The Weavers School

Diana and Ingrid were fortunate enough to be able to attend Madelyn van der Hoogt's Weaving School on Whidbey Island, WA last October.  It was an excellent experience for both of them.  It was five days of weaving on the many looms the school has already warped and ready to go and lectures.  They both came away with samples.  All of the samples were woven on eight shafts (except one) in mostly 10/2 cotton.

They wove some of the same samples.  The first is Atwater Swedish Snowflake Twill.  This is an advancing twill.

Swedish Snowflake - Diana



Swedish Snowflake - Ingrid

Diana liked this design so well, she wove several towels and a seat cushion in this design. 



Diana's Seat Cushion

Diana's Towel version

 

 

 












Two different samples included overshot in the design.  Diana wove a sample that was a blended draft of overshot and lace.  Ingrid wove an overshot gamp that was also a color and weave example.

Blended Overshot and Lace



Overshot Gamp

There was a doubleweave color window sample that Diana wove.

Doubleweave Color Windows

Both weavers wove a sample of collapse fabric.  Diana, a Circle and Star design and Ingrid, a Deflected doubleweave, mosaic pattern.

Circles and Stars - Flat and Collapse

Deflected Doubleweave - Mosaic Pattern

Another design using wool and cotton was the Blocks in Rosepath Order.

Blocks in Rosepath Order

Blocks in Rosepath Order

Diana got to weave a sample of Beiderwand.  This is a form of lampas.


Beiderwand



Beiderwand Detail



There were several lace designs.  This one was huck, playing with colors.

 

Sherbet Runners in Huck Lace

Ingrid was able to weave this bright sample in Summer & Winter.



Summer and Winter

The school has several draw looms.  One is set up to weave a sunflower pattern.  Another, a shaft drawloom, to weave a Figured Double Weave sample. This is an abbreviated version of the intended sample.  

Figured Double Weave

One final sample was woven on a Louet Megado computer dobby loom.  It was a Network Draft design.

Network Draft

It was an extremely fun and interesting experience.

Weaver's Poker Challenge - First Contestant Diana A.

The group decided to undertake a challenge last year.  In our version of Weaver's Poker, we came up with options for five different attributes of a handwoven project:  Structure, Yarn Fiber Type, Color, Color Relationship and Design Element.  All of the N2S's who participated drew a cards from grab bags containing the five different aspects.  Each person had the flexibility of discarding one of the attribute cards.

Diana was the first to finish her project.  She describes the project as follows:

For our weavers’ poker project I drew the following cards:

• Color – Black and White
• Color Relationship – Complementary colors of similar value
• Design – Stripes
• Pattern – Rosepath
• Yarn – Metallic

I decided I could not have black and white and also complementary colors. Since I have wanted to try to weave something in black and white, I decided to discard the complementary colors card.  I decided to weave a scarf as my finished project.

I didn't want to buy any yarn as I have a huge stash that needs to be used, so I found some soft white super wash merino (about 2060 yd/lb), some black 18/2 wool/silk, and some grey 10/2 bamboo.  I did buy a small spool of 3-ply metallic embroidery thread.  I warped these yarns in a random order with random widths, 10” in the reed expecting it to shrink down to about 8”.  The sett was 16 epi for the merino and 24 epi for the wool/silk, bamboo, and metallic. On the warping board I made sure these fibers would fit my sett plan.

I used the white merino yarn for the weft. To incorporate the Rosepath structure, I wove 2 bands of dusty rose (probably wool) about 2 inches from one end of the scarf and 3 bands of the same near the other end.  Treadling was all plain weave except for the Rosepath bands. I finished the scarf with hemstitching and a loose fringe.

 

 

To keep my selvedges even, I used a weighted “faux temple” system.  This uses two weighted clips rather than the traditional “toothed” temple.

 

 

 

I was not entirely happy with the finished product. It is a little stiff, and probably too wide.  It only shrunk ½” in width. (Maybe the temple system worked better than it should have.)  Using Twill the structure would probably have been a better choice than plain weave in order to make the scarf more drapeable.

If I wove this scarf again, I would make it narrower, use a twill treadling, and a finer weft yarn.

 

 

October's offerings - napkins, shawls and towels

Diana spent a large part of her summer in Maine this year. Her daughter and her family live there and her daughter's inlaws have a summer lake cabin. Diana noticed that everyone was reaching for paper napkins and paper towels while staying at the cabin and decided that what was needed were cloth napkins - each different so that people knew which one was theirs and could use it for several days. When Diana finally arrived home, she set up her loom to weave 12 napkins. Her four shaft draft came from the Handweaver's Pattern Directory by Anne Dixon and is Overshot:  Small Honeysuckle on pages 104-106.

Some of the napkins have an alternating tabby and some do not.  The dozen serviettes are destined to be Christmas gifts; what a great way to introduce using resuable over throw away.

Betsy brought a shawl she wove using bamboo in a shadow weave design from Marian Powell's 1000+ Patterns in 4, 6 and 8 Harness Shadow Weave.  Betsy's shawl is an 8 shaft design with a lovely feel and drape . Isn't shadow weave just the best!

Gus wove a shawl as well. The warp is ramie and silk (mostly silk) and the weft was cotton. It is now for sale at the Shawlsunlimited website where it is called Silver Lake Blues.  The 8 shaft draft for this shawl came from A Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns edited by Carol Strickler, page 52 #206.

Ingrid was weaving towels in preparation for selling at the Winterfaire craft show.  Since the show is now at the end of October, she decided that maybe pumpkins were better than Christmas trees (although she made both).  Here are two styles of pumpkins and they were a big hit at the sale (but so were the Christmas trees).

There are six of us in the Not 2 Square Weavers group that will be selling at a double booth at the Lake Wildwood Craft Faire in November. Lake Wildwood is a gated community and the sale is primarily for residents.  We have high hopes that even bad weather won't keep folks away! Several of us that sold at Winterfaire experienced what it is like to try to sell handwovens when there is a record rain falling outside  and the parking lot is flooded.  Umbrellas might have been popular!

Christmas scarf #3

Marcy got her yarns from Igor's brown bag which contained pink ribbons, pink wool/rayon singles, and several shades of spring green cotton and wool yarns. She mixed them in the warp and used a variegated rayon chenille for the weft yarn -- which contained many of the warp colors.

Her weaving draft was taken from an old publication of helps and hints compiled by the Handweaver's Guild of America and is called a double rosepath. She sett the warp at 15 epi and dented it 2-1 with the heavier yarns in their own dent and doubling the finer ones.

The design is very subtle because of the variety of colors used in warp and weft. The fringe was left untwisted to show off the colors used in the warp.

The chenille makes this a very touchable scarf, which will be sure to please the wearer.

This is the draft used and the extension of twill lines, gives larger diamonds than a regular rosepath draft.