colors of the yarn better. But, when they are on my feet and I am looking at them from about 5' away, they both look just fine. Go figure! ;)

Here's the wall hanging for my husband. A friend of mine makes quilts from t-shirts and she is often sewing on the binding during storytime at the library. I love her sense of design and the way her use of scraps and pieces in between the big blocks of t-shirt art unifies her quilts. (Check out the 4th picture down on the link) Needless to say, I wanted to try my hand at this. I rescued two t-shirts from the rag bag, figured out how to prepare my machine for free motion quilting (actually, I knew how to make my machine ready...It's just that this time when I tried to make the feed dog covers go on, they actually did! Hooray!), and did some quilting. It was fun and I'm looking forward to doing more!

Wabash Weavers' Guild Meeting

2010-11-19T20:05:00.003-05:00

Today's Wabash Weavers meeting included a "weaving/fiber garage sale". I sold many cones of acrylic yarn and purchased two wooden boat shuttles.

The long, dark wood shuttle I purchased because--well, because it was long. Those are approximately 6" bobbins with it. My red LeClerc shuttle that uses 4" bobbins is at the bottom of the photo for size comparison. I think the long shuttle will be great for multi-bobbin weaving as well as for projects that will use a lot of weft!

The middle shuttle I purchased because it is pretty. (Isn't that terrible! :) It looks like it will take the same 4" bobbins my LeClerc shuttles use, but the two colors of wood were just too pretty to pass!

Our guild has been doing a towel exchange for the last couple of years. These are the two I drew this year! Aren't they beautiful!?

The white M's and W's is stunning. I do not know how to use this beautiful piece. If I use it like my regular handwoven towels it's bound to get dirty, but it's too beautiful to just put away. I don't know what to do, but I love it!

The blue towel is huck lace and I know this one will get regular use! It's just right to join the ranks of my other towels from the last few years!

Walking Weaving

2010-11-15T14:20:00.002-05:00

My fabric seems to be walking to the right on my front apron beam.

See that stack of selvages showing in the top photo? It's not draw-in...the fabric seems to be winding on to the beam in a spiral.

The right edge of the fabric is loose enough that I can stick the tip of my finger under the selvage that shows.

WHY?

What would make fabric wind onto the front apron beam irregularly like this?

--This is on a Baby Wolf loom. I did notice that the right side of the loom was loose (lifting screw not tight) and tightened it early in the weaving.

--The fabric is weaving beautifully and I'm almost finished (100/140 inches woven). Is my tension about to go all crazy because I discovered this?

--I am using my make-shift "paper-clips-on-weighted-strings" temples on this piece (Woolgatherer's weighted temple plans). They are evenly weighted, but the strings are different lengths. Am I inadvertently pulling the fabric to one side with my temples?

???

Warping Woes

2010-11-10T15:26:00.003-05:00

I was taught to warp from front to back, but have found that it is easier to thread the heddles on my Schacht Baby Wolf if I sit at the front of the loom.

So, I am trying to figure out how to warp from back to front. In theory, it is pretty straight forward. In practice, I haven't gotten it right yet!

This warp was one of the worst ones that I have done. I wanted to maintain the warp cross, so I put the other end (just a loop) of the warp chain on a rod and lashed it to the back beam. I spread the warp in my raddle, and wound it onto the back beam. When I got to the end of the warp (with the cross) I discovered that I had a mess! The cross was still there, but the thread order as wound on the back beam did not match the thread order of the cross!

I think I'm still missing something! I need to go back and read two or three different references on how to warp from back to front before I do this again. I think the problem is that I "think" I know what I'm doing....and so I'm not doing something right! I'll get it sorted out eventually!

The warp is weaving beautifully--there is something wonderful about plain cloth! This is a 15" wide plain weave piece to complement a brown & white piece I wove earlier this year.

Frogged Mittens

2010-11-10T15:17:00.002-05:00

I used to knit regularly and I thought that I remembered how to knit mittens. The mitten on the right looks ok from the backside, but it was too narrow across the hand and the thumb opening was huge!!

I admitted defeat with the mittens and got out a knitting book, made some calculations and started again--this time with a pattern and a decorative stitch. That's the mitten on the left. I like the decorative stitch, I really do, but it doesn't show the colors of the yarn very well.

Both of these mittens got ripped out or frogged and I started again. I got the body of the new mitten (knit with a pattern, but no decorative stitch) done and had my daughter try it on for size.

The first words out of her mouth were, "Mom, it's itchy".

Argh!

At which point I gave up knitting these mittens for her, and found some scraps of polar fleece and made this bright pair of non-itchy mittens:

Hooray for non-itchy fabrics!

Hanspun yarn

2010-10-28T20:44:00.002-04:00

My loom has been very empty of late, but my spinning wheel has been very full!

There are four balls of yarn in the photo, but the little one on top is a part of the ball on the far right.

