Linen and Lace Details

It is somewhat hard to photograph lace weaves, especially in situ and in florescent light. But here are a few examples of what we're weaving.

8-shaft huck diamonds

Bead Leno

Handm Manipulated Laces

Alphabet Bronson Lace

4 Shaft Bronson Lace

Basket weave with tabby border

Linen and Lace Workshop

Sue

Several of the Not2Sq group are taking advantage of a workshop with Suzie Liles of the Eugene Textile Center. The topic is Linen and Lace. All of the warps are using linen and a lace structure of some variety.

Gus

It's a three day workshop - mostly weaving round robin.

Diana

Dee

Betsy

 The drafts included huck lace, bronson lace, basketweave, swedish lace, and hand manipulated lace. There were 4 and 8 shaft designs.

A Tour of Gus' Studio

One of the great things about our meetings is that we get together in each other's homes.  So, in addition to sharing what we are working on; brainstorming weaving problems; and stretching our brains around group challenges, we can see the spaces we use for our weaving.  Each person's area is unique. Many of our group have the luxury of a dedicated room or area for weaving.

Gus has a combination guest bedroom and weaving studio. Sometime the weaving takes over and when guests arrive she has to do some shifting to find the bed.

Gus is working on lap blankets for the Holiday Cheer project for this coming December.  These will be two blankets. The first is already finished.  The warp is cotton and the weft is a verigated chenille. It is fairly fine (see detail in picture below).




(If I was a good note taker like Beryl, I would have remembered more about this piece.) 

It does look pretty nice.  Gus used some slub cotton for the yellow stripes.  That yarn turned out to be not strong enough for warp yarn.  She paired it with a perl cotton thread and it worked great.  

Some of Gus' Stash

Gus is VERY organized.  Nice storage, well labeled.  Hmmm, maybe she can help me with my organization.  She's pretty creative.  She has an unused chest freezer in the garage that she used to store roving.

She obviously can find what she's looking for quickly. 

Gus in her studio

It is always nice to have company while weaving.  I'm not sure how much time Carl spends helping Gus, but I'm sure he's good company.  This rug is an example of the many woven items in Gus' Studio.

Weaving at Joanne Tallarovic's Studio

detail of  Carol's rep weave using print yardage as weft

Way back in January, we had our monthly meeting at Carol Phillip's home.  She had taken a  rep weave class with Joanne Tallarovic in Arizona.  It turned out she was the only student and so it was a chance to get some in depth knowledge about rep weave and its possibilities.  Carol says Joanne has a whole house devoted to studio space, so it was a real luxury to work with the master in her surroundings.

Carol wasn't sure what to take with her to the class, so she brought some colorful printed cottons.  Igor is holding up one of the pieces she wove during her stay in Arizona.  It looks like three different fabrics were used in this piece.  Joanne has a procedure for cutting her fabrics and getting them to line up in sequence during the weaving process so that the original fabric design shows through in a blurred representation of the original cloth. 

This is a towel woven with sewing thread and 8/2 cotton.  It is wonderfully flexible cloth and not at all what might be expected with rep weave.  Joanne specializes in rep weave clothing and the fabrics Carol wove in her stay with Joanne are very suitable for use as yardage.

If you aren't familiar with Joanne's work, her book Rep Weave and Beyond is a fabulous introduction.  However, when I looked for copies I saw that it is no longer in print and used copies are very expensive. This is a good book to see if your guild library owns, or maybe borrow a copy through interlibrary loan. 

Special Rug and a New Shawl

Way back in December, Gus showed us this rug that she wove for her daughter. Gus keeps rovings for spinning in a spare freezer and started digging around to come up with weft for an all brown rug (her daughter's requested color).   It was woven on her Gilmore loom with a 4 epi linen warp;  the roving completely covers the warp.  It  weighs a lot, so she got rid of plenty of roving.  To finish the rug, she put it in a bathtub, got it wet and stomped on it.  Her daughter was thrilled with the present and Gus may actually have room in that freezer for more roving.

At our last meeting, Gus brought in her latest shawl in which she used up odds and ends of lots of different luxury fibers.  She used an 8 shaft draft that Ingrid shared with the group.  It is a 1/1/1/1/2/2 twill  (see our drafts section).  The colors are gorgeous and the hand is wonderful. 

Fabric Analysis of a Handwoven Towel

As a child, Sue spent several years in India.  While she was there, the family bought some handwoven towels (made in Calcutta).  Each one was a different color and they used them for beach towels.  Sue still has her towel, and despite a little wear and tear, it is still functional.  She set out to analyze the weave structure so that she could recreate something similar on her four shaft loom.  The towel has pile, so she isn't going to attempt that on the first trial but says maybe that will come later.

Here is Sue's thread by thread analysis.

It will be great to see how she does with the re-creation and I'll be sure to add it on to this post when it is completed.

April 17 Addition to the towel story.  Here is the first sampling that Sue has woven from her analysis of the towel from Calcutta.

I think that this is an accurate draft for the towel.  I have interpreted it in two blocks and separated the blocks with color changes.