A Very Special Baby Blanket

Jackie needed to weave a special blanket for a member of her family who was having her first baby.  Since the couple wanted the sex of their baby to be a surprise, the mother was requesting pastel colored items that would suit either sex. 

 

In my stash, I had a five pound cone of heavy, white cotton chenille, won as a door prize at CNCH 2007.   I offered it to Jackie to use as much as she needed for a couple of baby blankets.

 

Jackie dyed some of the chenille yellow and used a pale yellow cotton warp. 

Jackie found a blanket she wanted to use in Favorite Scandinavian Projects to Weave by Tina Ignell.  On page 94 is a Heart Blanket with Weft Loop Patterning.  Then she looked online and located a giraffe photo which she converted to a graph to make her loop pick up design, rather than the heart shown in the project. She alternated the white and yellow chenille when weaving the blanket - I believe that the border loops were yellow and the giraffe was white. Sadly for the weaving group, the baby shower had passed and all Jackie had to show was a photo of her blanket and a couple of small samples.

 

Because the book mentioned above is very expensive now, I tried to find another resource for the weft loop patterning technique.  I couldn't find anything, but if readers of this blog know of one I hope they will share it. Here is a tip; Jackie said that the weft loop patterning had to be done in short lengths at a time because wrapping over a long dowel made it next to impossible to pull out the dowel to leave the loops.  I believe she used a series of shorter dowels to make the process manageable.

 

 

Two Blue Scarves

One of the challenges the Not 2 Square Weavers gave themselves for this year, was to experiment with chenille.  Almost (if not all) of us have this yarn in abundance and we know we need to get over our fears about worming and start weaving with it. 

Diana Abrell brought this scarf to our latest meeting.  She used a 10/2 cotton warp, with supplemental warp threads in wool and rayon (the pink threads) sett at 20epi.  The variegated chenille in blues, was in a skein which had to be wound into balls.  The structure is plain weave, with floats every few picks for the supplemental warp.  No worming!

Now for Dee Jones' story about her scarf.  Jackie brought lots of embroidery floss as a give away to our group.  Dee used some of her skeins of blue in the weft of this scarf.  Here is what Dee says about this scarf:  "The embroidery floss was used as every other weft. Alternate weft was ringspun rayon, same as the warp. 16 skeins were used for a scarf 6 1/2" x 64". (7" in the reed, by probably about 70" measured on the loom."

Here is the draft from Anne Dixon's Handweaver's Pattern Directory, it is on page 76, the first pattern

It's All About Chenille

There is chenille and then again there is chenille.  Sue Robertson was shopping through magazines for weaving project ideas and kept coming upon articles that showed you how to weave chenille yarns for another project. It almost seemed like a "sign" that she should undertake this task. She and her mother are both quilters - so there were abundant fabric scraps and Sue had this and that leftovers of acrylic yarns.  So the first step was to cut everything into strips and put on a widely spaced warp.  Sue said the threading for the warp wasn't a straight draw, but she didn't have her original draft, so we will have to guess what it was.  The weaving is straight forward and the results are in the photo below.  

This photo is a good one to enlarge to look at the details of the weft in this rather solid and weighty piece.

The next step is to cut lengthwise  between the warps with a rotary cutter and voila, you have chenille yarns.

The last step will be to weave this handwoven chenille into a rug.  Twice woven and twice the fun.

Because I was interested in finding articles about this process, I went through my stash of Handwoven, Weaver's and Praire Wool Companion magazines.  I'll bet the directions can be found in Spindle, Shuttle and Dyepot, but I didn't get those out to look.  Here is a little bibliography for those of you who may find yourself with stash that is too good to throw away, but not good enough to weave with. Turn it into chenille!

Beck, Ulrike. "A Pile Rug in Handwoven Chenille". Handwoven. Jan/Feb. 2008: pp 36-39.
Gaustad, Stephenie. "Do-It-Yourself Chenille". Handwoven. Sept./Oct. 1992: pp.62-64.
Piroch, Sigrid. "A Plushy Mat for a Cat". Handwoven. Sept./Oct. 1996: pp. 53-55.
Xenakis, David. "Yarn for the Weaving". Prairie Wool Companion. Issue 7: p21.

While we are on the subject of chenille, Gus Young showed us her masterpiece in progress.  She had two different weights of white rayon chenille yarn.  After winding warp chains alternating both yarns, she soaked them in soda ash and painted them with fiber reactive dyes.  The darkest threads are teal - then she just kept added more water to get a lighter and lighter color.  This is the backbone of a chenille shawl - weft will be teal rayon and cotton.  The loom is a Gilmore (of course)!

An interesting feature of this photo is the way Gus has tied bouts of her warp to the back beam using texolve heddles.  She loops texolve around a dowel tied to the back beam and then knots bouts of her chenille and forms a larks head  around that knot to secure it to the back beam. 

During the meeting we talked about fringes on a chenille piece.  Most people twist them first before washing.  We are always on the lookout for good ideas, so if you (reader) have any good tips, please add them to our comment section.