Wednesday, September 20, 2017

What are We Weaving in September?

Fall is a time to get back to the loom.  Although September isn't really very cool here in the foothills, some of our weavers have been busy.

Mardi wove these colorful towels as part of an exploration in Rosepath.  She used a Lunatic Fringe kit with 10/2 cotton to create these bright colors.




Mardi also created these rainbow colored towels using cotton she bought from another fiber person selling part of their stash.  Here's her description of the project:

"I have a large amount of non-descript pale blue cotton yarn, which I suspect is about a 5/2.  It was the perfect yarn to experiment with warp painting .  I wound the warp into 2 parts, striping it with navy 8/2 cotton which I was planning to use as weft.  I laid both warp bundles out identically, or so I believed, and proceeded to dye them in a rainbow pattern.  When I beamed them on, I found that they weren’t exactly identical.  The finished result can be summed up as being “two in one towels”.  When folded in half lengthwise, you get two different colors, depending on which side is facing out.

Technicalities: The sett is 20 EPI and the PPI is about 26.  There are a total of 478 threads (I think, as I don’t seem to be a very good note taker). The width in the reed was 23.9 (including floating selvages) and the length on the loom was 34”, including allowance for hems. The finished dimensions are 28 3/4 “ by 19”.  The draft I used was Point Threading over 8 which can be found in Dixon on pages 80-81.

The biggest fatal flaw that I encountered was finding that the 100% cotton sewing thread that I used in the hems did not shrink at the same rate as the 8/2 cotton, which gave me some flare to work with when hemming."


Mardi's Dyed Towels with original yarn

Another view of Mardi's Dyed Towels 





































Mardi attended a Jane Stafford class on color and design.  She shared her lovely color samples with us.

Samples from Jane Stafford Class

More Samples from Jane Stafford Class


Eileen shared a poncho she made from fabric woven with sock yarn and black 8/2 tencel as the weft.  She was using up left over sock yarns in a random striping pattern.  The design is an undulating twill #219 in Carol Strickler's book, "A Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns".  

Eileen's Ponch

Eileen's Tencel Scarf 





















She also shared a scarf that was woven with 8/2 tencel in the warp and weft.  The weave structure was also from Strickler's book - #171.


Jeanne's Double Weave Color Study

Jeanne used cottolin in a double weave color sampler.  She is planning to weave placemats and used this color and weave piece to help pick out her favorite designs.


Ingrid shared a scarf woven with sock yarn in a point twill pattern.  


We are looking forward to more products of our looms next month. 

SaveSave

No comments: