What's on your loom?

 I am just about to get started with a very small linen project :)  We love to drink wine at my house, but we also don't have any screens on most of the windows, so bugs can be quite a problem.  I usually suffer through with a paper towel or napkin on top of my glass, but this summer, I will have some small linen squares! 

I'm thinking 5" squares with a texture pattern like Ms and Os in 40/2 linen.  Then I'll finish with some large beads on the corners to help keep them in place.  It should be a quick and fun project with some useful results.

What's on my loom?  Right now, it's dust!  Been focused on spinning for a while and need to get back to some weaving.  Nephew is marrying in June and I think some nice cotton kitchen towels are begging to be gifted!

I have a tencel scarf for a friend's b-day present.  Both warp and weft are uneven hand dyed 8/2 tencel.  The warp is turquoise and the weft is blue.  I am using a modified draft from "Designing Woven Fabrics" that is a combination of an advancing twill and a broken twill. 

Both looms are now dressed awaiting the time when I can weight bear and weave again.  Although I should be able to weave on the AVL by Monday when I can start putting small amounts of weight on my foot I don't really need my left foot because I've got air assist on the treadle. 

The Leclerc Fanny has my physiotherapy warp on it - placemats.  Ordered more weft yarn in because I used so much of my cottons up making placemats over the winter.  It should be here by the time I see the surgeon and hopefully get the go ahead to start weight bearing and physio/weaving.

I *have* made a couple of bobbin lace bookmarks, though.  Winding bobbins for another one.  Might even get that done today. 
 

Cheers,

Laura

We'll keep our fingers crossed all goes well on Monday and you will be able to reacquaint yourself with the AVL.

How nice to have them warped and ready!

Claudia

Nothing on the Avl right now.  I am designing a warp with about 12 cones of blue 10/2 cotton. Its stuff that been in my stash. This is the year I am trying to use or lose yarns in my stash. I have a warp waiting to be winded on the Kessenich but my helper(husband) is reorganizing his office.

Am finishing up winding a 40/2 (16,800 ypp) hand dyed cotton warp....beautiful yarn!   It goes on the loom next week and a new idea starts taking shape......the warp will only be 10" wide, so the 500 threads I have to thread shouldn't take too long.  Also have a tapestry that I have been working on for quite some time still being woven.  I love tapesty weaving, but it takes me a long time to weave one - only because I allow that to happen.  Tapestry is my respite......when I need to slow down and work on "slow cloth", I work on tapestry.  Other projects in the works are sewing a jacket of handwoven fabrics, another pieced jacket from indigo dyed fabrics, some my own dyeing work and some purchased.  And, of course, one loom has rayon chenille scarves.......

Su :-)

 I'm back to the current tapestry after a slow down while I prepared for, then taught at John Campbell Folk School last week.  Here's where I stopped today.  I'm weaving sideways, 24" wide x 60" long (when hanging it will be 60" wide).  I'm about 12" from the top at the highest point, 16" away at the lowest point.

well, in between eldercare stuff I am working on several things:

1. waiting for client to visit to bless a rug split shed sample for their mohair yarn, then I'll run mesquite dyepots and get rolling on that. just got done with hemming and finishing samples and working thru yield counts.  hardest part is the hurry up and wait

2. working thru a theo moorman sample of some newly spun mohair yarn for same client, just checked in the yarn from the mill and pondering what could be done with that, dredging my memory on theo moorman.....

3. when I'm not working on the stuff above I am weaving on my satin JOY 60 epi variegated yarn, went with the brown for the 1st scarf and then will with the red on the other....

4. in between all of this I am working on the design class and dye class I am taking at Northern New Mexico College....

and planting a new dye garden, japanese indigo, woad, indigo and madder.....suspense of the moment is what will grow here in Texas and what will not... 

regards Deb Mc

off to stir mordant pot for #4 above

I can't say that I am doing anything exceptionally exciting at the moment. 

