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.

Igor's hand - it was all black and white!

 

Thanks to Erica de Ruiter for the inspiration in her book,  Weaving on 3 Shafts.  This allowed me to create something from a very favorable poker hand.

The cards I drew were as follows:  Cotton, 3 shaft structure, black and white, checkerboard, combine colors by winding on a bobbin for weft.  I was allowed to drop one card so instead of two colors on one bobbin,  I used alternating shuttles of black and white.

Both the black and the white were used in the warp and the weft.  The yarns were labeled as 10/2 but the black was slightly finer than the white.  The white was sett at 30 epi and the black was sett at 32 epi in the warp.  I decided to make 1/2 the warp black dominant and the other 1/2  white dominant.  Black dominant was threaded and woven black, white, black - white, black, black - black, black, white.  Reverse the color sequence for the white dominant section.

Even though, I have access to a twenty-four and a forty shaft loom, I quite enjoyed the three shaft project.  Also I found changing the color sequence in the weft challenging to remember where I was. (I ended up using a stitch counter).

 

Weaving Poker is one of two challenging projects Not 2 Square Weavers participated in this year.  The second project was a brown bag exchange where someone else provides the yarn and you have to come up with a project.  Both of these are challenging and help you expand your weaving horizons. 

 

Thank you to Beryl for pointing me in the direction of the Erica de Ruiter book.

 

Igor Raven





Eileen Plays Her Cards Correctly

Eileen is our next weaver to finish the Weaver's Poker Challenge.  She also chose to weave a scarf as part of the challenge.  

Eileen's poker cards were:  Red, Swedish lace, Novelty, Beads, Analogus Colors​.  She decided to discard the Analogus Colors card.  

The scarf is red, 8/2 spun rayon, the weave is allover Swedish lace, the fringe incorporates beads, and the novelty is two picks at each end of eros yarn. 

Eileen's Scarf

Novelty Yarn at Fringe

The one thing Eileen thought was a surprise was how using the novelty yarn in a small way, it added a lot to the scarf.  She says she will continue to do this in future projects.  ​

Nice project Eileen!

Mardi Draws a Winning Hand

Mardi is the next Not 2 Square to finish her Weaver's Poker Challenge.  Here's her description of how she approached the project. 

"My challenge cards were Stripes, Warp-faced, Analogous Colors, Yellow and Overshot.

I decided to make a scarf because it was a small enough project to try out some of my ideas on.  The one card I chose to delete was Overshot.

I used a stripe generator and then edited it for the values that I thought would work in the design.

In a way, I cheated because I changed the warp-face to warp-dominant.  I did not want to make a plain weave scarf because I am working on finding a fabric that drapes well. The structure I chose was a 3/1 point twill. 

The yarn is 10/2 mercerized cotton.  The sett is 30 epi. The weaving length was 72 inches with a finished length of 64 inches plus fringe.  The width in the reed was 8 inches with a finished width of 7 inches.

Actually, the project satisfied the parameters but the fabric was still stiff.  If I did this again, I would change the sett to 24."  

The scarf is very nice.  The yellow color turned out nicely.

How Marcy Played Her Weaver's Poker Hand

Marcy chose to weave a scarf using her hand of Weaver's Poker.  She was dealt the following "cards":

Structure:  Spot Bronson

Color:  Blue

Yarn:  Thick & Thin (one yarn)

Design Element:  Incorporate a shape (e.g., square, circle, etc.)

Color Relationship:  Mix warp color by doubling thread in heddle, sley as one

She used a 3.5/1 periwinkle blue cotton flake for the weft which covered the color and the requirement for a thick and thin yarn.  The warp was 10/2 white cotton.  She created a design using Spot Bronson that included five diamond shapes across the 229 warp threads.  These were repeated nineteen times in the length of the scarf.  The warp color mixing card was discarded.

Marcy created the scarf design using Weaver's Craft Issue #23 pages 6&7 as a guide to understanding "Spot Bronson" also known as "Barleycorn".

The 10/2 cotton warp was sett at 24 eps using a 12 dent reed (two threads per dent).  The width in the loom was 8 3/4" and Marcy wove the scarf to 57.75".  The finished scarf was 8 1/2" x 46 1/2".

Here are some detailed pictures to show off the lace patterns.

Scarf front and reverse sides

This turned out to be a very nice scarf with a good hand.  Nice job Marcy!

Weaver's Poker - How Wendy-Marie Used Her Cards

Wendy Marie wove a set of stunning purple towels for her challenge.  The cards she drew were as follows:  

--Color: Purple

--Color relation: Monochromatic contrast

--Pattern/Structure: Summer & Winter

--Yarn: Ribbon

--Design element: Border

Here's her description of the project: 

Sarah H. Jackson’s design for “Four Blocks on Four Shafts: Summer & Winter Towels” (Handwoven, May/June 2013) was the inspiration for this piece. Some unusual things about her design are:

1) Both the pattern and the tabby weft are the same grist. Normally, pattern yarn is slightly thicker in Summer & Winter.

2) The pattern and tabby colors change every inch or so, together with the treadling. The effect is a complex interaction of three colors (warp, pattern, tabby) as well as the interaction of the different blocks.

3) She {Sarah} manages to obtain 4 pattern blocks on 4 shafts, and still preserve the tabby ground.

It is a complex design, and at moments I felt like a pianist trying to play 3/4 time with my right hand and 4/4 time with my left – a real mind boggle.

   

Threading

 

Like Diana, I did not want to buy more yarn. I had a drawer full of various 10/2 purple cotton, but no 8/2 purples. So I reconfigured Jackson’s design, which calls for 8/2 cotton sett at 18 epi, into 10/2 cotton sett at 24 epi. To restore width lost by the denser sett, I added 12 ends to each of the six warp colors, and repeated each of the 4-thread units six times rather than five.

