Linen and Lace Details

It is somewhat hard to photograph lace weaves, especially in situ and in florescent light. But here are a few examples of what we're weaving.

8-shaft huck diamonds

Bead Leno

Handm Manipulated Laces

Alphabet Bronson Lace

4 Shaft Bronson Lace

Basket weave with tabby border

Linen and Lace Workshop

Sue

Several of the Not2Sq group are taking advantage of a workshop with Suzie Liles of the Eugene Textile Center. The topic is Linen and Lace. All of the warps are using linen and a lace structure of some variety.

Gus

It's a three day workshop - mostly weaving round robin.

Diana

Dee

Betsy

 The drafts included huck lace, bronson lace, basketweave, swedish lace, and hand manipulated lace. There were 4 and 8 shaft designs.

A Tour of Gus' Studio

One of the great things about our meetings is that we get together in each other's homes.  So, in addition to sharing what we are working on; brainstorming weaving problems; and stretching our brains around group challenges, we can see the spaces we use for our weaving.  Each person's area is unique. Many of our group have the luxury of a dedicated room or area for weaving.

Gus has a combination guest bedroom and weaving studio. Sometime the weaving takes over and when guests arrive she has to do some shifting to find the bed.

Gus is working on lap blankets for the Holiday Cheer project for this coming December.  These will be two blankets. The first is already finished.  The warp is cotton and the weft is a verigated chenille. It is fairly fine (see detail in picture below).




(If I was a good note taker like Beryl, I would have remembered more about this piece.) 

It does look pretty nice.  Gus used some slub cotton for the yellow stripes.  That yarn turned out to be not strong enough for warp yarn.  She paired it with a perl cotton thread and it worked great.  

Some of Gus' Stash

Gus is VERY organized.  Nice storage, well labeled.  Hmmm, maybe she can help me with my organization.  She's pretty creative.  She has an unused chest freezer in the garage that she used to store roving.

She obviously can find what she's looking for quickly. 

Gus in her studio

It is always nice to have company while weaving.  I'm not sure how much time Carl spends helping Gus, but I'm sure he's good company.  This rug is an example of the many woven items in Gus' Studio.

Weaving at Joanne Tallarovic's Studio

detail of  Carol's rep weave using print yardage as weft

Way back in January, we had our monthly meeting at Carol Phillip's home.  She had taken a  rep weave class with Joanne Tallarovic in Arizona.  It turned out she was the only student and so it was a chance to get some in depth knowledge about rep weave and its possibilities.  Carol says Joanne has a whole house devoted to studio space, so it was a real luxury to work with the master in her surroundings.

Carol wasn't sure what to take with her to the class, so she brought some colorful printed cottons.  Igor is holding up one of the pieces she wove during her stay in Arizona.  It looks like three different fabrics were used in this piece.  Joanne has a procedure for cutting her fabrics and getting them to line up in sequence during the weaving process so that the original fabric design shows through in a blurred representation of the original cloth. 

This is a towel woven with sewing thread and 8/2 cotton.  It is wonderfully flexible cloth and not at all what might be expected with rep weave.  Joanne specializes in rep weave clothing and the fabrics Carol wove in her stay with Joanne are very suitable for use as yardage.

If you aren't familiar with Joanne's work, her book Rep Weave and Beyond is a fabulous introduction.  However, when I looked for copies I saw that it is no longer in print and used copies are very expensive. This is a good book to see if your guild library owns, or maybe borrow a copy through interlibrary loan. 

Special Rug and a New Shawl

Way back in December, Gus showed us this rug that she wove for her daughter. Gus keeps rovings for spinning in a spare freezer and started digging around to come up with weft for an all brown rug (her daughter's requested color).   It was woven on her Gilmore loom with a 4 epi linen warp;  the roving completely covers the warp.  It  weighs a lot, so she got rid of plenty of roving.  To finish the rug, she put it in a bathtub, got it wet and stomped on it.  Her daughter was thrilled with the present and Gus may actually have room in that freezer for more roving.

At our last meeting, Gus brought in her latest shawl in which she used up odds and ends of lots of different luxury fibers.  She used an 8 shaft draft that Ingrid shared with the group.  It is a 1/1/1/1/2/2 twill  (see our drafts section).  The colors are gorgeous and the hand is wonderful. 

Fabric Analysis of a Handwoven Towel

As a child, Sue spent several years in India.  While she was there, the family bought some handwoven towels (made in Calcutta).  Each one was a different color and they used them for beach towels.  Sue still has her towel, and despite a little wear and tear, it is still functional.  She set out to analyze the weave structure so that she could recreate something similar on her four shaft loom.  The towel has pile, so she isn't going to attempt that on the first trial but says maybe that will come later.

Here is Sue's thread by thread analysis.

It will be great to see how she does with the re-creation and I'll be sure to add it on to this post when it is completed.

April 17 Addition to the towel story.  Here is the first sampling that Sue has woven from her analysis of the towel from Calcutta.

I think that this is an accurate draft for the towel.  I have interpreted it in two blocks and separated the blocks with color changes.

It All Started With Leftover Sock Yarn

Some of us have lots of yarn - odds and ends of yarn that we aren't quite sure what to do with. Dee had this sock yarn - I'm presuming she must have had a couple of balls because you will see that she got quite a bit of mileage out of it.


                                                                                                                                                                                       

 Her first attempt was to use it as weft with a white warp of assorted cottons and rayon yarns. 

Well, this wasn't the effect she was looking for.  Out came fiber reactive dye to take care of the white yarns. 

