Coverlet repair, Sampling, and Transparency

I received a surprising phone call the other day.  A woman had seen my work at the Athens Arts Gallery and was looking for a weaver's opinion regarding some family heirlooms.  We set up a time for her to come over and this is one of the things she brought--a piece from a coverlet that her great-grandmother had woven!

Even more amazing to me than the beautiful weaving was the repair job.  Do you see the faded blue rectangle in the middle of the photo?  It is a patch that was sewn onto the coverlet. ~The weaving studio at Conner Prairie recently had a reproduction coverlet that needed repair and this type of repair is precisely what we were discussing.  So amazing to see it in person! 

I've been doing some sampling for a blanket.  The weave structure is M's and W's and is from Carol Strickler's Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns.  The cool thing about these samples is that by turning the tie-up, I was able to change where the floats appeared.  In the sample on the right, the floats are in the colorful stripes.  In the middle sample, the floats are in the cream stripes.  On the left, the floats alternate in a checker board pattern from colorful to cream and back.  Unfortunately, I think that the floats are too long and need to go back to the sample warp and try again.  (On the one hand, I'm disappointed.  On the other hand, I'm grateful that I'm learning this now, and not after I put on two blankets worth of warp!)

  

The pencil is under one of the floats.

And, lastly, here is a transparency sampler that I just finished.  The background warp and weft are 40/2 linen set at 30 epi.  The pattern weft is 8/2 cotton.  I used a cartoon under the warp to help me make the pattern shapes. --Check out all the snow visible through the window.  Spring has arrived since I took this photo and that is all gone and instead, I have crocuses blooming in my sunny front yard!  Hooray!  Hooray! Hooray!

Current Projects

These towels just came off the loom today.  10/2 unmercerized cotton for the warp and weft.  Warp sett is 30 epi.  The weave structure is M's and W's with tie-ups and treadlings from Strickler's 8-Shaft Patterns (I think it's #158).

Finding the right weft color for this warp was challenging.  The reddish-burgandy weft shows up well as did some pink wefts--as long as they were not identical to the warp colors!

Three little monkeys.  These are drier balls that have been needle felted, but not wet felted yet.  I did one of these monkeys in all grey and it was cute, but I like them so much better with more colors!

Special "Twin" project:

Marching band camp had "twin day" for their spirit theme today.  Last night my daughter and I made an outfit for her doll (that I made for her years ago!).  It was fun to draft a pattern and make the clothes together.  The doll's t-shirt is from the same program (but a previous year) as the one my daughter is wearing!

My turn! Fixing Errors with a Warp on the Loom

See my lovely pile of extra heddles?  I took them off my Mighty Wolf recently.  I've read about how challenging it is to have to remove heddles with a warp on the loom and tried really hard to avoid this!  Unfortunately, the way I eye-balled the warp didn't work.

This warp is 32" wide on a loom with a 36" wide weaving width.  As I threaded, I tucked extra heddles throughout the warp, hoping to avoid having to remove heddles. By the time I was tying on to the breast beam, it was obvious that I'd need to do something more.  The warp threads at the left edge of the loom were being pushed in by the extra heddles at the side of the shafts.  Time to remove heddles!

Before removing the heddles I threaded the top, the eye, and the bottom  of each group with a piece of cotton thread and tied them securely.  This should make it easy to put the heddles back on the loom later.  Keep your fingers crossed!

Now to go put the heddles away in my collection of weaving tools so I can find them when I want them back on the loom!

Prizes, Yarn Uses, Finished Scarf

Robin's multi-colored cotton boucle on the loom

I follow Robin Edmunson's blog "Rurification".  She lives within a couple hours of my home and posts wonderful suggestions of ways to use the local harvest.  My favorite food thing she suggested was making chive flower vinegar.  My youngest loved our chives and was thrilled when we put the chive flowers into the vinegar and it turned the vinegar pink, her favorite color!

