Making the most of a demonstration warp

Most of us are not excited about table looms, particularly after we have woven on a floor loom for a while.  Sue Robertson seems as though she may be the exception to the rule.  Recently Sue warped up a table loom to take to the Nevada County fair so that people could try their hand at weaving.  As always with something like this, you never really know how long a warp to put on the loom.  Sometimes you get someone really excited about the process and they weave and weave.  Then again, sometimes no one really wants to dip their fingers into that world.  This fair it seems that people were interested, but didn't use up much of the warp, so Sue took the loom home after the fair and played and played.

The sample to the left looks a lot like rep weave and Sue did use a thick and a thin yarn.

Then, what to do with variegated yarns?  This sample proves that there can be interest.  This sample also shows the striping in the warp more clearly when Sue went back to white yarn.  Wouldn't this make a nice place mat?

 

In the photo below, notice the nice edge that the thick yarn makes along the selvedge.  Wow - give Sue a warp and let her imagination take off!

 



Wonderful Towels for a Great Charity Sale

Marcy has been weaving for a good cause  - a sale to benefit the Women of Worth organization located in Grass Valley.  She put on a warp for towels, wove some and when the warp ran out,  did something she had never done before, tied on a new warp to the existing one!  Bravo, Marcy.

 Here are a few of the towels from Marcy's four shaft loom.  Don't they look more complex than four shafts? 

Marcy said she has been using a  selvedge tip from the Anne Dixon book - The Handweaver's Pattern Directory.  On page 16, if you have a copy, she lays out a selvedge plan for balanced weaves.  She uses 12 selvedge threads on a four shaft straight draw.  Thread the four outside threads in single order.  Then, thread the next 8 threads as doubles.  Then sley these threads at double the sett of the rest of the cloth.

The photo above shows Marcy's optical illusion towel.  As the twill lines are reversed, the line ripples.  Pretty neat!

The towels in the photo below, were Marcy's entry at the fair this year.  I believe they received a well deserved ribbon!

 

 

 

Quilter's Throw Away - Weaver's Delight

Sue Robertson and her mother are both quilters.  I understand that quilters cut off the selvedges before they use their cloth and I suspect that most quilters throw them away;  not Sue and her mother.  She had a big bag of these treasures and put them into this handwoven runner.  Some were thicker than others and you can still see the writing on some of them, which makes this piece all the more interesting.  Hooray for finding a creative use for the quilter's throw away!