Not bad, but still she wasn't completely satisfied.  Next she dyed the remaining scarf with Alter Ego dyes - they will dye both the wool of the sock yarn and the rayon and cotton warp yarn- in two different colors at the same time! 

Well, this was pretty cool too. But she had one last trick up her sleeve. Do another warp using the sock yarn in both warp and weft. Which do you like best?

Warp and weft of sock yarn

Checking Out Dee's Studio

The group met at Dee's house today. There were lots of woven items shown and some knitting and a pine needle basket. But maybe the best thing was getting to see how Dee arranged her work space and what she was working on.

In addition to being a fabulous weaver, knitter, quilter, seamstress and all around great gal, Dee's studio would make anyone jealous. Lots of books, yarn, fabric and ideas floating around.

She is currently working on a cat quilt - black and white cats on batik backgrounds. There will probably be some colorful fabric in the background as well.

Here's a weaving project in the planning stages. With inspiration from a towel (top right), she is pulling together yarns to weave a scarf. Can't wait to see how it will turn out. Makes me want to head to my studio to weave.

New Year - New Challenge

Happy 2012!! The group decided they like to be challenged with a project for the year. This year we are going to be using Nevada County as an inspiration for a woven piece. This is pretty wide open - it can be colors, structure or pattern that is "representative" of a scene, activity or feeling about the County.

We did something like this in 2007 when we created a perpetual calendar inspired by the County. There were pieces that evoke the local flora but many were inspired by our gold history. My piece from that project was inspired by Malokoff Diggins State Park. http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=494 This is a place where one can see the effects of hydrolic mining from the late 1800's. It was a shadow weave pattern using 10/2 cotton.

I'm not sure what will inspire me this year, but I am sure that the group will produce many creative and unusual pieces.

We are working with the County Fair Board to introduce a new catagory in the Wool Division for the Fair in August. This category would be for a finished item that is inpsired by our County - handwoven or hand knit using handspun yarn. This will be something to look forward to this summer.

Simple Twill - Fantastic Shawl

Sometimes the most elegant textiles are based on a very simple woven structure.  This alpaca shawl woven by Jackie Hervey is sumptuous - everyone at our meeting agreed.  The photo is unfortunately not nearly as impressive as the shawl!  The shawl is woven with two natural colors of alpaca from Henry's Attic and features diamonds with plain weave centers! 

Jackie found her draft in A Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns edited by Carol Strickler, draft number 97.  The original draft is credited to Christian Morath and found in A German Weaver's Pattern Book. 1794-1810.  However, when I tried to find it at the Handweaving.net, I could only come up with something similar.    Anyway, if you want to weave your own spectacular shawl, here is the draft that Jackie used.

Gifts for Holiday Cheer

The Not 2 Square Weavers like to do some sort of community spirited project each year.  This year some of us decided to weave lap robes for Holiday Cheer.  This is a local outreach for home bound seniors (and others recouperating from illnesses).  Visiting nurses supply Judi Barbour with the number of people under their care and she puts together gift stockings from donations for those with the most need. 

Since some of the recipients are confined to wheel chairs, several of us decided on rather narrow pieces that would cover the lap, but not be too wide and cumbersome.  It turns out that for wheel chair use, the pieces need to be without fringe so there will be nothing to get caught in wheels, etc.

Gus is pictured above with one of her lap robes woven in cotton and acrylic - the draft follows.

I wove my lap robes using a networked threading and treadling in turned taquete and a couple of weights of cotton.  See the related blog post here that gives more details on the process.  Working with the warp faced weave and divided threading allowed me to separate and weave the hem in two layers, which I turned to the inside to finish.

Marcy had woven a chenille lap robe before we decided to participate in this project, and she generously donated it.

Diana bought acrylic baby yarn to weave her pieces, but had a disaster when the yarn slipped and slid during the finishing process so she had a hand sewn robe in reserve which went along with our donations. 

Ingrid didn't weave her piece, but rather sewed it and finished it like a quilt.  See her blog for the colorful and warm covering she donated.

It was very gratifying to learn when we delivered our items to Judi, that there were so many donations this year that everyone on the nurse's list will be getting something warm and wonderful for Christmas.

Huck, More Towels and an Ecology Shawl

Sue Habegger is using up special yarns that she has collected over the years.  She had a cone of natural brown Guatamalan cotton and Sue decided that weaving a solid color and a stucture were both out of her comfort zone.  This is the gorgeous yardage that was the result of her efforts.  The picture shows the yardage sideways. Sue wove bands of plain weave separated with bands of huck lace.  The huck takes up a bit more than the plain weave, so there is a gentle ripple which turns out to be very attractive.  Sue is still thinking of what kind of a garment to make with it.

At the meeting, Betsy had just come back from a fancy three day wedding in the Bay Area.  She had given the bride and groom their choice of colors and she presented them with handwoven towels as a gift.  She used warp colors in the weft and the towel above was woven with a white weft.  The draft is from Marguerite Davison's book, pg. 75 - John Murphy's No. 10.  I'm not sure which treadling she used with this towel - maybe X?  I thought it was a lovely thing to give a color choice to the gift recipients. What a good way to make the gift personal for the couple.

We all were so captivated by Carol's Ecology shawls that she brought in one that she wove using all handspun yarns.  She says the only problem is that the shawls aren't perfect triangles.  As you near the end of the warp, it gets tight and is very hard to weave - therefore one side is longer than the other.  We all agreed that it didn't make a lot of difference with this shawl, which is a real treasure.