On the far left is a chain plied (3-ply) bit of Coopworth. The green in the middle is a 2-ply Romney. The top and far right is more Romney 2-plied.

What am I planning for these? Most likely some weaving. The 3-ply with all its colors is probably going to be an accent yarn. The green may need to wait for a companion yarn before I can decide what to do with it. The top & right yarns will probably be a scarf or something nice and cozy.

A bit of Sewing

2010-10-19T11:02:00.002-04:00

Cool weather has come. My eldest daughter has been growing and requested a new fleece jacket. I hemmed and hawed, and finally gave in. It's taken a week or two to get the fabric, get a pattern (I tried making one, but it didn't quite work out), and get it finished....

But it is done now, and got worn to school today!

:)

Paper Bag Basket

2010-10-05T11:39:00.002-04:00

Feast of the Hunter's Moon was this weekend in Lafayette, Indiana. I worked at the Wabash Weaver's guild's booth Saturday morning, and then shopped/browsed on my way back to my vehicle. I've been hoping to find some sort of basket to use to haul my things to and from the Feast. One of my friends laughed the year I carried things in plastic bags while still in 1730's dress!

There are arm baskets, and yarn baskets... I was drawn to the backpack baskets. When I got home (without a basket) I needed to do something to ease the desire for a basket! Out came the old Handwoven's and I started working on this little gem.

Elaine Webbeking wrote about weaving baskets from grocery bags in the March/April 1994 issue of Handwoven. Her baskets are beautiful!

I used lunch sacks instead of grocery bags and cut my strips 3.5 cm (instead of the recommended 3.5") due to the smaller size of the bags.

I had to unweave the basket once....but it went back together quickly and my top edge was much better because of the extra care the second time around! It's a small basket and won't help carry my things to the Feast, but it feels good to have woven it.

Handspun Scarves & Fab Four projects

2010-09-29T20:11:00.003-04:00

After the "Fab Four" workshop with Robyn Spady I couldn't wait to try some of the 4-shaft weaves with my yarns. The first was this integrated plain weave with two acrylic yarns. They are very orange, but they were very cool to weave and the fabric is a fascinating blend of colors and textures. How would I use this? Well, probably in very small bits--how about a 2-3" diamond on the cover of a book?

This scarf is still damp in this photo and you just can't see it's fuzziness! The yellow base yarn is an acrylic/mohair blend. The orange and black accent yarn is a wool that was knit into a "blank", dyed, and unraveled. The weave structure of the accent stripe is "cannele" and it used only a tiny bit of yarn!

These are two handspun scarves. The warp is a single sized with gelatin. The pink weft is a two-ply yarn that has been waiting very patiently for a project. The purple scarf has a mystery weft. It's a mystery because I didn't write it down. The warp alternates between a light purple/pink and a dark purple/pink yarn. I was hoping for a color-and-weave (shadow weave) effect. Unfortunately the yarns were too similar and my warping technique too irregular to keep everything straight. I gave up my plans for color-and-weave and just wove some twills.

FabFour with Robyn Spady

2010-09-19T19:11:00.002-04:00

Robyn Spady was in Indiana this weekend giving lectures at two weaving guilds and teaching her "Fab Four" workshop.

She was a good speaker and a great workshop instructor! I loved how organized and considerate she was and how excited she was to share her weaving tips with us!

The Fab Four workshop focuses on four shaft weave structures--twelve of them! We wove corduroy, diversified plain weave, ribs (in multiple directions), overshot patterned double weave...and lots more! By the end of the two day workshop, the samples you see in my photo were cut apart, inserted in our workshop notebooks!

I am excited to try some of these structures with my own yarns! :)

Headbands Ahoy!

2010-09-12T14:39:00.002-04:00

I've been playing with some narrow warps. The first set was a mixed warp with three blues and a multicolored yarn (all about 10/2 cotton grist). I wove with three or four different wefts and turned them into headbands.

I tried a 100% wool warp made of some of my handspun. The yarn was thick and sparkly (thanks to some angelina fiber in the batt), but the band was stiff and scratchy. I ended up turning half of it into a belt and being very glad when it was off the loom!

The third warp is 8/2 cotton--this time a solid color--and again I've used different wefts to change the way things look. This little piece has a linen single as the weft and will be a bookmark. I spun this linen a while ago and am thrilled to see it used! (The pin is my way of measuring progress at the loom. I weave a bit, then measure and put the pin in at the end of the measure. Then I'll weave more and measure from the pin. I keep the running total of woven inches on a scrap at the side of the loom.)

2010-08-18T20:29:00.003-04:00

I came into the kitchen recently to find what looked like four cones of twine on my counter! The grain of the wood at a distance sure fooled me! This is one of four chair risers that my husband turned for me on the lathe. They are made of two 2x4's that have been cut into a cylinder and an indention made on the top surface for the leg of the chair.

