Tale of an adventurous weaver

Dee Jones is an adventurous weaver who doesn't hesitate to use exotic knitting yarns in her warp or plastic bags as weft, should the occasion present itself.  In Dee's big bag of handwoven projects at September's meeting, there were some interesting surprises.  Dee loves to make handwoven bags and had been saving the orange wrappers in which her daily newspaper is delivered.  In the photo above, you will see the plastic bag weft puffing out at the selvedges in the log cabin design. Dee thinks that the handles are card woven - plucked from a long ago project; just waiting to enhance this bag.

Every year our local yarn store has a big blow out sale.  I have been guilty of buying a ball or two of this and that because it was so beautiful, but not knowing what I was every going to do with it.  Then it turns out you have all these odd balls that aren't enough for a project.  Dee has the solution.  She adds them as accent warps and leaves them floating free when she twists the fringe of the main warp threads.  This technique calls extra attention to their unique character.  Just take a look at  the exciting scarf pictures below.

She says the exotic yarns sometimes get caught in the heddles, but not as much as you might expect.  Dee warps from front to back and winds warps in chains of all the same yarn.  Then she designs her warp as she sleys the reed, dispersing the various yarns across the warp. 

 

Color Inspiration from Calendar Photos

Ingrid Knox has a big towel project in progress.  We were lucky enough to have the meeting at her home the other day so we could see what was on her loom and hear her plans.  She has a calendar with beautiful nature photos and plans to weave 12 different warps, all based on the colors from each of the 12 month's pictures.  She started out with December (see her blog for the color photo that inspired these towels)

Ingrid used an online random stripe generator to come up with the color sequence and a draft from A Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns edited by Carol Strickler.  For this series of towels, Ingrid used a dornik twill (pg 50) that was originally submitted by Dee Jones.  Dee is a member of our group - small world, isn't it?  Here is the draft for January towels and a couple of treadling choices.

September's photo was next with lots of golds, browns and greens.  This series of towels was woven with a twill tie up and different treadlings for some of the towels.

Here is September's draft.

Before we left, some of us checked out the towel in progress on her Cranbrook loom.  This one is being woven with a light blue weft and look at how it influences the stripe colors.

All of these towels are woven with 10/2 cotton, sett at 24 epi.

Stay tuned for towels, scarves and more from the September meeting.



Shadow Weave & a Bit of Theo Moorman

Betsy Abrams entered shadow weave pieces in the fair this year.  Her wall hanging has bead embellishments on the undulating twill design (click on the photo to get a better view) and is sporting a red ribbon.  Congratulations, Betsy.

She also entered several tencel shadow weave pieces.  Look at this striking design. I'm going to ask Betsy for the draft source so that I can share it with  readers of this blog.  I love her colors.

And, another red ribbon on this lovely shadow weave scarf/shawl.

In an entirely different weaving direction, Jackie Hervey embellished her cloth with a Theo Moorman fleur de lis.  I believe that this is destined to become a pillow top.  Theo Moorman is one of those things that if you can dream it, you can weave it (assuming you have the skills that Jackie has acquired.)

More Winners

Sue Habegger got a red ribbon on this beautiful top with the Theo Moorman motif.  Sue often utilizes selvedges as trim on her garments and is very successful at on loom planning.

Sue's yardage got a blue ribbon (well no surprise there because it is wonderful stuff).  I like the little jacket drawing she included with her piece.  On the side bar, you will see Sue Habegger's name.  Click on that to see previous posts about this yardage and the processes involved.

Several winners this year were white on white pieces.  Carol Phillips did an interesting scarf with a technique learned from Mary Berent.  She used a variety of weights of white cotton yarn, one after another in both warp and weft.  See how the piece undulates because of the varying yarn sizes.

  In another white on white piece, Gus Young wove a scarf from her handspun silk and Merino yarns.

 In the same vein (handspun yarn creations) Sharon Campbell got a blue ribbon for her handspun knit sweater.

And we have miles more to go with show and tell this month.  Stay tuned for more winners and a special Theo Moorman piece.