On the 32 shaft Weavebird is a baby alpaca warp which alternates a soft pink and a mauve in a 30 block huck point.  I wove one scarf on it with purple zephyr (silk wool blend) for my son's girlfriend.  The design played with large diamonds, decorative bits, small crosses, and places where warp floats dominate verses areas of mostly weft floats and areas of open lace. Alternating two colors means that the pattern floats alternate colors in adjacent blocks, which makes the single weft color look like two colors. There is enough for two more scarves, each of which will be progressively less traditional looking.  The next one has curving lines and the last will have two different overlain patterns, one in warp floats and one in weft.

On the 8S baby Macomber is an advancing twill in 10/2 cotton, leftover from a workshop on woven shibori.  I've used it for guild samples in lace (most twills can be made into lace), and next week it goes with me to a class on supplemental weft inlay with Bhakti Ziek at Weavers Guild of Boston.

The 4S Harrisville has samples for a WGBoston study group on Oscar Beriau.  It has a "cannele variation" from his book called Home Weaving.  I followed the directions, which called for 5/2 cotton.  The specified treadlings are extreme, with floss floats which are an inch long.  I may cut some of them and make eyelash fabric with it.  I designed another 15 alternative treadlings for it (most with shorter floats) and brought it to a Round Robin for my little local guild, Pioneer Valley Weavers, which meets at Webs.  People did some interesting things with ribbon on it. 

I couldn't stay long at the round robin, but was able to weave on three looms.  First was an 8S beiderwand where I played with block design.  Next was a 60/2 silk bookmark in 6S advancing twill.  I don't tend to color within the lines well, so I played with alternating between single shuttle and on opposites in various configurations.  The last one was a 10/2 white cotton 4S huck warp.  I've done a lot of huck so I turned it into a weft-faced blue and yellow-orange on opposites design on a Swedish lace base.  It definitely looked a bit different from the others :-)  There were a bunch of others I didn't have time for - an overshot pattern as double weave, a differential shrinkage piece, a differential sett piece, a 3S lace, and a crackle and one or two more.  It was a fun time, good idea for a guild day.

Laurie Autio

GREAT idea, just right for the pesky bees here that lurk around ice tea glasses! 

I'm back home from my winter down south and so back to my looms.  I've been struggling with the baby blanket warp on the AVL (discovered a threading error after the first blanket, cut off, then had trouble with the selvedges being loose, cut off AGAIN, and had trouble again).  The blankets are in 8/2 cotton in the lace hearts pattern by Kris Bruland that I love so much.

I also have a rug warp still on the Glimakra, which will probably be rag totes rather than rag rugs.  My Baby Mac needs to get overhauled, but I'm itching to put a warp on it too.

I'm hoping for some focused loom time on my Baby Wolf -- have a weft-faced alpaca fabric started on it, and still have worries that perhaps weft-faced wasn't the best idea for the fabric (to be a vest).  I have 3 projects vying for "next" on the rigid heddle loom, some natural colored handspun fine fibers for warp and black silk weft; a sock yarn & silk scarf; a silk scarf (a kit from Treenway); and some handspun merino I'd love to weave up as well for that 'natural plaid' look space-dyed handspun tends to give.  And my small table loom has a scarf malingering on it, I really need to weave it off or cut it off -- if it were a library book they'd have revoked my card by now!  The Tapestry loom also deserves some more time. I did the first 2 lessons in Harvey, but got distracted by upcoming workshops (where I am busy this weekend, and next). I hope to return to it once I'm home again :) I find it very peaceful and am excited to be learning some new weaving methods.

Cheryl is weaving  silk scarves with 12/2 spun silk (white) as warp and weft with inlayed butterflies. I am repairing 4, 32 foot/ 24 inch columns on a 1836 house here in Penfield, I am also working on building some 60 inch quilt display units for a local quilt shop.

Michael

I'm weaving pictorial rugs on a wool warp using heavy Berber wool for weft.  The structure is 3/1 1/3 double-faced, and I am weaving the top layer tapestry-style with discontinuous wefts.  With these materials and this structure the tapestry face weaves "square".  As a result, I am able to follow a charted pattern directly, rather than having to allow for the aspect ratio.  The real significance of this is that I'll be able to weave some Escher-like, interlocking shapes with four-fold symmetry, and be able to control the angles better.  At the moment I'm 2/3 through this image:

I got off-track at the beginning but I now understand better and am able to follow the pattern precisely and get excellent warp coverage.  Here is what I've woven so far.  The red and black pins enable me to align with the charted pattern.  This is a nice thick rug because of the two interwoven layers and the heavy weft.

 awesome?  do you mind sharing your draft for this structure..is it 6 shaft? the doublebinding technique?

Okay, not weaving (yet)...as I am waiting for some weft to arrive. So while waiting, I made a prototype from commerical fabric of the back pack I want to sew up using my handwoven. This project allowed me to re-engineer the pattern a bit for better results. Hey! The weft just arrived. Woo Hoo!

The actual fabric can be seen under projects > JHW potpourri exchange. So far, I have only posted my sampling of wefts, about 10" worth. I hope to weave off the 3 yards, full-width this weekend.

Hi Deb.  This is a straight draw threading on 4 shafts.  Treadling sequence (lowered shafts) is:

--------

lower shaft 1 and pass weft for bottom layer

lower shafts 1,2,4 and lay in the discontinuous wefts on top layer

lower shaft 3 and pass weft for bottom layer

lower shafts 2,3,4 and lay in the discontinuous wefts on top layer

--------

These four picks constitute one unit or "pass" and are equivalent to one row of the pattern chart.  I have found that in order to get good coverage of the warps threaded on shafts 2 and 4 I need to dovetail at every color change.  One very nice feature of this structure is that verticals can be achieved very easily with no slits to sew up because the bottom layer holds everything together very soundly.  Here is a previous piece I wove illustrating that:

The selvedges look messy but that didn't matter for this piece.  I use the Norway selvedge wrap to eliminate that when I need to.

Love the bird!  Is it based on a traditional figure?  I'd enjoy seeing more of your symmetry and tessellation work.  I've been fascinated with symmetry since I was a geology student in crystallography classes.  Now I mostly like to use it as a framework on which to play.

Laurie Autio

Wow, ask a weaver what they are working on and you get a torrent of words!  And now for my trickle.....I have a linen huck lace dresser runner on my loom that I am weaving for a friend. It's in natural, light blue, and periwinkle.  After that my husband wants me to weave rag rugs for the two doors to the house to match the one in the kitchen.  But I have a friend who is (FINALLY!!!!) going to have a baby in the summer and I want to make a baby blanket out of Orlon for her.

I originally used this image for tablet weaving -- about 20 years ago and I have no idea where it originated.  I'm sorry I can't acknowledge the source.

My background is mathematics and that, combined with the fact that I'm no good at drawing, led me to explore lots of geometrical imagery.  Here is a piece I embroidered:

I recently posted a weaving on "Projects" that is a transformation tessellation:

http://www.weavolution.com/node/7807

This was done on the same basic structure as the bird rug, only with continuous wefts that interchange between the top and bottom layers.  The trick on this technique is being able to get all angles smooth on both faces.

 I'll post a photo when I've finished a rug with interlocking shapes a la Escher.

 Bonnie, thank you, that is a great threadling on a 4 shaft threading, I am going to try it and will report back!  I especially love the use of pins to keep your sanity on a grid and on the loom!  regards  Deb Mc

Silk scarves with butterflies inlay. Here are the pictures to go with post 15.

This is a 12/2 spun silk, warp/weft with cotton/rayon inlay butterflies.

You all have such neat things on your looms.  Here is a picture of my loom at the moment.  Can't say this is on my loom, but I can say IN my loom!

I have four "on the road" looms going at once! I have to resist the temptation to put together my new inklette and warp it up. One loom has simple warp floats with a yurt band design, the other has a suppementary weft reproduction of a pre-Columbian fragment and the other two have pebble weave. Oh yes, there's one more with just plain warp faced weave so I can let people try the loom to see how it feels. I just need two loom bars and a roll up stick and I can slip whichever warp I want to work on onto those. I hope I can demo some place at the Maryland show.

Hi Laverne,

Weavolution  is working hard to get a vendor booth and if that doesn't work out we have several possibilities to explore.  I will contact some of our advertisers and see if we can find one for you. 