I discovered that my weaving chair was too low (even with a pillow on it!) and my shoulders and elbows were complaining. Getting the chair at the right height makes it easier to weave!

This is what I've been working on. It's a 16/2 cotton/poly brown with a mystery bobble yarn as the white stripes. It's a fun fabric and I'm weaving it to be put away as yardage (I have no idea what it will become!). It has been lots of fun to imagine what I could make with this...and to think of coordinating fabrics that I would like to weave next!

And here's a blast from the past. My twill scarf has been hanging on a closet door for weeks while I tried to decide what to do with the fringe. Right now I am playing with adding beads--a first for me--mostly to add some black to the very orange warp threads.

Handspun projects

2010-08-14T20:32:00.003-04:00

This cardboard loom was warped to test a color & weave (shadow weave) pattern that I was hoping to use with these two handspun yarns. Unfortunately, I either messed up the pattern--very possible...I pulled the weft out at least three times on this little piece!--or the pattern is just hard to see at this scale. The yarns are spun from a dyeing series from a while back: two rovings dyed in similar colors and patterns, one with dilute dyes, the other with concentrated dyes. For now, these yarns have been returned to the yarn box. I've requested a book via interlibrary loan to learn more about color & weave patterns.

This piece makes me smile! It's plain weave with handdyed, handspun singles used as both warp and weft. I still remember spinning this single. The colors formed such beautiful stripes that I didn't know what to do with them!

The original plan had been to ply the single with itself. I could imagine all my pretty colored stripes turning into mud. I couldn't handle that possibility, so I began looking into more options. I considered chain-plying, but I'm not overly fond of the technique and didn't really want a three ply (or quasi-three ply) yarn. For a while I hunted around trying to find an appropriate yarn to ply with these pretty stripes...and then I just gave up and put the bobbin on my shelf.

As I put the two green yarns away (awaiting further enlightenment on shadow weave) I spied the bobbin of green & purple. I grabbed it off the shelf, ran upstairs and made a new batch of gelatin sizing (1/2 oz gelatin: 2 C. water), skeined that pretty bobbin of singles, and sized the yarn! While the sizing dried, I made my calculations, trying to maximize the existing yardage of singles. Soon the warp was wound, the scarf (?) was woven, and it was wet finished. It's sooooo pretty! It's Romney wool and is a bit scratchy, so it may not really end up as a scarf....but I love the color and the fake plaid effect as the various stripes crossed each other! I may have to do this again!

Handspun Wool Singles (warp & weft)

2010-08-01T21:22:00.002-04:00

I did it! I finally did it! I bit the bullet, sized my warp yarns with gelatin and wove with handspun wool singles. This is not the first time I've done this, but I'm still new at using my handspun singles as warp. Without sizing, they fall apart after a yard or so of weaving. Sizing the warps requires planning and an extra day to dip them and let them dry. --Oh the challenges of life! :)

I'm pleased with the way this turned out. The singles were ~14 wpi and I sett them at 10 epi in a 6 dent reed. Three yarns were used: variegated blue, variegated red, and pink/light blue/cream stripe.

I have wet finished this piece already and like it's hand, but I'm considering fulling it some. I read recently that you can wet a piece, wrap it in towels, secure the towels, and throw it in the drier--and the end result is a fulled piece. (Gudrun Polak has an article in the Jan/Feb 2010 Handwoven that uses this method of fulling.) Has anyone out there done this successfully? I have to decide if I'm willing to sacrifice this piece to test the method!

Advanced Twill/Point Twill Scarf

2010-07-25T20:33:00.003-04:00

This is an advancing twill/point twill scarf in a wool/silk yarn. It's my first project with this yarn and my first advancing twill project.

Both the front and back of the scarf are visible in this photo. I really like the front. I'm not sure yet about the back! --Granted, this is the unfinished piece. Perhaps I'll like the back better after it's wet finished.

This photo shows why I haven't wet finished the scarf yet. I have to decide to fringe or not to fringe! The ends are hemstitched, so I have considered a short (1-2") cut fringe, but I am partial to twisted fringes and have yet to decide which to do. What do you think?

And, lastly, here is a photo of my double error and fixing method. I ran into problems on my Baby Wolf with the extra treadle ties getting caught in the lamms. After much frustration, I finally sat down on the floor and pulled out all the unused ties. I will have more work when I change tie-ups (I'll have to move the ties around) but at least this way the shafts aren't sticking!

There were two errors in this piece: A row above the scissor case (looks like an almost solid black line) and a row right at the point of the scissor case that is under repair and only one long float is visible. To correct this, I cut the float, pulled out the original weft pick and needle wove a replacement into the piece. The challenge was I kept loosing my place! I eventually wove a high contrast, slippery yarn into a good row to serve as my guide. Much better! Needle weaving corrections like this are time consuming, but the scarf looks much better without the errors!

