January Meeting on a Stormy Tuesday

It was pouring rain for our meeting at Sue's home but enough of us braved the weather and were so happy we had. Sue had hot apple cider and cookies ready and we got a tour through her living room studio to check out what was on her looms. Dish towels are being woven on the loom in the picture above. Sue gave us a tutorial on how she ties on new warps and saves time by not having to sley the reed and thread the heddles.

This loom is one that Sue built when she attended classes in Espanola, New Mexico. She learned a tapestry technique there and has woven many wonderful wall hangings and rugs on this loom. You can see one of these pieces on the wall to the right of the loom.

Sue wove the cloth for this top some time ago, but recently sewed it into a top for summer wear. On the back are two of the same rectangular motifs.

Marcy got inspired to weave another scarf after finishing up her contribution to our gift scarves we wove around the holidays. This one has some rayon chenille in the warp and a glitzy yarn she picked up at a guild raffle. Very festive.

Jackie brought this alpaca shadow weave shawl and we all agreed it is a spectacular piece. The pattern is from Marian Powell's 1000+Patterns in 4,6 & 8 Harness Shadow Weaves. This particular pattern, for those readers that have the book, is 4-17-2 on page 134. Jackie added her own touch to the pattern by threading some of the darker yarn into stripes between the motifs. These stripes are in plain weave.

Here is a closer view of the cloth.

Sue R. has her scarf done from the brown bag exchange and will be twisting the fringe. Watch for it this next month because I will borrow it to take photos and post a copy of the draft.

A Start on Next Year's Scarves

Igor finished his scarf after the deadline, so it will be put away until Christmas 2010. His yarns came from the bag that Dee brought to the exchange and he used some of almost everything in the bag. There were two red rayon threads -- one was about 16/2 and the other probably 8/2. There was a bright red mercerized cotton of about 10/2 weight and a fine black rayon thread. All of these were used in the warp. Igor added a black mohair and metallic novelty yarn as one of the warp threads and used 10/2 black bamboo for the weft.

The finished scarf is very long and 4.5" wide. The warp was 4 yards in length and 5" wide in the reed, sett at 30 epi. He wove it very slowly to make sure he wasn't beating too hard so the resulting scarf has lots of drape. He used a crepe tie up from his weaving files but doesn't remember the source and it is likely that he has tweaked it a bit.

Merry Christmas

Marcy's Christmas cards this year. Aren't they festive!


Diana wove Christmas stockings for each of her two grandchildren. Keepsakes they will always treasure.


Have a great holiday -- hope Santa brings you lots of weaving goodies.

Scarves for giving #8

Ingrid ran out of time to weave her scarf with yarns donated by Igor, so she knitted this bulky scarf for a lucky teenager.

We have a couple more scarves that are still on the loom (they will be destined to give away next Christmas) Once they are done, I'll post pictures and drafts for them as well.

Scarves for Giving #7

I (Beryl) got my yarns from Jackie. In my bag was a cone of yellow rayon boucle. I used this for the warp, sett at 20 epi. The weft is Sari silk for the plain weave picks and the same yarn as warp for the basket weave picks. A finer yarn would have been better for the basket weave picks.

Sometimes I did more than two picks of the Sari silk to make the striping more interesting.

I found the draft for this scarf in Weaver's magazine #12. It was used for a baby blanket on the back cover of that issue. In the draft above, the red picks are shown double to emphasize that they are heavier yarn -- you don't actually do two picks in each shed.

For my next scarf, I picked two more yarns from my bag. There was a chestnut brown rayon boucle and a finer beige rayon. I combined these with three other pink tone rayon and novelty yarns for the warp. I warped all five threads at once, separating them with a rigid heddle paddle. Then, I used an 8 dent reed and put four fine threads in one dent and the heavy novelty yarn in its own dent. The weft was a rayon single that I had overdyed a dusty pink.

This is a very long scarf -- finished length is 106" plus another four inch fringe on each end.

I found the draft on Alice Schlein's blog some time ago and have been looking for a reason to try it out. Alice suggested a random threading, but I used the same thread sequence throughout the warp, which gives a subtle diagonal stripe to the finished fabric.

Scarves for Giving #6

Dee's yarns came from the bag that Gus brought to the exchange. The bag contained a really special wool in a saturated red, which Gus had used in a lap robe project (shown in a previous post). When our group looked at the yarn we decided that there may have been some silk added to the wool, because it was really lusterous and very soft.

Dee's choice of draft was a two block twill design. She made two long scarves and one short one (a preteen size) on the same warp and used the red wool as her weft yarn. Her sett was 20 epi.

Dee used two different treadling sequences for her scarves. The draft that follows shows the regular tromp as writ treadling and an alternative treadling of 1-8/ The twill blocks done red on red are more visible with the light playing on the surface of the cloth than the photographs indicate.

These are stunning scarves in just the right color for Christmas and winter cheeriness.

Scarves for Giving Post #5

Carol got her brown bag yarns from me (Beryl). For this first scarf, she used a painted wool/rayon and rayon/cotton pink ribbon for the warp and some of her own pink rayon as the weft. The structure is plain weave. This is a light, delicate scarf in a fabulous shade of pink.

Carol used the same painted wool/rayon yarn in this scarf, but this time she made use of it in both warp and weft. The striping was a naturally occuring feature. The structure is plain weave.

