More from the 2023 Nevada County Fair - Part 1

 This is Ingrid K. gorgeous scarf.  Woven in double weave, this scarf won the best of show for the Handwoven category.  Truly stupendous color work and design.  Congratulations, Ingrid.

Ingrid collaborated with Jeanne when weaving this scarf.  Jeanne spun the weft yarn and Ingrid used it on a wool warp.  Enlarge photo to see the details.

 The photo to the right is a close up of a scarf woven by Jeanne D.  Her description follows in italics.

Simple Collapse Weave Pucker up Scarf
The puckers in this scarf are created by using Merino wool and Bombyx Silk. This was
a kit that I purchased from Jane Stafford Textiles. It was woven on a 4 shaft loom with
a sett of 15. The warp alternated sections of 18/2 merino wool and 30/2 Bombyx Silk in
two colorways. The weft used the same yarns creating squares. The magic happens
when the scarf is felted. The wool shrinks and the silk does not created the puckers in
the scarf.

Sue R. won a second place on this lovely place mat woven with twill blocks.  Great colors too!

These towels were also woven by Sue. R.  Great designs and a lovely little diamond pattern.  Both woven on a four shaft loom.

 

Weaving at the County Fair

 With things looking a bit more like normal, the Not 2 Square weavers have been showing off their woven projects at the local county fair.  Here are the entries for some of our members.

SueV entered three scarves and a hand towel.  The brighter, striped scarf used hand spun yarn that Sue had spun several years ago.  

Sue V's Scarf

Sue V's Scarf

Sue V's Scarf with Handspun Yarn

Sue V's Towel

SueR entered two pieces.  One was a table runner woven from warp left over from a demonstration at the 2019 fair.  The other is a loom bench pad.  It is rep weave that include some pick up.  Sue R used fabric scraps for the weft.

Sue R's Table Runner

Sue R's Loom Bench Pad

Mary entered two project woven using the split shed technique and a plaited twill towel.

Mary's Morse Code Wall Hanging

Mary's Quail Wall Hanging 

Mary's Plaited Twill Towel

There are more entries that will be in later posts.  Stay Tuned!

Highlights from the County Fair

The Local County Fair has come and gone.  The weaving and spinning entries were amazing as usual.  Many of the Not 2 Square members entered beautiful pieces again this year.  Here are the highlights.

Betsy captured the People's Choice award with a beautiful shawl made from hand-dyed tencel.

Betsy's Shawl

Diana garnered an Honorable Mention with her bright and fun turned taquete towels made with 10/2 and 8/2 cotton.  

Diana's Towel

Ingrid submitted a shawl woven from Madeline Tosh merino yarns.  This was woven in an 8-shaft extended twill pattern.

Ingrid's Shawl

Jeanne won a second place ribbon with this elegant hand towel.  She wove it with 40/2 Normandy linen with Lanis Valley Linen as the pattern.

Jeanne's Towel

Karen won a first place ribbon with a fabulous wool rug.  

Karen's Rug

Marcy's classic dresser scarf, woven in cotton with M's and W's pattern won a second place ribbon.

Marcy's Table Runner

Mardi's show stopping shawl was woven in plain weave with rayon chenille.  It feels as fabulous as it looks.

Mardi's Shawl

Sue R. woven a colorful table runner from the warp left over from last year's demonstration project.  She used bleach to remove color from black yarn for the weft.  This inventive piece was a first place finisher.

Sue R's Table Runner

Sue V.'s yardage entry brought her a second place ribbon.  This cotton piece woven in a twill design used a variety of yarns from Sue's stash.

Sue V's Yardage

We are starting to look ahead to what we will be weaving for next year's fair entries.

The Last of the Weaver's Poker Challenge



We are looking back for a couple of years now, when Not 2 Square Weavers decided to do the Weaver's Poker Challenge.  Sue R. drew the following cards for her challenge.  Double Weave, Variegated Space Dyed yarn, Fibonacci Sequence, Random Stripes & Blue. 

 Sue decided to dig into learning all she could about Double Weave before she attempted to work on her challenge. At one of our meetings, someone was giving away their extra copies of Handwoven magazines and Sue picked up the issue from Summer 1983 with a couple of articles about weaving double weave on a rising shed loom. 

Sue studied this issue for a while before she embarked on her double weave sampler which contains all the elements in the cards she chose. The photo below looks like the Fibonacci series to me. and naturally the color blue.

 

Then variegated weft for this sample, which I think is probably double width weaving with the opening in the center of the warp.

 

 

Then random stripes - this time a pouch stuffed with poly fill and then woven closed.

 

And more double weave fun that wasn't in the "cards".  A lace weave on one layer of the double weave.

