Nevada County Inspired ... and more!

 For the past few years, Not 2 Square Weavers have been giving a cash prize for the best "Nevada County Inspired" textile.  This year's winner is Ingrid Knox with this gorgeous shawl woven from Nevada County alpaca yarns.  Some of the yarn came from a ranch Ingrid and her husband found while  out "garage sale-ing" and the light colored yarn came from Lola's Loom (BJ Forester's alpaca herd)  The design is threaded M&W's and the tie up is a twill. 

Now for the rest of Ingrid's entries.  (She was pretty busy this year)
Scarves - sock yarn for warp and weft, woven in plain weave



 

Handspun scarf - Mardi Nayton's handspun Merino yarn for warp and alpaca for the weft. 8-shaft point twill with a 2-2-1-1-1-1 tie-up

Left photo:  Baby blanket - mixed cotton warp woven with synthetic baby yarn in the same twill 2-2-1-1-1-1 as is done in the SF towel.
Right photo:  Summer Shawl - Mixed warp and a slubby cotton weft (Cotton Kisses from Plymouth). Structure is plain weave. 


 

Left photo: Rosepath towel - 10/2 natural cotton warp and a 10/2 variegated cotton weft. 8-shaft rosepath design

Right photo: San Francisco Towel - 10/2 perle cotton for warp and weft. 8-shaft point twill  tied-up as a 2-2-1-1-1-1

 

Stay tuned for our last fair post -- coming in a few days!







Simple Twill - Fantastic Shawl

Sometimes the most elegant textiles are based on a very simple woven structure.  This alpaca shawl woven by Jackie Hervey is sumptuous - everyone at our meeting agreed.  The photo is unfortunately not nearly as impressive as the shawl!  The shawl is woven with two natural colors of alpaca from Henry's Attic and features diamonds with plain weave centers! 

Jackie found her draft in A Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns edited by Carol Strickler, draft number 97.  The original draft is credited to Christian Morath and found in A German Weaver's Pattern Book. 1794-1810.  However, when I tried to find it at the Handweaving.net, I could only come up with something similar.    Anyway, if you want to weave your own spectacular shawl, here is the draft that Jackie used.

From 24 shafts to Plain Weave!

Ingrid is branching out and starting to design  drafts to use on her 24 shaft AVL loom.  She is a member of Complex Weavers and has joined the study group called "24 More or Less".  This group exchanges woven samples and drafts once a year.  The criteria is that draft and cloth must use at least 17 shafts; no limit to the maximum number of shafts.  Here is the sample that Ingrid wove for the exchange.  The warp and weft are 10/2 cotton and the warp has two colors - champagne and natural which gives the cloth an extra  visual depth.  The draft is an Ingrid original. 

In order to weave the exchange samples, Ingrid needed to weave off the warp that had been on the loom for an extended period of time (months, a year?)  There was enough warp for a table runner in snow white.  Won't this look great on someone's dining table!  I believe that this is a 16 shaft design.

Jackie is fond of using Alpaca in shawls and scarves.  In her stash she had an array of odd balls from previous projects so she  set out to combine them into scarves.  Using a 2/2 twill, she designed these two lovely pieces.  They were almost feather weight - but will be so very warm because of the Alpaca fiber.

Sue Habegger spent several years in Espanola, New Mexico, studying Chimayó-Style weaving.  She built  her own walking loom that was sturdy enough for the weft faced rugs and wall hangings she was learning to weave.  This type of weaving is somewhat more strenuous than Sue likes to do these days, but she managed to finish up this wonderful wall hanging with a design inspired by a textile seen on the internet. Black is not a color Sue usually uses, but it is quite effective in this piece. 

 

There are still several  more things to share in my next post about March's meeting.  As I write this, it snows.  Nevada county has certainly had its share of winter this year and we can hardly wait for spring!

And more scarves #4

Jackie's brown bag contained yarns donated by Carolyn. There were several balls of cotton/wool in lovely colors of blues and turquoise and some mohair with long repeats of color. Jackie used the cotton/wool sett at 8epi for her warp yarns and the mohair as weft. The color repeats in the mohair yarn worked perfectly - what an elegant look!

This is the draft for the mohair scarf.

Since there was cotton/wool yarn left over, Jackie went to her stash and pulled out alpaca for the second scarf. This scarf was sett at 12 epi and the cotton/wool is used for color stripe accents along with the brown alpaca. The weft is all alpaca and will surely make this a favorite scarf for some lucky person.

Here is the four shaft draft for the alpaca scarf. Notice what reversing the points in the threading does for interest in the finished scarf.

Dog Days of August

Well, have you ever seen a cuter dog than Carl? Carl was the greatest greeter ever at Gus' home for our August meeting. He made each person feel totally welcome and everyone got an invitation to throw the ball for him.



Our group had such a lot of show and tell after the Nevada County Fair, that I'm dividing our meeting post into at least three separate posts so that readers will be sure to get all the glorious details from a fantastic meeting.



Diana brought this towel that she entered at the fair. She wanted to combine two different weave structures -- in this case huck and plain weave into one piece. Her colors are fabulous and we all agree this would be a perfect drying towel because of the open structure of the huck. Her one problem was that the plain weave didn't draw in as much as the huck leaving the selvedge with a slight bulge in the plain weave areas. We finally decided that there wasn't much she could have done about it except perhaps to use a finer thread in the plain weave sections. If anyone has ideas for Diana, please post them here.





Ingrid brought a sample for the napkins she is weaving on her new 24 shaft loom. The sample is 16 shafts on a point threading. She used a sett of 32 epi, but says she is beating at 40 ppi. We all thought that the sample looked great and didn't think that the sett needed adjusting. The napkins will be so fine and delicate. I think the cloth would make a fabulous christening gown and someone suggested wedding gown fabric.



Jackie brought two new shawls that she will be selling at Shawls Unlimited. The shawl in the photo above has a ring spun rayon warp. Jackie combined several different colors and weights of rayon and if you were to be so fortunate to see the shawl in person, you would see how much the slight color variation in the warp threads adds to the interest of the shawl. The weft is white alpaca and since the shawl was slightly weft faced, Jackie used 10 ounces of alpaca. This is a large shawl, worthy of cold weather wearing, if we should ever again be so lucky.






Jackie's other shawl is 100% alpaca. It is a two block twill design and the alpaca yarn uses is mixed gray and white. In a stroke of genius, Jackie outlined the changes in the twill blocks with a dark gray stripe. The overall effect (which is completely lost in this photo) is of a Navajo rug design.

This is blog post one of our meeting. I will put up another post in a few days because I still have lots of photos to edit. Hope I don't forget details about weave structures, etc.