It was hard to predict how the colors would work together, so I just grouped the rosier purples on one side and the bluer purples on the other side. In retrospect, I wonder if the white warp would look better on an edge rather in the center, where it tends to bisect the towel. 

 

Purple Summer & Winter Towels

 

How was I going to add ribbon and border? At this point, I considered dropping those, and just showing up with a “three of a kind” poker hand. But eventually it dawned on me to use the ribbon as a loop to hang the towel on a drawer knob. The ribbon also provided a border. The loop added a little zing.

 

Towel Detail

Towel Detail

Towel Detail

Use of Ribbon

 

 

I’m glad the Weaver’s Poker challenged me to stretch beyond my usual thinking.

 

Weaver's Poker - Beryl's Hand

It seems like a very long time ago that we all got together and pulled our poker hand from a series of 5 bags (structure, yarn, design element, color and color relationship) We were allowed to discard one card which left us with four items to incorporate in a woven piece.

Initially, my hand looked pretty workable. 
Structure - gamp
Yarn - silk
Design Element - To look ancient or faded (discarded)
Color - green
Color Relationship - Triad Complement (in my case purple and orange to go with the given color of green)

As the months went by, however, I struggled with a couple of the items.  Silk and "to look ancient or faded"  I really didn't want to use silk and then deliberately fade it with a chemical of some sort.  And then, there was the question of not wanting to buy any more yarns for this project - so I added the constraint of using what was currently in my stash. 

I toyed back and forth between using cotton and fading it with a discharge or dipping into my silk stash which I'm rather picky about saving for something special.  Finally, when rummaging around in my silk box, I found several cones of some rough silk that I had purchased from Robin and Russ, many years ago.  Frankly, it didn't look or feel much like silk.  I had a cone each of a brownish purple, teal and a burnt orange .  I needed green, so I wound off a good amount of the teal and overdyed it with yellow.  The  resulting green was a good solid bright color.  The purple was kind of ucky, so I overdyed that as well and used all that was on the cone. 

The next step was to create a gamp design.  I wanted to make this a useable piece, so I put together an eight shaft point and advancing twill threading and then mirrored it.  I played around with some tie ups and found one that showed off the design well and went with it. 


This is one half of the warp.  To use this design, mirror the threading for the other half of the warp.

Next step was to get yards per pound of my silk yarns to see what kind of a warp I could put together.  I decided on the green and the purple in the warp and the orange for the weft.  I tried looking at a design with stripes in the warp since I had less purple than green.  Finally, I decided to make a green border and then alternate the purple and green through the center of the piece.  When I wound the warp, I had to use one extra green thread on the border because I ran out of purple yarn.  The green and purple turned out to be very close in value and almost make another color when warped next to one another.

The warping and weaving was fairly straight forward, although keeping track of  first the threading and then the treadling required concentration.  After I had done one repeat of the pattern, I thought  that if I changed the tie up it would make it more gamp-like.  So I used a total of three tie ups in the piece.  And, no, I didn't use a dobby.  I got under the loom and changed the tie ups!  Each of the tie ups shows off the two color warp differently - a great learning experience in itself.

When I wet finished the runner, I used fairly warm water and soap to remove any of the lingering sericin in the silk.  It was rinsed with a squirt of white vinegar to restore the pH to the fiber.  I was being careful when I pressed it, but then found if I ironed with a little pressure, the silk became lustrous and softened nicely.

It was really a fun learning experience and a great one to do in weaving groups. 

Weaver's Poker Challenge - First Contestant Diana A.

The group decided to undertake a challenge last year.  In our version of Weaver's Poker, we came up with options for five different attributes of a handwoven project:  Structure, Yarn Fiber Type, Color, Color Relationship and Design Element.  All of the N2S's who participated drew a cards from grab bags containing the five different aspects.  Each person had the flexibility of discarding one of the attribute cards.

Diana was the first to finish her project.  She describes the project as follows:

For our weavers’ poker project I drew the following cards:

• Color – Black and White
• Color Relationship – Complementary colors of similar value
• Design – Stripes
• Pattern – Rosepath
• Yarn – Metallic

I decided I could not have black and white and also complementary colors. Since I have wanted to try to weave something in black and white, I decided to discard the complementary colors card.  I decided to weave a scarf as my finished project.

I didn't want to buy any yarn as I have a huge stash that needs to be used, so I found some soft white super wash merino (about 2060 yd/lb), some black 18/2 wool/silk, and some grey 10/2 bamboo.  I did buy a small spool of 3-ply metallic embroidery thread.  I warped these yarns in a random order with random widths, 10” in the reed expecting it to shrink down to about 8”.  The sett was 16 epi for the merino and 24 epi for the wool/silk, bamboo, and metallic. On the warping board I made sure these fibers would fit my sett plan.

I used the white merino yarn for the weft. To incorporate the Rosepath structure, I wove 2 bands of dusty rose (probably wool) about 2 inches from one end of the scarf and 3 bands of the same near the other end.  Treadling was all plain weave except for the Rosepath bands. I finished the scarf with hemstitching and a loose fringe.

 

 

To keep my selvedges even, I used a weighted “faux temple” system.  This uses two weighted clips rather than the traditional “toothed” temple.

 

 

 

I was not entirely happy with the finished product. It is a little stiff, and probably too wide.  It only shrunk ½” in width. (Maybe the temple system worked better than it should have.)  Using Twill the structure would probably have been a better choice than plain weave in order to make the scarf more drapeable.

If I wove this scarf again, I would make it narrower, use a twill treadling, and a finer weft yarn.