Experimenting with New Techniques and Materials

The June meeting was a little sparse of attendees, but not of things to be shared. 

 

 

Sue Robertson showed us the results of her class work at CNCH 2013 at Squaw Valley.  She took Marilyn Romatka’s Viking Knitting class and created a beautiful necklace.  This technique is also called “Viking Chain Knitting” or “Viking Weaving” but isn’t really knitting.

    

She also took Wendy Patrucco’s Cyanotype Printing class and created two different printed pieces of fabric and a printed canvas bag.

  

The third class was Knotted Button Covers with Mushroom Dyed Silk taught by Gayle Still.  Her button was about half finished. 

 

 

Marcy showed us a table runner she wove as a challenge to use linen.  The warp was 8/2 white cotton and the weft the blue linen shown in the picture.  The design is an M’s & O’s pattern on 4 shafts.

 

 

 

She used a blue floating selvedge that created a very neat edge for the piece. 

 

Betsy is working on a five-piece collection of wall hangings/shawls that represent the four elements and the moon.  She has been working on the water element.  She showed us a shawl woven with tencel in an 8-shaft shadow weave pattern.  There are different color blue warp stripes with silver and blue as weft.

Here is some detail of the shawl.  It is very reminiscent of water. 

Betsy also showed us a sample where she played around with a black weft that was woven in treadle order.  It is really quite striking.

Betsy has started working on ideas for the earth piece.  She brought a sample of what the structure of the piece will look like.  This one was woven with 5/2 cotton.

Finally, Ingrid showed two lap robes woven with local llama yarn.  These were done in 3/1; 1/3 twill stripes. 

She also showed us her latest sock yarn scarf - merino wool and nylon yarn.

 

Catching up

I've got some special pictures in my meeting folders that need sharing. So this post is a little gallery of recent projects from the Not 2 Square weavers

Here is Betsy's shadow weave shawl; she made two and traded a loom for one of them!  The directions are in Handwoven, Issue 158.  I believe that Betsy used bamboo for her shawls and added a border that wasn't in the original directions.  The one she brought to the meeting was gorgeous.

And - another striking scarf from Betsy's loom.  This has a couple of shots of novelty knitting yarn every so often.  What a good idea!

Here is a pairing of tick-tack-tow placemats and napkins from Diana's loom.  The placemats are double weave pick up from Jean Scorgie's  Weaver's Craft #21.  Diana and I were totally baffled by the instructions for the pick up, but finally e-mailed Jean to get an explanation.  Once explained , Diana finished weaving the four mats and then designed a huck lace pick up design for the napkins. 

Ingrid is working her way through the twelve months of a colorful calender, using the colors for each month for a series of towels.  These are April towels and sitting next to them is a pine needle basket that Gus is working on.  She is just zooming along with baskets these days and they are looking really nice.

To end up our gallery showing we have an homage - or could it be un hommage?  Dee bought one of Ingrid's towels (the middle piece) and was so taken with the color combination that she wove a scarf (on the far right) and a shawl (on the left) using the same color combination.  Dee refers to her inspiration as an homage to Ingrid's original piece.  Dee was correct in thinking that color combination was worth repeating, don't you think?

Shadow Weave & a Bit of Theo Moorman

Betsy Abrams entered shadow weave pieces in the fair this year.  Her wall hanging has bead embellishments on the undulating twill design (click on the photo to get a better view) and is sporting a red ribbon.  Congratulations, Betsy.

She also entered several tencel shadow weave pieces.  Look at this striking design. I'm going to ask Betsy for the draft source so that I can share it with  readers of this blog.  I love her colors.

And, another red ribbon on this lovely shadow weave scarf/shawl.

In an entirely different weaving direction, Jackie Hervey embellished her cloth with a Theo Moorman fleur de lis.  I believe that this is destined to become a pillow top.  Theo Moorman is one of those things that if you can dream it, you can weave it (assuming you have the skills that Jackie has acquired.)

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!

January Meeting on a Stormy Tuesday

It was pouring rain for our meeting at Sue's home but enough of us braved the weather and were so happy we had. Sue had hot apple cider and cookies ready and we got a tour through her living room studio to check out what was on her looms. Dish towels are being woven on the loom in the picture above. Sue gave us a tutorial on how she ties on new warps and saves time by not having to sley the reed and thread the heddles.

This loom is one that Sue built when she attended classes in Espanola, New Mexico. She learned a tapestry technique there and has woven many wonderful wall hangings and rugs on this loom. You can see one of these pieces on the wall to the right of the loom.

Sue wove the cloth for this top some time ago, but recently sewed it into a top for summer wear. On the back are two of the same rectangular motifs.