For her final scarf, Carol chose two different yarns from the bag. One is a cabled variegated silk in shades of wine, green and blue. She combined it with a loopy mohair in almost the same colors. She was inspired to do the window pane design by "Night Windows" scarf in Handwoven's Design Collection 19 Loopy mohair creates the window frames in both warp and weft.

This is an opulent scarf, with lots of length and multiple ways to wrap and wear it.

And more scarves #4

Jackie's brown bag contained yarns donated by Carolyn. There were several balls of cotton/wool in lovely colors of blues and turquoise and some mohair with long repeats of color. Jackie used the cotton/wool sett at 8epi for her warp yarns and the mohair as weft. The color repeats in the mohair yarn worked perfectly - what an elegant look!

This is the draft for the mohair scarf.

Since there was cotton/wool yarn left over, Jackie went to her stash and pulled out alpaca for the second scarf. This scarf was sett at 12 epi and the cotton/wool is used for color stripe accents along with the brown alpaca. The weft is all alpaca and will surely make this a favorite scarf for some lucky person.

Here is the four shaft draft for the alpaca scarf. Notice what reversing the points in the threading does for interest in the finished scarf.

Christmas scarf #3

Marcy got her yarns from Igor's brown bag which contained pink ribbons, pink wool/rayon singles, and several shades of spring green cotton and wool yarns. She mixed them in the warp and used a variegated rayon chenille for the weft yarn -- which contained many of the warp colors.

Her weaving draft was taken from an old publication of helps and hints compiled by the Handweaver's Guild of America and is called a double rosepath. She sett the warp at 15 epi and dented it 2-1 with the heavier yarns in their own dent and doubling the finer ones.

The design is very subtle because of the variety of colors used in warp and weft. The fringe was left untwisted to show off the colors used in the warp.

The chenille makes this a very touchable scarf, which will be sure to please the wearer.

This is the draft used and the extension of twill lines, gives larger diamonds than a regular rosepath draft.

Scarves for Christmas giving #2

Diana wove this big, warm scarf using the yarns that Marcy brought to the brown bag exchange. The warp is an 8/2 or maybe 10/2 cotton in navy and was sett at 12 epi. Diana added some red cotton stripes to the warp and then used a 1/3 twill draft. The weft is a loopy acrylic blend in navy.

The scarf is fairly wide -- maybe about 12", so it lends itself well to being worn as a shawl.

Diana added extra red threads to the fringe to give the dark navy fabric a bit of spark.

Here is another dramatic way to wear this very versatile winter scarf.

Scarf for Christmas giving #1

In the spirit of giving this year, our group is weaving scarves for teenagers in foster care. In that same spirit, each weaver will share the details with our readers. This scarf was woven by Gus using yarns supplied by Carol. The pink/purple is 6/2 cotton, the green is an 8/2 green rayon slub and the black was a 3/2 cotton from Gus stash. Gus used the Fibonacci sequence for her stripes and reversed the sequence in the middle of the scarf.

The scarf measured 6" in the reed and the sett was 12 epi. The length of the scarf is 60" and it has a 10" twisted fringe on each end. Below is the draft that was used.

This is an elegant and very fluid scarf and I'm sure its new owner will love wearing it.

November meeting part 2

Jackie brought yardage to the meeting that she hoped to turn into towels for Christmas gifts. The original color of the yardage appears in photo number 1. She was disappointed that the colors weren't as vibrant as she hoped, so we did a photoshop overdye of her cloth to see what might happen in a dye bath. Photo number 2 is a yellow overdye, photo 3 is magenta and photo 4 is green. I think that number 2 and 3 are probably fairly accurate renderings of what an overdye of the cloth would look like. I'm not so sure about the green filter because the red still shows as red, but it is interesting to play with a photoshop technique before you actually commit the fabric to the dye pot.



Jackie also brought this luscious chenille shawl destined to be sold at Shawls Unlimited (they called it Night Shadow). It is a big shawl, with perfectly twisted fringe that would make the ultimate in a luxury gift. The warp and weft are rayon chenille.

Sue H. wove this yardage and is still thinking about what it will become. The main part of the yardage is the blue in the top of the photo, but I wanted to show some of the colorwork at the end of the piece. Will certainly become something wonderful.

Sue has also been weaving towels for sale. Here are several from the stack she brought to show. Sue weaves a couple of towels, cuts them off the loom and then ties on a new warp with a new color sequence for a fresh look.

What we are up to this fall

At a meeting this past August, we decided to weave scarves for teen age foster kids in our county that would be given to them as gifts during the holidays. To make it a bit more of a challenge, we set up an exchange of yarns hidden in brown paper bags. Each weaver was to use at least one of the yarns in the bag to weave one or two scarves. Using up to 50% of one's own yarn was permissable.

At the November gathering, several people were done with one or more of their scarves and some people had woven scarves for the gift giving that weren't part of the brown bag exchange. So interpersed with the show and tell from the November meeting, some of these lovely scarves will be on display here along with pertinent information on the draft, yarns used and problems encountered.

The scarf shown in this post was woven by Diana. She painted a neutral colored cotton chenille skein at a local dye workshop. The scarf was woven using the painted yarn as warp and the unpainted neutral as weft. And what a stunning, soft scarf it is. Diana washed and dried her scarf and was dismayed that the twisted fringe wormed. She did some research and found a suggestion on the web about braiding the fringes rather than twisting them -- which is the finish she settled on. We all agreed that the teenager that gets this scarf will love wearing it.

Stay tuned for more show and tell from the November meeting. I plan to keep the blog posts shorter and hopefully more interesting to our weaving readers.