Nevada County Inspired Part 2

 A couple more Nevada County Inspired pieces were woven by Not 2 Square weavers.

Mardi Naytons inspiration was a wonderfully designed twill towel.

I took this photo on a morning walk down my road.  The colors were a summer inspiration that led me to weave this towel.

 

 

 Eileen Lee designed and wove this lovely twill block shawl.  We don't have the inspiration for this post, but the shawl speaks for itself.  I believe the photo attached says "Nevada City in the Fall" and the colors certainly reflect that. 

Textiles at the Fair

Eileen submitted a number of pieces this summer, including several scarves.  The award winner was a variation of overshot.  She used indigo dyed hand spun yarn for the blue and white scarf .  A third scarf was woven with tencel.

  

Eileen's Indigo Dyed Scarf

Eileen's Scarf

Eileen's Tencel Scarf

She entered a shawl.

Eileen's Shawl

She also submitted household items - a huck towel and overshot table runner.  

Eileen's Towel

Eileen's Table Runner

A bag and yardage round out Eileen's entries.

Eileen's Bag

Eileen's Yardage

Betsy entered two rag rugs. 

Betsy's Rag Rug

Betsy's Rag Rug

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She also entered a hand towel woven with twill blocks.

Betsy's Towel

Betsy also entered a doubleweave table cover and a bag.

Betsy's Handwoven Bag

Betsy's Table Cover

There's lots of talent in the group.

From Not 2 Square Looms

  Weaver's are always on the lookout for new ideas, new structures, new ways to use color and texture in their projects.  Here are a few relatively recent projects by our members.

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 From Wendy-Marie's Loom

These scarves are part of on-going play with the patterns offered in Denise Kovnat's "Echo and Jin" workshop. The teal scarf is an 8-shaft pattern called "Chakras." The warp is tencel and 10/2 perle cotton, the weft is 20/2 perle cotton, sapphire. The sett is 40 epi. Denise strongly recommended that we avoid white, as it tends to cancel out the other colors. I think the silver tencel in this scarf had the same tendency, so the scarf is interesting but not iridescent as I had hoped.

 

The second pair of scarves are made using a 4-shaft Kovnat pattern called "Blooming Leaf." Again, the sett was 40 epi. The left hand one had a purple 10/2 cotton for weft, the right was made with fuchsia 20/2 perle cotton. Of the two, the fuchsia weft produced a lot more iridescence. 

 

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Ingrid's Projects

Several Not 2 Square members are working on our local fiber guild's challenge.  We were given three colors and were challenged to create a fiber project using those colors. I got forest green, navy and turquoise and wove towels using those colors with some others.  They were made using 10/2 cotton for the warp and weft.  The structure was a regular/irregular point twill on 8 shafts. I  was also participating in another guild's challenge: weave something with colors inspired by a national park poster and this project satisfied both challenges.

 

 I also finished the linen towels I wove as part of another guild’s challenge.  16/2 linen for warp and weft for most of the towels, although 2 were even with 10/2 cotton.  The design is an 8-shaft huck.

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Betsy's Current Project

Betsy is weaving a lap blanket for someone who needs a bit of warmth while she is in church.   She is using the intended recipient's favorite colors - teal and magenta in warm wools. The structure is an M & W twill. After this blanket is completed, she intends to use an orange weft on the next one. 

 

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Eileen's Adventure in Wet Finishing

 I don't remember where I found this draft, possibly online.

 

The yarn is from Webs - Colrain Lace - 2/10 Merino?Tencel.  The floats were too long, particularly on the back side.

 

On the Loom 

 

I normally wash my woven products in the washing machine on the gentle cycle and cold water.  Well, in this case, the yarn felted a great deal and was perfect as the floats felted together and are not now problematic.

Subsequently, I always wash all products with this yarn by hand.

 

Off the loom and after wet finishing

More from the County Fair

Jeanne, Eileen and Betsy are our next three entrants to be showcased here.  Jeanne entered two scarves.  One was made starting with a painted warp.  The second used Theo Moorman techniques she learned in a workshop this spring.  

Jeanne's Painted Warp Scarf

Jeanne's Theo Moorman Scarf

 


Eileen had an indigo-ikat dyed warp that she used for her Nevada County Inspiration entry.  She also entered another shawl, a scarf and yardage this year.

Eileen's Nevada County Inspiration Shawl

Eileen's Scarf

Eileen's Shawl

Eileen's yardage

Betsy entered two rugs a towel and an interesting wall hanging using wheat as weft material.  The wall hanging was also inspired by the Theo Moorman technique.

Betsy's Rug

Betsy's Rug

Betsy's Towel

Betsy's Wheat Wall Hanging

There are few more people we will show off in the next post.

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. 

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