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.