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.