Did I mention sewing bags?

Really, I've only been sewing one or two or...

Last night I took a class from my local sewing store (Caldwell's) from a self-taught sewer, Kimberly Haskell. She sews pet apparel and, did you guess yet? Yup. Bags.

The design of this bag is cute, especially with the button accents and the box pleats. The thing that sold me on the class was the inside of the bag. Check out the pockets! There are pockets on both sides of the bag and there is a zippered pocket!

I love pockets!



The next question is: can I make these with my handwoven fabrics...and what fabrics would I use? :)

Weaver's Swap Complete!

My package from my Weaver's Swap partner arrived today! I was so excited I could hardly wait to open it!

It's a fully lined messenger-style bag. Right now it is loaded with a binder, a book, and a few miscellaneous things I need for a meeting tonight. I can't wait to see how it wears!

Many thanks to Dave & Benita who organized this swap, and thanks to my partner Lynn for a wonderful bag!

Weaver's Swap -finished object-

Here is a photo of the bag I made for my Weaver's Swap partner. The fabric is an amazing piece of double weave, and I worked hard to come up with a purse design that would work well with the wonderful squares.

After considering many possibilities, I went with a simple bag with dowel handles (they are square dowels! :). All the seams are covered with a fabric binding, so the bag could be turned inside out (the binding would show, but it goes well with the color scheme of the inside) to use the other side of the cloth.

I wish I had a picture of the inside to show you...but I shipped the bag off before I thought of it! :) Maybe Lynn will post a photo of the inside!

Treasure!

Last Saturday, when I found two more boxes of craft things from my grandmother hidden in my son's closet, I was not a happy camper. I thought I had moved all those boxes to my craft room. I thought I was starting to get a handle on things...

Two more boxes. Sigh.

I was a good girl. I took my two boxes out of my son's closet and took them to my craft room. I even opened the boxes and started going through the contents and putting the items where they will get used.

Some things went to my nine-year-old who enjoys sewing. She was thrilled to have her own tape measure (vinyl), measuring tape (metal), and hem marker (is that what the 6" rulers with a little slide are called?).

Some things I just looked at and could not fathom the bounty--Check out my current assortment of sewing needles. Can you imagine life with so many sewing needles? No more looking for the one or two needles in my pin cushion. No more counting needles as I prepare to come home from church activities with the girls to make sure I haven't left behind any of my precious yarn needles. --I remember reading stories of life in England during and just after WWII. A sewing needle was a precious thing--you could do so much, if only you had a needle.

And here I am with a treasure trove of sewing needles!

What am I to do with them all?!

A Little Bag

I have never been much of a purse/bag type of person. Yet, here I am, making bag, after bag, after bag!

This one is cute--it stands about 6" tall, and about that square. It's based on a pattern by Lazy Girl Designs (the Noriko Handbag).

The exterior fabric is the block twill sampler (8 shafts) that I made prior to weaving on the Baby Wolf. It's made from fingering weight acrylic knitting yarns. The lining and handles are "scraps" from my mother-in-law. The button is from my grandmother's button collection.

Anyone need a bag?

Huck Lace Shawl

The shawl is off the Macomber! This is a shawl woven from my "garage sale" yarn, and is the same yarn, the same sett, and the same structure as the scarves I wove earlier.
The shawl was wider on the loom than the scarves and it had lots more warp threads break.

Check out the close up photo of the shawl--I finally got a decent photo of the huck pattern! Can you see it? A column of diamonds alternates with a column of "spots".

It's pretty and it's subtle. Perfect for this gift!

I've Been a Little Busy

I was given the opportunity to weave a scarf on an 8 shaft Baby Wolf loom at Tabby Tree Weavers in Arcadia, Indiana.

What an opportunity!

My warp yarn (previously purchased from the shop and hand dyed by me) was wound, my pencil cases with scissors, and pins, and clamps, etc. were packed! I started warping the loom just after 10am (after a 1.5 hour drive!). The loom was warped and ready to weave just after lunch. Good conversation slowed the process, but it was so good to talk with another weaver!

There was one challenge with the warp color changes--a color change occurred in the middle of one of the twill blocks and it was very abrupt. It only took me two moments of staring at it before I took a deep breath, untied the warp from the front beam and set about to fix it!

I am pleased with the end result--the scarf is 100% merino wool and soft and cuddly! The yarn (warp and weft) is "pony" 100% extrafine merino wool --I think it's by Henry's Attic. And, I am pleased with the experience weaving with the Baby Wolf.

Garden Friends

This is the first year we have had zinnias in the front yard. It turns out that the butterflies love them! Yesterday we had a monarch and a zebra butterfly drinking from the flowers--the perched on the petals and went around the flower sipping from each of the little yellow inner flowers (oh, dear! My plant parts vocabulary is significantly lacking!).