Marcy got inspired to weave another scarf after finishing up her contribution to our gift scarves we wove around the holidays. This one has some rayon chenille in the warp and a glitzy yarn she picked up at a guild raffle. Very festive.

Jackie brought this alpaca shadow weave shawl and we all agreed it is a spectacular piece. The pattern is from Marian Powell's 1000+Patterns in 4,6 & 8 Harness Shadow Weaves. This particular pattern, for those readers that have the book, is 4-17-2 on page 134. Jackie added her own touch to the pattern by threading some of the darker yarn into stripes between the motifs. These stripes are in plain weave.

Here is a closer view of the cloth.

Sue R. has her scarf done from the brown bag exchange and will be twisting the fringe. Watch for it this next month because I will borrow it to take photos and post a copy of the draft.

Weave Meeting January 20th

The weather was beautiful for our January get together and we had a great meeting of show and tell and a little glass drying experiment with handwoven towels to end up the day.

Dee brought in a new shawl that she wove with some of her handspun mohair and a decorative ribbon. The ribbon laid perfectly flat without twists in the shawl. Dee said she put it in a dent with a finer thread of rayon and didn't fuss with it during the weaving.

Dee also had a nice piece of yardage she hopes to make into a jacket.

Diana brought a couple of napkins she had recently completed. She used a draft from an e-book she downloaded. Top Ten Towels on Eight Shafts One of her napkins had hemstitched edges with a small fringe; the other had a machine stitched hem. I think I liked the hemstitched edge the best.

Here is a detail of the cotton and rayon chenille scarf in shadow weave Gus brought to the meeting. Shadow weave seems to be a good structure for chenille because the floats are small, diminishing the tendency of the chenille to worm.

Ingrid took us downstairs to her weaving studio so she could show off her new AVL Computer Dobby loom. She has her first warp wound on the beam and is threading heddles. The weaving width on this sweet loom is 36" -- just perfect for scarves, towels, shawls etc. Her main Cranbrook loom is off to the right in the photo.

Brand new weaver, Paulette, has woven a series of goose eye twill dish towels. The warp is white and she used a different color weft for each towel.

Paulette also brought in this scarf, which she considered a failure as a scarf because it was too heavy and dense. She used a novelty suede type yarn for the warp and a nylon fuzzy yarn for the weft. I thought that it might make a cute purse and someone else suggested using it as a table runner. Anyway, it was a very interesting piece of cloth and we were glad she brought it for us to think about what went wrong and how it could be utilized in a way other than she originally intended.

This is Paulette's very first weaving project made under the tutelage of Gus. It is warp and weft rayon chenille with a touch of gold metallic in the warp. With such a success as a first project, we think that Paulette has quite a future as a weaver.

Ingrid showed one of her Christmas towels. They are of fine white cotton in plain weave, with a rosepath row of Christmas trees on one end. We feel that these are not belated 2008 Christmas towels, but a good head start on Christmas 2009!

Sue H. shared her ideas about doing a strip woven garment. She wants to weave up some denim colored cotton yarns she has in her stash and sew a casual jacket. She showed a very interesting picture of a jacket found in a catalog that she is using for inspiration.

Sue R. has her loom warped and is weaving her first towel. We convinced her to use some of her warp to weave napkins for our May exchange.

Igor and I jointly wove off a warp of mixed cottons using the bumberet and ducape drafts shown in the previous post. I used the warping paddle I bought from Kerry and warped 10 mixed cotton threads at one time. The towels contained 8/2, 10/2, 16/2 and 20/2 blue and green cottons I had in my stash. When one yarn looked like it was going to run out, I threaded a new one into the paddle. I'm finding the technique works well on my warping wheel, but is more difficult when using a warping board. The angle at which you are approaching your warping device seems to be the determining factor in how easily you can transfer the cross from the paddle to the warping board.

The meeting ended with a rather unscientific attempt at seeing what fiber and structure types make the best dish towels. We tried a mercerized cotton, unmercerized cotton, cottolin- unmercerized cotton and all linen. Most of our towels left lint on the glasses we were drying which was something I didn't expect from the linen towel. My favorite towel was woven with an unmercerized cotton warp and a cottolin weft. It really dries dishes and hands quickly. I also liked a finely woven towel in unmercerized cotton which fits into glassware easily. We tried out a very closely woven twill towel of unmercerized cotton. It was much too dense a fabric to soak up water easily, telling us that the weave structure and sett are very important . If you have done your own experiments to determine the best fiber and structure for towels, please feel free to share your ideas in the comment section.

Next month's meeting discussion will be about selling your handwovens. We will be interested in venues, pricing and marketing tips.