February's News

Well, I didn't get to the February meeting but I heard through the grape vine that it was cosy and informative. Many of us were dealing with weather that was dumping a ton of snow in our back yards. Even though the snow is inconvenient at times, we really do appreciate the water for our forests and wells.

Since I didn't have a chance to take pictures at the meeting, I thought I would share a couple of things that are happening with our local weavers. JoAnn has a new shawl on Shawls Unlimited. JoAnn loves weaving shawls and scarves and although she and I collaborated on a handspun shawl several years ago, this is her first solo item on the site. Good luck with the new online selling venture, JoAnn.

During the past few weeks I have been working with two other fiber artisans to put together a new market on the 1000 Markets site. It is called Fiber Alchemy . We are a market of fiber afficianados who make textiles from scratch; handweavers, a nuno felt artist, a needle felt artist and someone who makes felted bowls and trays. Knitted and crochet items may be featured in the future, but will not be the main emphasis of the market.

I've spent some time catching up with our own member's blogs and see that Ingrid is cutting up tee shirts that will be weft for rugs that have special meaning to her. Sharon's blog has a great post about an unexpected windfall of wool - ready for spinning. It looks like almost too much of a good thing but Sharon carried off the challenge like a pro.

Until the March meeting rolls around, keep those looms and shuttles busy so that we have lots to share and talk about.

Weave Meeting January 20th

The weather was beautiful for our January get together and we had a great meeting of show and tell and a little glass drying experiment with handwoven towels to end up the day.

Dee brought in a new shawl that she wove with some of her handspun mohair and a decorative ribbon. The ribbon laid perfectly flat without twists in the shawl. Dee said she put it in a dent with a finer thread of rayon and didn't fuss with it during the weaving.

Dee also had a nice piece of yardage she hopes to make into a jacket.

Diana brought a couple of napkins she had recently completed. She used a draft from an e-book she downloaded. Top Ten Towels on Eight Shafts One of her napkins had hemstitched edges with a small fringe; the other had a machine stitched hem. I think I liked the hemstitched edge the best.

Here is a detail of the cotton and rayon chenille scarf in shadow weave Gus brought to the meeting. Shadow weave seems to be a good structure for chenille because the floats are small, diminishing the tendency of the chenille to worm.

Ingrid took us downstairs to her weaving studio so she could show off her new AVL Computer Dobby loom. She has her first warp wound on the beam and is threading heddles. The weaving width on this sweet loom is 36" -- just perfect for scarves, towels, shawls etc. Her main Cranbrook loom is off to the right in the photo.

Brand new weaver, Paulette, has woven a series of goose eye twill dish towels. The warp is white and she used a different color weft for each towel.

Paulette also brought in this scarf, which she considered a failure as a scarf because it was too heavy and dense. She used a novelty suede type yarn for the warp and a nylon fuzzy yarn for the weft. I thought that it might make a cute purse and someone else suggested using it as a table runner. Anyway, it was a very interesting piece of cloth and we were glad she brought it for us to think about what went wrong and how it could be utilized in a way other than she originally intended.

This is Paulette's very first weaving project made under the tutelage of Gus. It is warp and weft rayon chenille with a touch of gold metallic in the warp. With such a success as a first project, we think that Paulette has quite a future as a weaver.

Ingrid showed one of her Christmas towels. They are of fine white cotton in plain weave, with a rosepath row of Christmas trees on one end. We feel that these are not belated 2008 Christmas towels, but a good head start on Christmas 2009!

Sue H. shared her ideas about doing a strip woven garment. She wants to weave up some denim colored cotton yarns she has in her stash and sew a casual jacket. She showed a very interesting picture of a jacket found in a catalog that she is using for inspiration.

Sue R. has her loom warped and is weaving her first towel. We convinced her to use some of her warp to weave napkins for our May exchange.