Full Loom Width Test

2010-07-09T14:26:00.003-04:00

The fabric from my full width of the loom test is done! This was a plain weave piece, woven primarily to weave something at the full width of the Baby Wolf.

I filled every dent with yarn for this piece--the warp was 10/2 cotton, unmercerized, sett at 12 epi. The weft was a thick/thin mystery yarn (I think it's a cotton/rayon blend).

I had woven a test scarf with these yarns and liked the texture created from the pooling of the thick pots in the warp. I also liked how it looked with some fabric that I had pulled from my stash...so, now I have more textured fabric, and maybe I'll make some clothes from all this! :)

The next challenge (and the real reason why the fabric I just finished weaving is still sitting on my loom) is cleaning my sewing space! We had a water problem in the basement a couple of weeks ago--a new one: the exterior drain by the back door got clogged, and the water poured in over the door sill. Things got cleaned up reasonably fast. It took some time for my husband to get the drain unclogged, but he succeeded, and we got the carpet and pad dried out in a couple of days. The challenge was getting my craft room back together. With the exception of my sewing table (perhaps because it was an open table it accumulated stuff!) things are back together. Now I need my sewing machine!

Here's one of the possibilities for the next project: overshot on 8 shafts. These threadings are from Strickler's "8-Shaft Pattern" book, but the tie-up and treadling are mine.

I must admit that I have so many structures that interest me right now that there is a good chance that this will never get woven. I want to do EVERYTHING and I just don't have the time to do it all. So, now I have to decide what to put on the loom. Maybe I'll just leave it empty for a day or two.

Weighted Selvege --Loom Modification

2010-07-01T18:46:00.002-04:00

I have yet to invest in a temple for my weaving. For a long time I didn't think they were necessary, but I've learned a little since then! The last few times I've wanted a temple, I have made use of weights clamped to the selvege. With my old looms I would just hand the string (connecting the clamp and weights) over the edge of the support bar at the side of the loom. The Baby Wolf doesn't have a high enough support bar, so I added a zip tie to each side to support the string for the weights. :)

After I figured out that this would work, I read a different solution on-line: run a strong cord from the front beam to the back beam and let the string hang over the cord. :)

Dyeing with Freinds

2010-06-28T17:03:00.003-04:00

My friend Ellen came by to spend an afternoon dyeing with me. (Doesn't that just sound....strange...getting together to die/dye.) But we did! It was Ellen's first dyeing experience, and it was fun to have her here.

This pink boucle yarn was our test piece. We were unsure of the fiber content and wanted to see how well the different parts of the yarn would take the dye. Both the thick/thin and the binder yarns took dye beautifully!

Here's my handpainted skein. It's a wool/silk blend that started off as white. I'm not sure how I will use it, but I like the colors (dusty rose & olive drab).

And here's a shot of the dye pot after we had pulled out Ellen's skeins. Mums the word on the color that we chose to dye...but the yarns looked gorgeous coming out of the dye pot!

These were acid dyes on wool/silk and wool/?? and mohair.

:) I love dyeing!

BitterSweet--Nilus sold

2010-06-26T16:56:00.004-04:00

I should be jumping up and down...my 4 shaft Nilus Leclerc loom has sold! I must admit that I really liked that loom and I will miss it. If I had been using it more (it hasn't been warped in months!!) I would not have considered selling it.

It sounds like the loom will be going to a good home. It will again be a "first loom".... May you have many happy weaving days, Jeane!

The sweet part of this sale, was warping the loom one last time. I had an extra warp (would you believe I wound twice as much as needed for a project?) and threaded it in an advancing twill.

Wow!! Advancing twills are beautiful! I can't wait to do more!!

My upstairs workspace is much smaller now...

Acid Dyes on Wool

2010-06-08T13:46:00.002-04:00

Oh, I'm a happy camper! I have two stacks of beautiful rovings! This was my first opportunity to dye after taking a class with Rita Petteys (see my previous post on the class).

These are wool rovings-one coopworth and one Romney. The dyes are acid dyes from Pro Chemical.

The rovings were soaked in warm water and vinegar for 30 minutes, then the water was spun out (hooray for my salad spinner!) and the wool was laid on plastic wrap on my table.

The dyes were all in squirt bottles and I squirted them in bands across the wool.

After putting a top layer of plastic wrap on the wool, I used my hands to smoosh (technical term!) the dye into the wool.

The wool/plastic sandwiches were rolled into bundles and steamed for 30 minutes.

:)

I think they are super pretty!!

Handspun Wool Singles as Warp

2010-05-27T21:21:00.004-04:00

More headway on overcoming my "fear" of handpspun in weaving. I'm beginning to think that it's not so much a fear or quirk as it is a lack of data. I'm not confident how it will behave, so I hesitate to use it.

This continuation of my quest uses a handdyed, handspun wool single as the warp. It was a small skein, but I was able to get 121 ends out of it for a two yard warp.

