More from the County Fair

Here's more of the County Fair entries.  This post features three of our members and their entries.

Mardi wove a marvelous men's scarf with some special Alpaca yarns she recently purchased. The warp is painted and the weft is a neutral. Because the scarf is slightly weft faced, the painted warp creates a very subtle design - best viewed from a little distance.

Mardi's Men's Scarf
 

Mardi's Huck Placemat

Mardi also wove a set of placemats using 3/2 cotton yarn.  They have huck lace in the center and plain weave around the edges.  This piece won Mardi a second place ribbon.

Sue H wove yardage and sewed a top that she entered this year. Top is made from a cotton warp with a textured yarn for weft.  It's basically a huilipile or traditional garment of South America.  It is just two strips of cloth with a center front and back seam and a slit for the neck.  Sue used graduated width stripes that got further and further apart. There are planned selvage stripes that become decorative when the seam allowance is turned to the outside.  A nice first place entry!

Sue's Top

 

Sharon's Scarf

 

 

Sharon entered a scarf and a towel this year.  The warp in the scarf is hand spun yarn.  She dyed several different colors of blue-faced leicester and then blended them together on her Patrick Greene drum carder with silk noil, white Cormo and alpaca, and Tussah silk.  She spun the fiber unevenly and then plied the single with "natural" 16/2 bamboo.  The weft is 8/2 green Tencel.

 

  

The red towel is Turned Taquete with 8/2 cotton, for warp and weft, sett at 20 epi.  There's a discussion about this draft right now on 4 shaft weaving page on Facebook.

 



Sharon's Towel

 

Tops and Towels

Sometimes it's really amazing just how much mileage you can get out of a single threading and tie up.  At this month's meeting, Marcy brought towels she wove from Anne Dixon's book The Handweaver's Pattern Directory. The draft is Ms and Os on page 129.  This book is just full of fun stuff to weave on four shafts and I recommend it highly.  Marcy's towels were a delight and I'll bet she will use this draft again for future projects.

Sue finished up her fabric and top that was inspired by the Thiebaud painting, "Big Pond".  Check out the slide show in a previous post for an array of handwovens using this painting as a color and pattern inspiration.

In the detail, you can see that Sue sett some of her yarns more closely so that the stripes are more prominent.  She used a lovely soft spaced dyed chenille yarn for weft, alternating it with a finer cotton yarn so that the fabric is less dense than an all chenille weft would have made it.  The top features fringe detail at the neckline and is so luxurious and wearable.

See everyone again after next month's meeting!  Hopefully our rain and snow storms have ended and weather will no longer be a factor in where we meet!