Claudia

Hi again.  I finished the rug shown and another one of interlocked falcons.  I've posted them on the Projects page, "Berber Rugs".

Bonnie.

That is lovely.

Just curious - why the double structure as a backing? Is the rug thicker? More durable? Interesting idea. 

Hi Sara and thank you.

The double-faced weave produces two locked layers, and yes it does serve to make the rug twice as thick.  Plus the plain weave effect (it's actually 3/1) on the back gives a good foundation so that slits in the tapestry on the front are automatically held closed -- a great feature for rugs as sewn slits are always a weak point.  The back structure also enables me to bury the tails of the tapestry image very nicely -- another way in which the rugs are more durable.  Another wonderful feature is that the back, woven with the same yarn throughout, stablizes the weave sufficiently that the wefts used on the upper face can be of great variety of grists and not have the woobly-edge thing happen.  Sometimes with tapestry solid areas tend to pull in and areas with lots of color changes stick out, another way to get wooby edges.  Again, with this structure, the bottom layer is like a foundation and what happens on the top layer is more decorative then structural, so the effects of frequent color-changes or variations in weft characteristics or tension are muted.

Thanks for your post.

Bonnie.

Thought there would be a good reason behind the structure.

I've started diddling with all manner of graphic techniques - could you explain the structure in more detail or point me to a reference. Not for right now, bit I can see that a self-backed tapestry has very interesting possibilities. 

The structure is a straight draw threading on 4 shafts.  A pass is 4 picks:

1. Lower shaft 1, throw weft for bottom layer

2. Lower shafts 1,2&4, throw or insert discontinuous wefts for top layer

3. Lower shaft 3, throw weft for bottom layer

4. Lower shafts 2,3&4, throw or insert discontinuous wefts for top layer

So picks 2 and 4 constitute what is defined as a pass in regular tapestry weaving, and picks 1 and 3 weave the bottom layer.

All of the tapestry techniques can still be used on the top layer, although I only do Rio Grande style tapestry myself.  Hachures and hatching etc. would work, but of course unlike free-form tapestry in which the weaver can work up an area and fill in later, with this the weaver must go row-by-row.

Bonnie.

THANK YOU - I"m working on a little Oaxacan piece to show my instructor from last year - will be just a runner, but working in all those ends for a rug has me wondering if there is some way to hide them better.

This definitely looks like something to try. 

I believe that Bonnie D. is weaving a double-faced twill. Is this correct, Bonnie?

On 4 shafts this is fairly well covered in weaving books and magazines as a way to make a weft-faced cloth. The wefts alternate colors A/B to give one face in color A and the other face in color B.  Peter Collingwood includes this as a good structure for rugs. He also has an 8-shaft draft with two blocks.  I have worked out how to use this structure for loom-controlled designs on 8 or more shafts and plan to write it up for WeaveZine sometime this summer, if I can find the time.

I find that double-faced twill makes a better rug than a twill woven on opposites.

I do not know anybody besides Bonnie Datta using double-faced twill with pick-up for imagery.  This is very interesting and I like the results, Bonnie.

You can turn the double-faced twill structure and get something like Sheila O'Hara's warp-faced twills. With the colors in the warp, it is also considered "echo weave".

On my loom right now is a warp for turned polychrome taquete.

Bonnie Inouye

Hi Bonnie I.  Thanks, I'm so happy that the virtues of this structure (taquete, basically) bring fabric and rug weavers onto common ground.

I always called it 3/1 double-faced twill, but when I posted to the yahoo shaftswitching group and called it that I was rather upbraided for calling it twill when neither surface has twill lines.  And after thinking about it I thought that was a valid point so I changed to calling it 3/1 double faced.

Yes, I first did this type of thing after reading Peter Collingwood's book.  Later when I became interested in Navajo weaving I found this in a book published in 1936, Navajo Shepherd and Weaver, by Gladys A. Reichard:

"A truly two-faced or double-faced cloth has entirely different patterns on the two sides....The Navajo can make a fabric corresponding to these though they do not often do so.  The few double-faced rugs in existence are generally considered somewhat remarkable, and they vary from simple designs on the face with a plain different-colored reverse to combinations of the ordinary weave with one of the more elaborately strung saddleblanket weaves."

