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.