I know two yards is almost nothing for a warp, but this is a sample...it's just a test. And, it turns out, it was a good test.

One warp thread broke early in the weaving (oh, details: 8h, straight twill threading, woven as plain weave throughout). Later on, two or three threads started to pull apart and I could feel that the piece wasn't stable anymore.

So, I got a one yard sample woven. My weft yarns obscured the warp colors. It's so sad :(
That will be the focus of yet another set of samples! I want to learn to get warp stripes in my weaving!!

I didn't use any sizing on this warp. I have sized wool singles before, and I would rather not mess with soaking the yarns in the sizing solution, letting them dry, picking them apart, etc. While I was reading one of Paula Simmons' books ( "Spinning and weaving with Wool" or "Spinning for Softness and Speed") I noticed the comment that while Paula preferred to spin and weave with singles (using a sizing on her singles warps), her husband liked his two-ply warp yarns...and so he spun his own warps!

I may be spinning two-ply warps!

:)

Oh! The photo at the top of the post needs a word of explanation! I usually warp front to back, but I was concern about the integrity of this single yarn as a warp and didn't want to expose it to any unnecessary stress, so I rigged a raddle (the thing with twisty ties on it!) and tried warping back to front. It was easier on my back and shoulders to warp the Baby Wolf this way. It may be time to make a "real" raddle.

Sticky Baby Wolf Shaft

2010-05-22T16:56:00.002-04:00

The first shaft on my new-to-me 8H Baby Wolf was sticking. I tried spraying silicone in the tracks as Schacht suggested, and it didn't solve the problem.

A friend has an older Baby Wolf about the same age as mine, and her husband suggested I check the pins in the mechanisms that lift the shafts as they are pressure fit and can loosen over time.

Go figure...one of the pins on the shaft that was sticking was out. It took a pair of pliers to push it back in, but it worked! No more sticky shaft!

--The pin is likely to work loose again. Packing tape was suggested as a way to keep the pins from pushing out.

(Thanks, Ron!! )

Handspun, Handwoven

2010-05-22T16:06:00.003-04:00

Here at my house we are each allowed a handful of fetishes or quirks. I'm working on a series of projects to try and overcome one of my fears/fetishes.

I spin yarn. I want to weave with yarn that I spin. I_am_afraid of working with my handspun yarn.

Why am I afraid of it? What do I think will happen with it or to it? I don't know. That's why it falls in the fetish/quirk category.

But, I am a brave girl! I can overcome my fears of using my handspun yarn.

I've put together a couple of different bits of handspun yarn with the intention of making samples. Really, just samples. These projects serve no purpose, except the one to help me overcome my fears!

This warp is a two-ply yarn, probably a Romney wool, handdyed with dandelions. I sett it at 12 ends per inch, threaded in a straight twill, and wove a pattern from Strickler's Patterns for 8 harness weaving. The weft is a handdyed, handspun single.

When the handspun single weft ran out, I shifted to some other handspun yarns and plain weave. The red is a dyed two ply, probably cotswold wool, and the brown is a natural brown wool single.

Would you like to know what happened when I wove with my handspun yarns? Did they explode? Pull apart? Make strange lumpy, bumpy fabric? Nope. The yarns behaved like....well, like yarns!

Go figure! Maybe there is hope for this fetish of mine!

Ruffler!

2010-05-20T22:02:00.002-04:00

This is a ruffler. It happens to be an old Singer ruffler being used on an older Elna sewing machine, but it works wonderfully!

My local sewing/fabric store, Caldwells, is amazing. I walked into the store asking for a $10 presser foot to do gathers. The sales clerk went directly to a $40 presser foot contraption (that almost gave me a heart attack!), only to discover that it was the wrong connection for my machine. (Whew!)

Then she went looking in their used pieces, brought out a ruffler like this and told me how they work.--She also commented that she had the $10 type of presser foot I was asking about and it didn't really work!

It took a bit of searching for the clerk to find the right size ruffler for my machine, but she did. $5 later, I was the happy owner of a ruffler foot!

And look what it does--in one evening, too! This is intended to be a skirt for my oldest daughter. I need her to try it on before I do any more finishing to it.

The ruffler is a wonderful attachement. It creates evenly spaced mini pleats and sews them to another fabric all in one pass. No more basting stitches to pull!

:)

Gifts

2010-05-14T13:10:00.003-04:00

The other moms in our home schooled preschool group have been kind enough to watch my daughter before school on the days that my weaving guild meets.

One of the moms has started using cloth napkins, so a few weeks ago I made a set for her. This morning I finished the gifts for the other two moms: a pleated scarf and a table runner.

Believe it or not, the last two items were woven on the same warp! The warp is an unknown fiber yarn (it feels like it could be a polyester) that is a nice shade of blue with flecks of tan and white in it. The weft for the table runner is a fingering weight acrylic knitting yarn. The weft for the scarf is white, 20/2 tencel. The hand of the two items is very different!!