Igor and I jointly wove off a warp of mixed cottons using the bumberet and ducape drafts shown in the previous post. I used the warping paddle I bought from Kerry and warped 10 mixed cotton threads at one time. The towels contained 8/2, 10/2, 16/2 and 20/2 blue and green cottons I had in my stash. When one yarn looked like it was going to run out, I threaded a new one into the paddle. I'm finding the technique works well on my warping wheel, but is more difficult when using a warping board. The angle at which you are approaching your warping device seems to be the determining factor in how easily you can transfer the cross from the paddle to the warping board.

The meeting ended with a rather unscientific attempt at seeing what fiber and structure types make the best dish towels. We tried a mercerized cotton, unmercerized cotton, cottolin- unmercerized cotton and all linen. Most of our towels left lint on the glasses we were drying which was something I didn't expect from the linen towel. My favorite towel was woven with an unmercerized cotton warp and a cottolin weft. It really dries dishes and hands quickly. I also liked a finely woven towel in unmercerized cotton which fits into glassware easily. We tried out a very closely woven twill towel of unmercerized cotton. It was much too dense a fabric to soak up water easily, telling us that the weave structure and sett are very important . If you have done your own experiments to determine the best fiber and structure for towels, please feel free to share your ideas in the comment section.

Next month's meeting discussion will be about selling your handwovens. We will be interested in venues, pricing and marketing tips.

Ducape and Bumberet

Ducape Draft



















Bumberet Draft


















At the weave meeting today, I passed around some towels I wove using these drafts. I converted my drafts to 6 shafts, so that I could thread and treadle a straight draw, but here are the four shaft versions. The original drafts are found in The Weavers Draft Book and Clothiers Assistant by John Hargrove from 1792. This publication was the first weaving book printed in the U.S.

Bumberet is a nice ribbed fabric in which both sides are similar in appearance. Ducape has an all over irregular texture - both sides are different.

For more information see Handwoven #140 pages 54-56 and Weaver's # 14 pages 10-12.

Snowed In

We were suppose to have our weaving group meeting today, but winter finally arrived a couple of days ago and many of us are still digging our way to plowed roads. Snow was a very welcome sight.

Happy Holidays!

The Great Handwoven Towel Exchange of 2008

At the exchange meeting, I started out with the best of intentions to photograph the event all the way through. But, I got distracted by all the beautiful towels and didn't get good pictures of most of them. However, I did come home with six wonderful towels myself, so I'm rounding out the photos of the exchange with close up pictures of those I chose. Most people -- maybe all of us, didn't weave all the same towel for the exchange, so we were all like kids in the candy store with more choices than we had towels to exchange



Detail of one of Gus' towels.

Close up of Marcy's Green M's & W's Towel -- Four Shafts

Gus holding up one of Dee's towels. The draft came from Handwoven Issue 141 pg. 56.

One of JoAnn's towels in peach and aqua - four shafts.

JoAnn holding up one of Diana's towels in a color and weave design. Four shafts.

A detail of one of Ingrid's huck lace towels.

Gus holding up one of JoAnn's towels.

Gus examining one of Dee's towels.

A detail of one of Diana's towels -- four shaft huck.

Marcy picking one of my towels. 20 shaft twill.

A striped towel woven with mercerized cotton by Marcy. Four shafts

For the napkin exchange in May I may solicit several photographers to get the job done right!

A clean well lighted place for weavers

Weavers need friends -- maybe more than other artisans. We work alone for the most part and what we do is fraught with problems. Often we have as many failures as we do successes. For several years, a group of weavers in my area have been meeting on a monthly basis to share our mutual joy and frustrations.

I've had this empty blog for years, having signed up so that I could post to other people's blogs. It occurred to me that it would be a good place for our weaving group online meeting place. Several of our members can't come to meetings because they live too far away or work for a living. So, this blog is dedicated (for now) to an online meeting place for show and tell and updates on what we are doing.

Stay tuned for the November Towel Exchange. I've got some pictures, but want to be able to show a sample from everyone's offerings before I post.