Snow Day

We had to do a bit of last minute planning on where to hold our April meeting.  Snow -- yes, snow was falling at our planned meeting location.  Some of us are prepared for such weather -- some of us aren't.  We were lucky that Ingrid agreed to host the meeting.  She lives at a bit lower elevation and it was simply raining a bit at her house.  Everyone managed to make the meeting except for Sharon, who had made a trip to California and was really hoping to join us.  The snow made her flee back to Nevada -- where it was snowing too!

Jackie H. brought in two new shawls that are light in weight and will make stunning summer wear.  The yellow shawl shown below is in a cotton and rayon mixture.  Someone will find this a fantastic light wrap for a summer picnic or a walk on the beach.    Jackie thinks the weave structure may be idiot's delight -- but couldn't remember for sure.

Her next shawl is a two block twill with some of the twill blocks outlined in a darker color.  This gives the shawl an optical appearance of being embossed, even when it is not.  This shawl was woven in cotton and silk.  The weft is a very fine boucle cotton and the shawl is as light as air.   

Gus brought in the shell that she sewed with the handspun silk yardage (in one of last month's posts it was still on the loom).  The shell is lined with a fine batiste and is ever so airy and light.  The variations in the handspun silk make this a very elegant wearable.  To do it justice, we really needed Gus to model it and maybe that can be arranged for a future post.

Stay tuned for more posts about our Snow Day meeting.

Handspun Silk on the Loom

The March meeting was at Gus home and since the group always likes to check out what is on the host's loom, I thought I would start with these pictures of her current warp.  This is handspun silk, folks.  Both in the warp and the weft.  Gus spun this silk over the past five years and gathered it all together for weaving yardage for a shell top.

Look at the waterfall of blue silk over the back beam.  Simply gorgeous.  

The picture below is more of the silk waiting to be woven.

 

Gus showed us a pillow that was pieced together from samples she wove in a deflected double weave class.  The pillow backing and the piping are handwoven plain weave to coordinate with the pillow colors.  The different designs are simply the reverse side of the cloth put together in a traditional nine patch design.