The weave structure is an eight harness summer and winter pattern from Strickler's Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns. The scarf was woven as plain weave with gathering threads placed using two of the summer/winter patterns. The gathering threads (polyester sewing thread) were pulled tight and the pleats were steam set for 20 minutes. The table runner is pattern #554 and looks different on the front and the back.

Dye Class with Rita Petteys

2010-05-09T19:52:00.004-04:00

Linda Adamson of Tabby Tree Weaver in Arcadia hosted a beginning dye class with Rita Petteys of "Yarn Hollow" . The class was fun! Rita covered immersion dyeing and handpainting of protein yarn and fibers with washfast acid dyes.

The best part about the class (aside from some of the cool tips and tricks Rita taught us) was getting to play with color! There was a box with perhaps 100 dye powders (don't trust my numbers here...I didn't really count, it just seemed like tons of color to a girl who owns three (count them, three) jars of dye!) and the same number of quart jars of dye solutions--all ready to be used!

We were given some instruction on making dye solutions, given the opportunity to practice, and then set loose. If we finished a dye solution we were to refill the jar, but we could use any and all colors we desired.

Wow!

My pictures are of three of the five projects I did. The first was a solid red, immersion dye on DK weight yarn. The second was a handpainted lace weight skein....and I left it in the shop! Dooh! (Linda has kindly offered to bring it to our next guild meeting so I can bring it home! :)

At the top is a falkland wool roving that I dyed with yellow, blue and a darker blue/black.

Next is some of my Romney roving that I squirted with orange, then added an olive green and a diluted leaf green.

And lastly, here is a sample knit piece that I dyed and will unravel and re-knit.

Rita has a nice post on sockblanks on her blog. I think I may need to go through this exercise myself to see how dye patterns on the blank translate into knitting.

It was a great day! Thanks to Rita, to Linda A., and to a fun bunch of classmates!

Spring Cleaning

2010-04-27T10:21:00.003-04:00

I've been doing a bit of spring cleaning around the house. It started on Tuesday or Wednesday of last week with a garage sale purchase. This Domestic sewing machine came home with me (a bit unexpectedly)! I've oiled the machine and cleaned it up--but I don't have any experience at fine tuning a machine like this, so I may need to make a call to some experts to make it sew a seam.

The next bit of spring cleaning is without a photo. We moved to this house almost four years ago, and on Saturday I got the last box out of my son's closet. I'd been in it recently enough to know that it had some decorations and nic naks....but I hadn't been in it deep enough to discover our old box of loose change! We had over seventeen dollars in coins, and at least that much again in our children's old piggy banks that were there too!

And, the last bit of spring cleaning... This came home with me yesterday. It was a Craigslist purchase and had been living in a warehouse in Indianapolis. It's a Schacht 8 Harness Baby Wolf. There was a lot of dust and dirt on it and it took me most of the afternoon to get it clean, but it works just fine! Here it is with my test warp.

A "Real" Swimsuit

2010-04-09T13:56:00.002-04:00

My now almost 10 year old was desperately in need of a new swimsuit. Her old one was made without a pattern and of odd material over a year ago. It worked ok, but it was odd!

This time, I purchased a pattern and spandex, and am thrilled with the outcome!

The pattern is Kwik Sew #2606 with a racing back. I got it and the swimsuit elastic from Sew Sassy Fabrics online. The fabric came from Spandex World (again, via their online store). Both stores had great service and good prices. I put my orders in on April 5th. The pattern arrived first, then the fabric arrived yesterday, and today the suit is finished!

How's that for fast!

Cutting Error (and Repair)

2010-04-07T21:50:00.002-04:00

Nope, it's not mice eating my fine handwoven table linens....it's operator error--I cut into the fabric when I was cutting the napkins apart! Waaaaaa!

This is a set of Atwater-Bronson lace napkins in an unlabled yarn, which I think is a rayon/cotton blend. It's a fine yarn--about 20/2--and they turned out wonderfully soft and fine! They are perfect for a nice set of napkins.

And then I went and worked on sewing them and cutting them apart when I was a bit tired. The fabric is so much finer than what I usually weave, that I hardly noticed when I caught the edge the first time. The second time, I realized that something wasn't quite right, and sure enough it wasn't.

The napkins sat for a day or two. It took me a while to decide how to hem these (I've chosen a rolled hem--thank you internet bloggers who posted tutorials on this little hemming technique!) and now, with two napkins hemmed, I turned to this error.

The easiest repair was to simply make them shorter. I knew that there is some variation in the positioning of the lace that goes across the whole piece, so it would just be part of the variation and these are napkins.....They will never be right next to each other except in the laundry, so no one should notice the extra variation, right!?