This summer Robin had several give-aways on her blog.  One of them was some hand-dyed cotton boucle yarn and the pattern to crochet it into a shawl.  I entered....and won the yarn!  I was excited!  I tried crocheting the shawl pattern.  It didn't make my socks go up and down.  So, I found an alternate use for the yarn.  I wove it in a deflected doubleweave piece and turned it into a scarf.  Tee-hee!  Deflected double weave gives great dimensionality to a woven piece!

This weave structure is referred to as "Marshmallows" Madeline van der Hoogt and "Cloudy Day" by the designer, Lynn Tedder.  The draft is available in Handwoven magazine, Jan/Feb 2001,p.62-67.  The squares of cotton on the scarf puff out and push in....I love it!

The concept of deflected double weave is still a bit mind boggling.  Essentially two layers of cloth are woven at the same time on the loom (that's the double weave part) and the two layers are next to each other.  Upon removal from the loom, the threads shift or deflect so they are on top of each other which creates the multi-dimensionality of the piece.   Additional interest can be created if the two layers are woven with felting vs. non-felting fibers.  A felting wool will not only deflect, but also shrink and can create amazing textures in the final pieces.

So far I've only woven two deflected doubleweave pieces, but I'm hoping to do more soon!


Just so I remember--I wound the dark purple warp threads on a fake second back beam.  I used the raddle for my Mighty Wolf to keep the purple threads separate from the variegated cotton ones.  The purple threads had a rod placed in the end loop of the warp, the rod was held next to a larger wooden stick, the the warp was rolled with paper as a separator.  I hung the sticks with the purple warp off the back beam and then added two cords with live weights (two 15oz cans of veggies vs. one smaller, perhaps 8oz, can of tomato paste for each cord).  It worked well!  Also, the dark purple threads are a recycled wool blend yarn.  It originally came to my house as a sweater dress.  I like it much better as a weaving yarn (even if I do have to ply it to give it enough strength for a warp!).

Making

What have I been making?  These days I'm making a fair bit of yarn, but I haven't been taking photos.  I'm preparing skeins for evaluation by the Handweaving Guild of America's Certificate of Excellence program.  Everything is due in September.  I am close and getting closer, but every step requires work, self examination, and more yarn.

In the mean time, I've done a few other things.  I made some felted flowers after my husband's grandfather passed away. They are supposed to be forget-me-nots...I felted them on to ribbon to use as bookmarks.  I used two techniques and ended up with three distinct flowers.  The upper left flower with skinny petals started with five separate petals that I then connected to make a flower.  The other two both started with a felted circle where I made five cuts around the edge to form the petals.  The petals looked funny right after they were cut--very angular!--but the edges felted nicely into petals.

I also warpped and wove a baby blanket.  This is from 10/2 cotton sett at 24 ends per inch.  The weave structure is an eight harness huck lace.  It was fun testing the weft color/pattern position combinations to see what I liked best.  The blanket was woven at ~27" on-loom, then washed and seamed up the center.  I used the darker yarn and added a single crocheted edge.  I did learn that my beat is irregular.  The weft stripes didn't line up properly in the middle of the blanket. Next time I'll need to measure my stripes!

Odds and Ends

 I've taken up a new fiber-hobby:  bobbin lace.  Like my lace knitting, this is one that requires time and concentration.  So far I have made two tiny samples--they aren't even considered true lace!--but they were neat to weave!

Bobbin lace is essentially weaving that is tensioned by pulling the threads against pins.  The manipulations of the bobbins creates the woven sections.

I've made some new little bags.  These are based on a tutorial posted at Sew Together.  They have a zipper at the top and angled sides so the bottom sits flat.  The one with the bright yellow zipper was my test piece made with commercial fabrics.  The other three are made with handwoven fabric from a network drafting sampler I wove recently.    The zipper insertions are all slightly different on the purple bags.  I like the look of the bag at the back best.

The Emperor's New Clothes

 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

 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! :)

Deflected Doubleweave

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.

Miscellaneous Collection of Stuff

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

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?

Rep Weave Sampler

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!

Rep Warp Challenges

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!

On and Off Again

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.

Finishing

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)

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!

Updates

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.

Walking Weaving

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

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.