Preparing a Vest...err Shawl...err Cocoon!

Remember this warp?

And these rolags?

It only took a week or two to spin and ply the yarn.  I plied on my Louet wheel, but the spinning was on my Majacrat Little Gem II.  

And here's the weft and warp together.  The warp was woven in less than a day.  I am amazed at the speed of weaving yarn this size!  (~14 wpi and sett at 8 epi).  Once off the loom, I sewed the edges with the sewing machine so they wouldn't unravel and then I fulled the fabric to make it more stable.

The goal now is to make this into a vest....I'll be busy tomorrow!

Tomorrow came and went, but the fabric never did make it to become a vest.  I ended up making a cocoon by sewing the narrow ends of the rectangle of fabric to the top long edge to make sleeves.

The seams are at the shoulders and top of the arms.

Here's the curve of the front.

This one is currently on display (and for sale) at Athens Arts Gallery in downtown Crawfordsville.  I must admit that I think it would be great if it sold... but if it doesn't sell, then it would be mine!  Deep sigh! It's such a challenge to put my work up for sale!

More Warp Twisting and a Finished Vest

Here's a photo of my warp from the last post.  Some of the raddle sections show twisting.  Some do not.  I don't know that I did anything different from one warp chain to the next.  If, or when, I figure this out, I'll let you know what I've discovered!

This is me in a newly finished vest.  I dyed and spun the wool for this piece, then wove it as a plain weave section  and a twill weave. I haven't been able to date spinning and weaving for this.  The twill section had it's ends woven in like I learned in Joan Sheridan-Hoover's finishing class at the Michigan Fiber Festival in 2007.  So I know this fabric was finished sometime after summer 2007...  But when did I spin and weave it?  I tried to sell it as yardage numerous times.  I often thought that the twill and plain weave would make a great vest, but it wasn't until I put the twill on the front (I kept trying to use it as a yoke) that I had enough yardage to proceed.

The inside of the vest is finished with hong kong seam finishings--bias tape over the edges of the fabric at the seams.  It looks neat and clean!  Now I just have to decide if it is really mine or if I'm going to put it in the gallery for sale.

24 Hour Scarf Project

I had a little bit of yarn left over from the Alaska (Kenai) hat I knit.  I added an old skein of handspun--it was spun from the same fiber that I used for the color base for the top and bottom of the hat (dark brown & green sections) and it worked well as a fill-in yarn.

The piece was about 6.5" wide on the loom and sett at 8 ends per inch.  I tried a couple different wefts--first a tan, commercially spun alpaca, then a dark green with specks of red and gold handspun merino.  The dark green merino was a very fine lace weight yarn.  I ended up using it doubled--it was closer in size to the warp yarns that way--and wove away.  The project was on and off the loom in less than 24 hours!  After washing it, there was an extra 24 hours wait for it to dry.

Now the hat and scarf are a set and get worn regularly. :)

Sheep-to-Shawl Contest

This year's Sheep-to-Shawl contest took place on Aug. 17th in the sheep barn at the State Fair.  The teams of spinners and weavers have four hours to transform washed wool into a woven scarf or shawl.  This year there were four youth teams making scarves and two adult teams making shawls.

As judges, we look at the drape of the piece and how it looks on a person.  That meant that we got to try everything on!  This shawl was from the "Serendipity" team and won first place for the adult teams.  The warp (pre-spun and warped prior to the contest) and weft are both Shetland wool.  The shawl was lovely and wonderful!

 Here is the entry from the "Dream Team".  This is a group of younger adults who had previously been on some of the Conner Prairie youth teams.  The undulating twill and warp colors were lovely!  They won second place.  Someone commented that the amount of work required for the shawls is soooo much more than for the scarves the youth teams make.  It's true.  The shawls are twice the width and about ten inches longer than the scarves. That takes a lot more yarn!

 the "Dream Team" (and a "Pirate" head off to the right)

 "Serendipity" with many of the youth teams visible in the back

 This spinner from "Serendipity" has a flick carder in her lap.  The "Serendipity" team all used the flick carders; the other teams used hand cards.

 This is the moment where the scarf is off the loom.  Any errors in the weaving need to be found and fixed.  The fringe finishing needs to be done and then it is turned in for judging.

The finished scarves from the youth teams.  From the left is the "Lady Bugs" (2nd), then "Silent Spinners" (1st), "Pirates of the Treadle" (4th), and "Wonder Wheels" (3rd).

One of the amazing things to me about this contest was the amount of process engineering that is required to know how to make this woven piece in a short amount of time.  As a spinner and weaver, I often fill a bobbin or two one week, ply them on another and weave with the yarns a few weeks (or years) later.  This contest requires all that to be done in just four hours!  The spinners never filled their bobbins.  They spun enough to fill a one inch section on their bobbin, and then changed bobbins so the plier could use the little bit they had just spun.  With four spinners, a plier, and a weaver it didn't take long before everyone was busy, busy, busy!  And, everyone was busy until the end!  Whew!  What an amazing process!

Progress--Knitted Lace Blanket Edging

Remember this piece of handspun knitted lace?  It just got a new home--on the edge of the handspun, handwoven blanket I made! 







I machine stitched two rows of straight stitching across the top of the blanket, cut the fringe close and carefully turned it to the back and sewed it down.  Then I added the knitted lace and carefully sewed it to the seam, making sure to cover the trimmed warp ends.

The blanket is pinned to the ironing board cover and each of the tips of the lace have been stretched (2.5" from the blanket) to show the pattern.  I had sprayed the lace edge with water before I pinned it out and sprayed it again once I finished pinning.  Now it's back to knitting while the lace dries.  I have a bottom edge that needs covering too!

Hanspun Wool--Bits and Pieces

 Summer is in full swing here at my house.  My kids are staying up late and getting up late and my quiet project time seems to have disappeared!

This bit of lace edging is one of my new projects.  I was able to knit during an episode of StarTrekVoyager last night (we've been watching them regularly as a family.  It's kind of fun to watch a show like this all together!).  I have to keep track of my progress row by row or else I get distracted and am lost.  I've also been using a "life-line" (it's the blue cord in the photo).  At the end of every complete pattern in the lace, I pull out the cord and thread it back into the new starting point.  So far I've only had to rip back to the life line once!

The edging pattern is from the book "The Best of Knitter's Magazine, Shawls and Scarves".  It was designed as part of a christening blanket by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts.  I'm using handspun, brownish-grey wool on Brittany 3.5 mm straight needles.  The lace is springy, stretchy, and as you can see in the photo, shows the lace stitches beautifully (even without blocking!).

The goal is to knit two forty inch long strips of the lace and use it as a blanket edging.  I wove two greens and a grey into some striped yardage recently and want to turn it into a throw blanket. 

The plan is to cut the yardage into two strips and to piece them together (dark green as the outer edges).  The knitted lace will help hide the raw warp ends at the top and bottom edges of the blanket.

We'll see how it turns out.  Right now they are just bits and pieces of a project in the works!

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.

All Because of Ellen....

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!

Handspun Scarves & Fab Four projects

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.

Handspun projects

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)

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!