Paper Bag Basket

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

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

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!

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.)

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

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!

Advanced Twill/Point Twill Scarf

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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!