Today these two beauties were out and about. I don't know the names of the butterflies, but they are beautiful to watch! We may need to plant zinnias more often!

Weaving Woes

Check it out! I've been having some challenges with my weaving. Do you see the position of the bar that holds my back-beam? It is set at a notch other than the very end. I have never intentionally done that until now! It turns out (thank you very much, Joanne Hall for your tips on improving Jack loom sheds!) that one way to get a better shed with inelastic fibers--rayon in this case--is to raise the back beam.

I discovered I had a problem with this warp (6-ply rayon, 20 epi) when every other pass with the weft was catching warp threads that were supposed to be down! Then I realized that the warp threads were rising (1/4" or so) off the shuttle track of the beater/reed when I depressed treadles.
Things are working much better now with the back beam closer and higher. I can't weave much--I have to advance every 1.5-2", but it works and looks great! There is a subtle check pattern (twill+broken twill) if you look closely at the photo.














Weaving Woe #2.

If you have two looms then you can have two woes, right? This one is a case of too much draw in for the poor selvage threads to handle. They are just getting scraped more than they can bear. I'm at the point where I am just going to weave as much as I can (I've stopped repairing the broken threads!) and cut it off the loom. It is supposed to be a shawl for a friend....but I'm not giving it to anybody until I take a good look at the edges....it might have to end up in the "fabric stash" and not in the good enough for a gift stack.

Wow! Weaver's Swap Fabric

My Weaver's Swap partner's fabric arrived today. Isn't it beautiful?!!

It is a double weave structure, with warp stripes and weft stripes, and the overall effect is stunning!

Now I have to figure out what sort of bag would best fit this beautiful fabric...and then make it! I love the filmstrip effect of the double weave squares...If camera bags were more fashionable, this could definitely become one!

Flax Seeds

All my flax is out of the ground. This is the batch that I pulled early in the summer. It's dry...I don't know if it's truly retted yet.

I want to keep the seed for next years' crop, so I used my old dog comb (they are such handy tools!) and combed the top of the flax to remove the seed pods.

It's easy enough to get the seeds out of the pod one pod at a time--just roll the pod between your fingers, let the hull and seed drop into your palm, then blow gently and the hulls blow away. I just haven't figured out how to do that on a larger scale! Here's to learning new things! :)

Misc. Fiber Things

My friend was given some llama fiber by her neighbor. She was so excited!! We picked out the longer locks, washed it, carded it, and blended it with some wool roving. I was pretty tired by this point! But the fiber nests spin beautifully!












This is my great aunt modeling her new vest. It's an 8-harness diamond huck lace pattern with bamboo warp and weft.
















This was my "short vacation" project. A pair of mittens for my growing three-year-old. The yarn is a commercial wool/silk blend.













And this is a project for a friend. She won some alpaca fiber at a fiber festival last year--it is beautiful and soft!! The goal is to spin the fiber into a yarn that can be woven with the two blue yarns. What kind of yarn will that be? At this point I haven't decided! It may be a straight two ply alpaca; it may be cabled with the blue yarns...

More Hanspun Thoughts

Sharon Alderman has a chapter on "Crepe Weaves" in her book Mastering Weave Structures. "Physical crepes"are woven with a "very highly twisted yarns woven in plain weave, set openly enough to allow them to collapse and crinkle when the cloth is wet-finished".

That sounds like my handspun yarn--a highly twisted single! And the end result--fabric that was rough and bumpy!

Sharon's solution? "...if the highly twisted yarns were set very closely, tracking did not occur. (The threads had no room to collapse.)"

So, do I have enough yarn left to try a closer sett? I'd love to know if this would work!

As an aside: I can tell that I am growing as a weaver. The first time I looked through this book, it didn't interest me. Now, I am reading it carefully and learning lots!

Handspun Singles as Warp

I left my camera at a friend's house early this week and missed some great photos! This handspun single (natural brown, 36 wpi) was dipped in a gelatin solution while skeined, allowed to dry, then wound into a cone. The gelatin is referred to as "sizing" and helps protect the yarn against abrasion and wear from weaving.

The yarn looks well behaved on the cone, but as loose warp threads it was like a pot of curly ramen noodles!

The warp was slow to thread because of the curliness of the yarns and one thread broke because of a glob of gelatin that wouldn't pass through the reed, but other than that it was straight forward to warp.

My project: the same huck lace that I did earlier with the pale orange yarns and plain weave. I was looking to see how the single would behave as both warp and weft and how the single would effect the final fabric.

I sett the warp at 18 epi, and wove without measuring my picks per inch, but it's pretty close to a balanced weave.

