Three End Block Rug and a Rag Rug on the Loom

Wendy-Marie took a class from Jason Collingwood at CNCH in 2015.  He introduced her to the three end block weave.  Block one is threaded 1-3-2 and block two is 1-4-2.  Recently, Wendy-Marie took what she learned in the class and created a wonderful rug on her Gilmore Gem loom.  The warp was linen and sett at 4 epi.  The warp and sley technique are a bit unusual.  It is sleyed 1-2-1-2 in the reed, with two ends acting as one when two ends are in one dent.  This adds extra stability to the rug.  The weft is wool, doubled.

As you can see in the photos, the colors reverse on the two sides of the rug.

 

 

The next photo is a rag rug being woven by Jackie H.  She has an amazing flair for elegant rag rugs.  In this rug she is using old blue sheets and white stripes from a bath towel as the weft yarns.  Jackie uses 12/2 seine twine in her warp. Her loom is amazing too - a wonderful countermarch Toika that she has been weaving on for many years. 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

Entries from the Fair

Several of our members entered woven items and handspun in the County Fair this year.  I realized I forgot to photograph the hand spun but here are the woven entries.  

Several items woven by Betsy, including two table runners, a rug, shawl and scarf.

 Dee submitted various items including yardage, a scarf, a jacket sewn by her daughter using Dee's woven yardage and a shawl.  One of her scarves won the "People's Choice" Award.

Diana's entries included a scarf and two towels.

Ingrid submitted a scarf and two towels.

Marcy entered a huck placemat and dresser scarf.

 

 Sue H exhibited her tablecloth and fiesta placemats.

Sue R entered an inkle band, small towel, small basket and a vest. 

Rug for the Mud Room

Jackie brought another amazing rug to our meeting on Tuesday.  She wove this rug for her mud room and you won't believe the effort that went into this stunning piece.

First of all, the materials used in the rug are from worn out T-shirts, polo shirts and other knit tops from her family.  She designed her weft plan and then put it on a spread sheet to calculate how long each knit strip should be and when to sew in a dark piece for the meander pattern in the rug. That's right, each strip was calculated individually.

Jackie says she would never use red in her household furnishings, but since she had the red rug warp and it was going into the mud room, she went ahead and used it.  She didn't expect that the rug would swallow the red color so completely.  Yes, it does alter the overall color and appearance, but it certainly doesn't look red.

She encountered a few problems with various knits stretching differently and wasn't too encouraged that the rug would be flat, but somehow after it went over the breast beam, everything was nicely tamed.

 

She had more warp and more knit strips, so she wove two smaller rugs to go with the large one.  No dark pattern, but they are still interesting because of the varying fabric colors.

 

Special Rug and a New Shawl

Way back in December, Gus showed us this rug that she wove for her daughter. Gus keeps rovings for spinning in a spare freezer and started digging around to come up with weft for an all brown rug (her daughter's requested color).   It was woven on her Gilmore loom with a 4 epi linen warp;  the roving completely covers the warp.  It  weighs a lot, so she got rid of plenty of roving.  To finish the rug, she put it in a bathtub, got it wet and stomped on it.  Her daughter was thrilled with the present and Gus may actually have room in that freezer for more roving.

At our last meeting, Gus brought in her latest shawl in which she used up odds and ends of lots of different luxury fibers.  She used an 8 shaft draft that Ingrid shared with the group.  It is a 1/1/1/1/2/2 twill  (see our drafts section).  The colors are gorgeous and the hand is wonderful. 

August Meeting Part 2

Carol's towels are both woven with a variegated slub yarn. Notice the amazing plaid created when the yarn crosses itself. The towel on the left has a lot of texture and is a waffle weave structure and the towel on the right is plain weave. However, because of the thick and thin nature of the yarn it also has a lot of texture.

Carol's beautiful huck scarf won a first prize. This was woven with Carol's two ply handspun yarn in angora and Merino. She used two different sources for the yarn, so there is a slight color variation and she alternated colors in both warp and weft to give a uniform appearance to the scarf.

It was hard to capture the colorful beauty of Carol's multi-color shawl. But I was so surprised when I held it up to the light in the picture below and found this glorious pattern that isn't so easily seen without the light going through it. The structure is again, huck lace, but it so different from the scarf in appearance. The warp is a rayon blend and the weft also rayon.

Carol used space dyed yarns for this wool plaid blanket. The weave structure is plain weave and the variation in the color of the yarn again gives great depth to the finished blanket.

Gus wove this rug after a workshop with Jason Collingwood a year ago. It now resides in her kitchen -- and what a beauty it is. The warp is linen and the weft is wool. Look for details of this rug in a future blog about finishing touches.

Gus wove this colorful red, black and white lap robe for an antique car that she and her husband restored. Gus used an 8 shaft advancing twill from a draft by Bonnie Inouye. I'm going to try to get pictures of the lap robe and the car together for a future blog post.

It's Really Spring

What a show and tell we had for our April meeting. Jackie has been busy weaving for her new travel trailer. She brought two bound weave rugs that she wove last fall and have already been put into service in the trailer. The warp yarns are cottons from her stash, and what lovely colors they are. The thick weft is wool and similar to a felted roving. Jackie says she has washed one of the rugs and there was no problem with the cotton and the wool behaving differently. These rugs lay perfectly flat on the floor and are beautifully finished. We were all very impressed.



Dee brought a towel to the exchange last fall woven from this draft. Jackie's interpretation was woven with boucle yarns in the warp and weft. The texture is much like a terry bath towel. The two colors of green come from the structure showing one face and then another with the different shade of green weft. This is a great draft and can be found in Handwoven Issue 141 pg. 56

Sue H. was commissioned to weave towels for someone with a new kitchen decor. The recipient wanted something to match her new granite counters and specifically asked for white, black and gray. Sue's idea was to pop the color with a bit of turquoise, but deferred to her friend's color choices and wove this stunning waffle weave towel. The design can be found in the Design Collection No. 5: Dish Towels (Handwovens Design Collection Series) which is now, unfortunately, out of print.

Ingrid has been very busy experimenting with her new 24 shaft AVL. Her first warp was threaded on a 16 shaft point. This towel and the one that follows are from the same warp. She also wove some in all white, which are lovely but don't photograph easily.

Diana also has a "new to her" 8 shaft Mighty Wolf loom. For this series of napkins, she got down under the loom after each napkin and changed the tie up. What a variety of patterns can be woven on a straight draw threading.

Here is a sample from my most recent Baby Wolf warp. I used fabric shown in the picture for a Complex Weavers sample exchange. The remaining warp was used for napkins for our weaver's exchange in June. Different colored wefts were used for the napkins and I'll photograph those when we do our exchange in June.

Dee showed a special vest, which couldn't be photographed until it has appeared in a magazine article later on this year. It's a real beauty -- but you'll have to be patient. We will tell all later. Also, Marcy had napkins in progress on her loom but I forgot to get a picture. We will see them in June.

See everyone in May!