 

 

A pouch which is open on one end with a bit of fanciful fringe - and hemstitched (how did she do that?)

 

 

 Some color and weave effects.

 

 

And finally, a bit of pick up.

 

 







This project was very much in the spirit of the challenge.  Learn something new and have fun with all the experimenting.

The Calcutta towel makes another appearance

Five years ago, Sue started on a journey to recreate a favorite pile towel from her childhood in Calcutta.  The whole family had the towels in different colors; they were bright and had pile weaves on both sides.  Sue really wanted to figure out how to weave them herself.  The first post about these towels appears here. 

Recently Sue dug out her draft and started weaving more of these towels.  No pile, you understand, but with the basic structure that you can see in the ends of the original towel.  The towels have a label that says they were woven in Calcutta - the pile suggests a factory weave.  We joked that maybe Sue should return to see if she could find the factory to see how they manage the pile.  Would the factory still be there we wondered.

Sue thinks that the original towel has alternating colors in the warp - which would be fun to try. 



I know you are dying to see the draft that Sue figured out.  Hours went into this relatively simple draft, but I'm not sure I've seen it elsewhere.

 

 

 

 

Here are the towels recently woven by Sue in colorful cottons to help her remember childhood memories in Calcutta.

 



It's Fair Time Again

If it's August, it must be Nevada County Fair time.  Many of the Not 2 Square members entered their spun, woven or knitted items into the Wool, Fibers and Textiles Section.  We are lucky enough to display in a nice cool, clean building rather than one of the other open buildings.  (They were not quite barns, but they sometimes felt like it.)

In this post, we are featuring Ingrid and Sue's entries.  

Ingrid entered nine items this year.  

She entered two baby blankets.  These are from different warps, but are made in a similar way.  The warp is a mixed warp of different cotton yarns, in varying thicknesses.  The purple warp has more similar sized yarns that the green/yellow one.  The weft is a synthetic blend.  These are both woven in plain weave.  The variegated colors really bring interest to the otherwise plain weave structure.

Baby Blanket

Baby Blanket

Ingrid's next items are two scarves.  They are both woven using Malibrego yarn but are from different warps.  Both scarves are threaded to an advancing twill on eight shafts.  One is woven with a 2-2-3-1 tie up and the other a 2-1-1-1-2-1 tie up.

Scarf

Scarf

She also entered two shawls.  These are woven from Mountain Colors yarns.  The purple is wool and merino and the orange/gold shawl is wool and alpaca.  The structures are both an extended point twill with a 1-1-2-1-1-2 tie up.  

Shawl

Shawl

Ingrid also submitted two towels for judging.  One (on the right) is a twill in 10/2 cotton.   It has an irregular point twill design. The second is a turned twill design woven using cottolin.   Full information about this towel can be found at Ingrid's blog:  https://foothillweaving.blogspot.com/2017/03/poker-challenge-turns-to-twills.html

Weaver's Poker Towel

Twill Towel

Finally, Ingrid entered a scarf in the Nevada County Inspiration Division.  This category challenges the entrant to create a piece that is inspired by something in the County.  Ingrid chose Fire as her inspiration.    

This scarf is woven with sock yarn, sett at 15 epi.  he structure is an extended point twill with a tie up that is almost a 2/2 twill.

Nevada County Inspiration Scarf

Sue entered two items in this year's Fair.

The first is a towel. 

The second is a inkle band.

Stay tuned for more Fair entries from the Not 2 Square members.

It's County Fair Time Again

It is August and that means it's time for the County Fair.  Several of the Not 2 Square members have entered items into the Fair this year.  In the next several posts, we'll give you a look at the entries.  Your roving reporter doesn't have all of the details but we can show the pictures and perhaps offer some information about the pieces.

Diana entered several kitchen textiles and two scarves.  There are two cotton towels and a bread cloth.  The snow flake pattern, I believe is an 8-shaft Swedish snowflake pattern.

Diana's Towel

Diana's Towel

The draft for this cotton bread cloth is from Marguerite Davison's book- Molly Pitcher - on
page 91. 

Diana's Bread Cloth

Diana entered two scarves.   The one on the left looks like log cabin.  The one on the right is inspired by the Iris and Echo book on 8 shafts.

Diana's Scarf

Diana's Scarf

Marcy entered two turned twill towels.  These were woven using design #228 from Carol Strickler's book.  Marcy tied on new warps and made a whole series of wonderful color combinations with this one turned twill pattern.  Here are two examples.

Sue entered a skein of spun wool.  This skein has a lovely thick and thin texture.

Sue's Yarn

Sue's Yarn

  
















That's it for this post.  If we find out more details for these pieces, we'll post them here.