The plain weave looks great! There is just enough variation in the handspun single to make it an interesting fabric (although it's rough and scratchy--maybe it's time to spin a softer yarn!). The huck lace portion (Upper fabric in photo) shows more deflection than the plain weave part, but I can't see the lace! The fabric may need a second wash--or the hairyness of the wool single may keep the yarns from deflecting enough to see the lace! All in all a very successful experiment! :)

Box Bag II

This is my second attempt at making a box bag. I added a tab at the end of the zipper (a suggestion on someone else's blog) and made the lining separate from the bag. I topstitched the zipper for the outside fabric and connected the lining all at the same time.

I like having the finished seams on the inside. It's much nicer than the first version with raw edges.

But, there are still a few more tweaks I would like to try. 1) Would it be better to attach the zipper to the lining first (rather than to the outside)? 2) What sort of interfacing (if any) do I need? 3) Can I make the bag bigger?

My goal? A box bag pattern that will work with my handwoven fabrics!

Box Bag Bonanza

I know I already posted once today, but my husband is home and played with the kids and put them to bed (he's been gone on a business trip this past week), and I got to play!

I am looking for a container for some drop spindles. Neither of them are very large--7-9" shaft length--but they are a gift for a friend and I have been trying to come up with something nice to put them in.

Enter the world of Box Bags. Caro of Split Yarn has some beautiful box bags. I want! I want! But, they are more expensive than my budget for this project, so I searched for sewing tutorials, and found one!

Kelly of Dragon{knit}fly has a nice tutorial about how to make a box bag. It worked great! This bag starts with some 12"x16" rectangles of fabric, and creates a finished bag 7" long x ~4" square. My toy wheel drop spindle (10 1/2" shaft) pokes out the top, but otherwise fits great!

One of the challenges with this tutorial are the inner seams. See how the stitching is visible on the inside of the bag? I'd like to figure out a way to have finished seams. Some folks have used bias tape to cover the seams--it works, but there must be a more elegant way!

Even with my seam issue, I am pleased as punch with my new bag! Hmm! Depending on the fabric that my swap partner weaves, maybe I could make a box bag from her handwoven fabric!! :)

Huck Lace

This huck lace scarf is an 8-shaft pattern from Carol Strickler's "8-shaft patterns" book. Can you see the patterning?

Weaving huck lace with fine threads (the warp is 44wpi, the weft over 50wpi) is a bit like weaving the emperor's new clothes. If I look at the cloth on the loom just right I can see the texture. If I blink it disappears!

Wet finishing loosens the fibers enough that the pattern shows up beautifully--it's a very delicate overall pattern...and I can't see it at all in this picture!

I have a few more yards of this warp on the loom. Hopefully it will weave as beautifully as this did!

What a difference!

Check out the differences in these two pieces of fabric! The top one has a dark blue weft; the lower one a grey. The top one is one side of the fabric; the lower one shows the other.

Such differences--front/back, dark/light weft!

The dark weft fabric is for the Weaver's Swap. The grey weft is for me! :) I wonder what I will make?

More "Happiness Is..."

Happiness is a garage sale find. My children and I often walk to garage sales in our neighborhood. Today there was one that advertised a knitting machine and yarn. I grabbed a bag "just in case" I found yarn.

And boy did I find yarn!

Two boxes of clean yarn in beautiful colors and weights. Most of the fibers are cotton/poly blends and many of the yarns are fine--20/2, 16/2 etc.

I am a happy camper!

And now I need to finish some weaving so I can warp with my new yarns!! :)














One more piece of happiness: the roving I'm spinning is turning into a yarn that looks like flowers!

Dye Strike

Kathleen Taylor's "Yarns to Dye For" has some interesting methods for dyeing variegated yarns. I tried one last night. It didn't turn out quite as expected!

The dye was an acid dye (for protein fibers) and was a mixed color--blue dye and yellow dye mixed to give a deep bluegreen.

The method: wind your yarn in a loose (oops. Mine wasn't loose!) ball and immerse in dye bath. Every few minutes, pull out a few yards of yarn.

The result: My handspun wool yarn is now a beautiful robin's egg blue. It has subtle shading, but no overall variegation. (The idea is that the end that is pulled out of the dye bath first is pale and the end that is pulled out last is very dark.) Also, the blue dye obviously struck first--I added some rovings after the yarn was out of the dye bath and they are more green.

An interesting note: one of the rovings I added was a natural brown. It successfully picked up dye, so I know it can be overdyed. Unfortunately, bluegreen dye on brown looks sickly...it's a very creepy, witchy color to me! The photo below is out of focus but you can see some of the blue in the brown. What you can't see is the green that is also there! Eww!

I think I'll keep that one and see if it doesn't find a use around Halloween time!