The Last of the Weaver's Poker Challenge



We are looking back for a couple of years now, when Not 2 Square Weavers decided to do the Weaver's Poker Challenge.  Sue R. drew the following cards for her challenge.  Double Weave, Variegated Space Dyed yarn, Fibonacci Sequence, Random Stripes & Blue. 

 Sue decided to dig into learning all she could about Double Weave before she attempted to work on her challenge. At one of our meetings, someone was giving away their extra copies of Handwoven magazines and Sue picked up the issue from Summer 1983 with a couple of articles about weaving double weave on a rising shed loom. 

Sue studied this issue for a while before she embarked on her double weave sampler which contains all the elements in the cards she chose. The photo below looks like the Fibonacci series to me. and naturally the color blue.

 

Then variegated weft for this sample, which I think is probably double width weaving with the opening in the center of the warp.

 

 

Then random stripes - this time a pouch stuffed with poly fill and then woven closed.

 

And more double weave fun that wasn't in the "cards".  A lace weave on one layer of the double weave.

 

 

A pouch which is open on one end with a bit of fanciful fringe - and hemstitched (how did she do that?)

 

 

 Some color and weave effects.

 

 

And finally, a bit of pick up.

 

 







This project was very much in the spirit of the challenge.  Learn something new and have fun with all the experimenting.

The Calcutta towel makes another appearance

Five years ago, Sue started on a journey to recreate a favorite pile towel from her childhood in Calcutta.  The whole family had the towels in different colors; they were bright and had pile weaves on both sides.  Sue really wanted to figure out how to weave them herself.  The first post about these towels appears here. 

Recently Sue dug out her draft and started weaving more of these towels.  No pile, you understand, but with the basic structure that you can see in the ends of the original towel.  The towels have a label that says they were woven in Calcutta - the pile suggests a factory weave.  We joked that maybe Sue should return to see if she could find the factory to see how they manage the pile.  Would the factory still be there we wondered.

Sue thinks that the original towel has alternating colors in the warp - which would be fun to try. 



I know you are dying to see the draft that Sue figured out.  Hours went into this relatively simple draft, but I'm not sure I've seen it elsewhere.

 

 

 

 

Here are the towels recently woven by Sue in colorful cottons to help her remember childhood memories in Calcutta.