I kept the little piece with my cuts in it. I think I need the reminder to focus and pay attention to the details in my work! :)

Two Dye Jobs

2010-04-06T20:25:00.002-04:00

I'm playing with dyes again. I used to do a fair bit of dyeing and would sell my dyed rovings on ebay. Then I hit a bad spell where most of the things I dyed felted...either that or they just looked awful!

So, after taking a break, I'm at it again! Pictured here are two variations on the same theme dyed with acid dyes. The outer two rovings are the initial dye job, and I felt that they were too pale. The inner two rovings are a repeat with 3x the amount of dye. Definitely more color there...I'm not sure about beauty!

It's time to take a dye class!

A little bit of Inlay

2010-03-22T13:39:00.004-04:00

Check out these little pictures! Starting from the left:

1. The original warp design with green stripes at the sides.

I tried to weave with this and discovered that the bumps in the green yarn made weaving impossible. My husband asked, "Didn't you notice that when you were warping?" To which I answered (with a sheepish grin), "Well, I noticed it was challenging to get through the heddle, but I didn't know that it would be impossible to weave! :)"

2. The mess. After having problems with green stripe #1, I tried replacing the bumpy green with a smooth green yarn. It made an awful mess. I wasn't careful as I unwound the warp and ended up having to cut of the green stripes and the extra yellow.

3. The yellow warp. Whew! The green weft was just a thick yarn that I used to get things started.

4. The finished flower. Look, Ma! A Flower! It wasn't terribly hard to do... it required a bit of focus, but otherwise it was ok! The background is all plainweave. To make the inlay patterning, throw a pick of plain weave, pickup the threads where you want the inlay color and pass the inlay yarn into this shed. Change sheds, throw a pick of plain weave, and do the next bit of inlay.

PS. Check out what is sitting by my sewing machine! It's my grey dots fabric--it's off the loom!

Plans for Inlay Weaving

2010-03-16T10:24:00.004-04:00

Our community garden is in need of some flags. The entrance to the garden is off a busy road and the drive is just an access drive to a field. We would like to have some bright flags there to remind gardeners of the entrance, and to let other drivers know that there is a reason why people put their turn signals on at that point!

I have some BRIGHT yellow and pink-ish orange yarns that I thought would make a nice flag...the trick was figuring out how to make it look nice (as well as extremely visible!).

Swedish Weaving by Thelma M. Nye has instructions for a window blind (called "Sunsmoke" by Peter Condu) that caught my eye. The weaving is a tabby ground weave with the pattern/design thread laid in with the ground by hand.

Other references use cartoons or drawings to determine where to put the inlay and I've warped my rigid heddle loom to try it. I have the bright yellow as the background (warp & weft) with some green stripes and will try to inlay some tulips in the center. I'll use the bright pink-ish orange for the flower and two greens for the leaves. Wish me luck! This is new for me!

Here are some pictures of inlay work by others. Seeing their work gives me hope for my project!

This is a simple inlay done on a Weavette loom. It looks easy, right?
It was part of eLoomanator's Square Deal Weave-Along in 2008.

Here is one done with a "cartoon" to help create the inlay pattern. It's the Diaphanous Leaves scarf from Sally Orgren's WeaveZine article.

And this is the piece that sold me on trying this for my garden flags--Isn't this beautiful! It's by Lynette Glass. Here's the link to her website. Check out her gallery! She makes beautiful work!

And, last, but not least, LOOK! The knots at the end of my warp are visible! This is terribly terrific! How can I weave only 8" a day when the end is so near!!!!!!

Actually, my shoulder has been doing better and I have been getting 8-12" a day, but I am still being careful, and slow...and I just want to weave and weave and get this done, but I don't want to be in pain, so I'll take it slow.

4 Harness Loom for Sale

2010-03-12T20:45:00.002-05:00

I can't believe I'm doing this! I just posted my "baby" for sale!

This is a 45" Nilus Leclerc 4 Harness loom with 6 treddles. It's a great loom! I'm including the loom, the bench, a warping board, and some books. The loom has a 12 dent reed (hmm. That's the short reed in the photo...I'm selling this with a full length 12 dent reed) and inserted eye heddles--roughly 300 per harness. $800 for the entire package--local pick-up only.

Why am I selling this loom? Perhaps, like Bilbo Baggins, I'm feeling like "butter spread over too much bread" and I need to thin down the amount of physical space my weaving takes (physically and psychologically). Perhaps, I just want the room and means to get a new toy.

If you are looking for a loom, this is a great loom! If you are local (or willing to spend some time here) I'd be willing to throw in some lessons for free.

Double Weave Bands

2010-03-10T09:40:00.002-05:00

I've been inspired by Laverne Waddington's blog about backstrap weaving. She has some nice tutorials on the blog and a great article on WeaveZine. I wanted to try the double weave technique, but didn't want to figure out a backstrap set-up, so I wound the warp on my inkle loom. It took a few tries, but by the end I had an idea of what I was doing and was enjoying the process!

My inkle/backstrap double weave band lead to the desire for more band work. Out came my pattern book for double weave tablet woven bands by Linda Hendrickson. I started with a 48 card pattern, got lost, and decided to back up a step or two. The squiggles (they look a bit like blades of grass) are the hair from KokoPele's head. The upsidedown triangle thing in the dark green rectangle was the "something more simple" that I created on the fly. I think I'll be making a few more "simple somethings" before I try the charted patterns again. I'm still excited about this. It's taken me months and months to even try these patterns and I'm finally getting there!

And, last but not least, I am making progress on my grey dots fabric. I'm over the halfway point in the warp. I get 4-12" woven each day. I've added a weighted binder clip temple like this paper clip one due to the loss of four warp threads on the left side (I've only lost one on the right). I decided not to repair the broken warp threads since they are in the selvage...and I expect they would just break again if I repaired them. Inch by inch I'm moving along!

Plant stand, card weaving prep, and progress!

2010-03-02T21:23:00.002-05:00

My husband came home the other night and needed a project--something that he could make in one night and complete. I had already drawn up a sketch for my plant grow-light stand, but together we got real numbers, and he went to town! Isn't it great! Eventually I will move it up onto a table on the porch. :)

I've been winding warps. There are 11 card weaving/tablet weaving warps in this shoe box. The girls are church are going to make friendship bracelets.

The warping method I used was one Linda Hendrickson uses--continuous warping. The pack of cards are threaded as one, and single cards are dropped as the warp is wound. Sound confusing? It's not as bad as it sounds. She has a video on youTube to help.

And, last but not least, I am making progress on my grey "dots" warp. Between my sore shoulder and a jammed little finger I am making slow progress...but it's still progress! I'm glad to be able to weave, and I love to pet the finished cloth as it's woven!

The Journey Continues...

2010-02-18T13:54:00.003-05:00

I am almost done warping my 1000+ thread cloth. The heddles are all threaded and the warp is beamed. The first knots are holding the warp to the front apron. It was about at this point that my tummy declared it to be lunch time, and my clock said that I had other work to get done before my house guest arrives!

I'm hoping to get the warping completed and the weaving in progress this evening!

Heat Set, Shibori Style Pleats

2010-02-17T16:21:00.003-05:00

A few months ago I wove a scarf with 3/1 vs. 1/3 twill stripes as an experiment with collapse weave. It was moderately successful, but I wasn't thrilled by the results.

Since then, I've read Catharine Ellis' Woven Shibori and a couple of web posts (Yarn Bits, Aug. 2, 2009), and tried a new experiment with one of my samples.

This sample has a mystery yarn (probably a polyester blend) alternating with a 10/2 unmercerized cotton as the warp with another mystery yarn, most likely an acrylic, as weft.

I stitched gathering threads into the sample every 3/4" to 1" and tied them tightly.

Once stitched and gathered, I steamed the sample for 20 minutes.

The resulting pleats were amazing! Oh, wow! This is what I was hoping for!!! Really, the pleats are wonderfully elastic and I was thrilled with the way this worked!

Some things to note: the imperfections in the gathering remain in the set pleats...see the little blue "bubbles" near the bottom of the piece? See how the piece curves up near the fold between the pleated and un-pleated sections? I'll need to be careful to have the piece gathered smoothly.

One last experiment. I had to see how permanent these pleats were.

A twenty minute soak in lukewarm water did not change them.

The iron set for acrylic (lowest temperature setting on my iron) easily flattened the pleats when the sample was still damp (see section marked with two arrows).

The same low temperature setting also removed the pleats from the completely dry sample (see section with single arrow).

So, my exuberance at seeing pleats is tempered by the knowledge that these are quasi-permanent. They can be washed, but the need to be line dried. My guess is that running this through the drier would remove most of the pleating. I can't wait to try more!

Color with Perler Beads

2010-02-10T15:02:00.003-05:00

I ironed this perler bead creation for my oldest daughter this morning and was amazed at her use of color.

In person it has an overall brown look, but the spots of color really jump out and shine!

When I grow up, can I create color combos on the loom like this?

Index Card Case

2010-02-09T11:35:00.003-05:00

I'm taking a break from my 1008 thread journey. I'm still threading and my shoulder is complaining and sore.

In the meantime, my oldest daughter is starting her first research project. We purchased 3x5 index cards for her to take notes on, but didn't think that the typical hard plastic box would work for carrying the cards back and forth to school.

This little envelope-type pouch will hold over 100 cards and only took a little bit of research (on-line of course! There are lots of free tutorials available! :) and 30 minutes of sewing time.

The stretchy loop is from an almost dead hair rubberband and the bright yellow button belonged to my grandmother. The fabric is from the stash of quilting fabrics a friend passed along my way.