That got me interested.  On an upright Navajo loom one could (more easily) lay in tapestry on both faces, but then one would loose the structural stability that the plain layer provides.  Going to 6 shafts would compensate for this as there could be a hidden third layer sandwiched between the two patterned sides.

Bonnie.

Oh, taquete is different from double-faced twill structurally, although both go over 3, under 1 and also over 1 under 3.  You are right, I cannot see any twill lines in your rug pictured here. I thought that I saw some in the larger rug with tessellations on the Projects page but maybe those are diagonals in the design.

Taquete is also woven with loom controlled designs but you would need a lot of shafts to make a design like your rugs here.

Taquete has a bunch of names, depending on which source you use. It is a very good interlacement for rugs.

I think Sheila O'Hara's warp-faced method is like a pick-up double-faced twill with the designs in the warp colors. And pick-up would work well for a weft-faced rug, too, but you would get the diagonal lines. Sometimes those lines are helpful. Or you could weave it in a broken twill order to avoid the diagonals. I believe the twill will give a thicker rug than taquete, but I have not woven many rugs myself.

The3-thread floats in taquete are staggered, brick fashion. The 3-thread floats in a double-faced twill are arranged in twill order.  Both are in Collingwood. Guess that is not surprising, as Peter knew so very much about rug weaves and his book is thick.

I think your new rugs are quite beautiful.

Bonnie Inouye

12/2 linen towels, (posted under projects), with thoughts of Sara v T and Kati Meek as I weave!

 Better, what's off the loom. After 7 months I've finished my first floor sized knotted pile rug. Description is in the project section - titled "Hearth Rug".

Beautiful, Sara! I want to grow up to be as talented as you! :)

My husband is a closet weaver.  Normally he just does loom maintenance and builds weaving tools for me. He wove a wool rug sampler after studying my notes from a Jason Collingwood class and Peter Collingwood's books.  And he made a little frame loom to play with a knotted pile rug.

I like to design my projects in software and then weave away.  He's more interested in tapestry techniques and such with a simple threading.

As for me, I just finished a baby blanket for a shower this weekend.  I have to fix a few errant threads, wash it, hem it, and get the project recorded on Weavolution!

I gave the baby blanket to my niece today.  I haven't added it to Weavo as a project yet, but plan to do it in a couple of days.  I got this pattern with my AVL.  The comments say it's from a CNCH conference and assume it came from a class there.  I'd love to know who designed it so I could add that information to my draft.  It's called Butterfly Away.  I did have to tweak it a bit to shorten some floats.  The threading is a 16 shaft point twill.

I used 6/2 organic cotton in natural and green (from Chamomile Connection).

I have a scarf/wrap on the loom at present but I don't have a photo just yet. The warp is alpaca, in natural color & the weft is a hand painted sock weight yarn in merino wool. The pattern is 2 up & 2 down on the patern stick. It's taking longer than I thought to make. The last one only took a couple of days. Oh well, it gives me something to do for the rest of the week. Photos up once its finished.

Cathy S/Willowwind

Lovely, lovely!  The design is dynamic, the sentiment just right for a new  member of our earthly family.  Organic and color grown cotton good for the earth and safe for baby.  Nicely put together.

The butterfly pattern looks very much like one I saw samples of at CNCH, taking a class with Jannie Taylor.  Maybe you could email her and ask if its hers?  I'm not sure what her email is but I'm sure the folks at AVL would be willing to pass a message on.

Tien

Thanks Tien.  I like to give credit for a design when I can.

 After shipping off the Ant Blanket I am now putting the part of the commission I really want to weave! I do define myself as a rug weaver, cloth is still a struggle for me.   A split shed rug, I've run the dye pots of mesquite (gave a golden brown) and am now threading the loom.  I hope to deliver by July 1st but we'll seee!  Still some tweaking to do with color and way design will fit to sample structure woven and size required.

You were right Tien, it was Jannie Taylor who designed it.  We had a nice little back-and-forth via email.  Thanks for directing me to her.