Summertime band #3
This is the third in what seems to be my Summertime Band Series. It's not too much of an exaggeration to say I wound this warp for our elderly cat (he may be deaf and nearly toothless, but he sure does like to weave!) -- but I also wound it for me. I loved the colourplay in my previous summertime band, and I followed the same general colour arrangement in this warp -- but with wildly mixed yarns.
The Navy and Chartreuse-yellow are thick(ish) knitting cottons. The sparkly Fuschia at the borders and accenting the central stripe is a glittery blend of (I think) rayon and lurex, not super-fine, but not thick, either. The Teal yarn is a shiny gossamer-y ribbon yarn sold for knitting. It's odd stuff, this ribbon: solid (and fine) at its edges, with what are basically fibres spanning the distance between those two selvedge structures. In use, it tends to fold its edges together, creating a loopy, softly textured effect.
In warping, I used a technique I'd heard people talking about, but had never tried: warping by pulling loops through the heddle and stacking them on a post placed a distance away from the loom. It worked beautifully! Granted, all my fussy little stripes slowed the warp-winding process considerably; but beaming-on was amazingly easy to control, and threading was an absolute breeze!
The first few picks of weaving made me a little nervous, because these wildly varied yarns all respond differently to being woven. The knitting cottons are cushy. The 10/2 cotton, created for weaving, is firm and steady, as one might expect. But the ribbon...! It stretches, folds itself, sags, and buckles... and I was worried that I'd just put a nightmare warp on the loom.
But a few picks later, all was well. The ribbon figured out what it wanted to do (and I like what it's doing very much!), so the cat and I are weaving along happily.
The next big test will come in the wet-finishing!
Sleepless medium-width band
This band is called "sleepless" because I warped it and started weaving while (1) under the influence of jet lag, and (2) on vacation with my sister and her new boyfriend in a motel with thin walls. (Let's skip over the details on both counts, okay?)
The photo of the weaving in progress actually shows the very end of the weaving. It started out set up on a backstrap loom: two sticks to hold the warp at the "far" end, the heddle in the middle, and two sticks at "my" end to attach to my backstrap. At the very beginning, I wove these yarns as a warp-faced band, and though I really liked the strong colour-play between the green and sunny-bright yarns, the band felt thicker and more cushiony than I wanted -- so I gradually spread the warps out to a weaving width of 4 inches and wove the rest of the band at that width.
Partway along in the weaving, my new Cricket loom arrived by UPS -- and 45 minutes after the nice man had knocked on the door with the box, I'd put the loom together, beamed my in-progress warp onto its warp beam, tied onto the front apron rod, and started weaving!
The beaming was wildly imperfect (as I think you can see in the photo), and between that and the thickness of the yarns, I had the impression the Cricket was a little bit short, front-to-back, and not capable of providing a very generous shed. (With subsequent warps, I've changed my opinion. The shed is still not generous, but it's big enough to work just fine!)
So there it is. The irregularities of my irregular warp beaming show in the finished band (warp threads wander a little, even after wet-finishing) -- but I like it anyway. At one point while weaving, I'd thought I'd cut this band up into mug rugs. I'm now thinking it will donate its sunny colours to a cushion cover for our living room!
Medium-wide summertime band
This was the demo warp I set up for the ANWG conference (Association of Northwest Weavers' Guilds) at the start of June. The semi-rigid heddle shown is the medium width (soon to appear on my website), which can produce narrow warp-faced bands, medium warp-dominant bands (like this one), or narrow strips of balanced-weave cloth (about 7 inches wide and 10 epi). As you can see from the photos, I set it up inside the framework of a Schacht Cricket loom. There are two good reasons for doing such a peculiar thing. First, the Cricket frame, with its warp and cloth beams and nice ratchet-and-pawl brakes, lets you gracefully handle and control a long warp (very useful, when you're weaving on something that hangs suspended on the threads!). Second, the Semi-Rigid Heddle lets you do things that aren't as comfortably accomplished with a plastic rigid heddle -- such as weaving with radically mixed warps, or weaving with delicate threads. The Tex-Solv allows you to weave the width you want, without putting strain on the selvedge threads (it surprises even me -- it's very forgiving!).
For this band, I warped with the materials I had on hand -- and as you can see from the photo of the band at the fell line, they were varied! The navy yarn was an 8/2 mercerized cotton from Webs. The glittery fuchsia yarn was actually two yarns wound and threaded together: a fine fuchsia rayon yarn (nice and shiny!), and a super-fine glitzy yarn in fluorescent orange, purchased from Russell Groff's estate. The teal and chartreuse yarns were both #10 crochet cottons (and you'll notice they have a Z twist rather than an S twist). And the variegated yarn, with its array of colours from slate blue to pink to off-white, was an 8/2 mercerized cotton from Webs.
My first band woven in the framework of the Cricket (posted as another project) made me think the Cricket's front-to-back length was a little too short to get a decent shed -- but I did a tidier job of beaming the warp for this one, and all was well. The shed was still fairly small, but it was comfortably big enough for my loaded stick shuttle, and clean enough so there weren't any shedding problems.
So... I like the finished band so much that I now need to make a jacket to go with it. (It looks wonderful on some medium-blue linen fabric I just happen to have in the stash.) It's firm in the hand, but not stiff -- and it's not thick or heavy, so I think it will work nicely as trim around the lower edge of a jacket, or maybe on the sleeves, or as a front placket....
In fact, I like this band so much that I decided to weave more bands like to it, in related colourways! (Hooray, a summer focus!)
The top-view photo above shows the "next" band, which is on the loom right now. Now that I'm home from my travels, I don't have the same yarns I had when I was away -- so this new band is wildly mixed, combining knitting cottons, shiny gossamer ribbons, and a different kind of fuchsia sparkle.
One more thing: this little loom is set up in our living room -- and our 19.5 year old cat has discovered that he loves weaving! I no longer throw the shuttle all alone, not even if I want to. :-)
Sparkly narrow band
This little band started life as a demo band at a show. After the show, only partly woven, it languished in a box until I rediscovered it. I love the colours! It's an experiment with variegations, as two of its yarns are blatantly variegated, and the remaining fine cottons have colours that undulate (the Orangey-red, for example, has zones that are Very Red and others that are Very Orange -- but the overall effect is too subtle to really call it a variegation).
The band is woven in warp-faced plainweave, but the variegations give it a more complex appearance.
The yarns are mixed. The fine cottons were sold as mini-skeins intended for use by embroiderers. The Red sparkly yarn is also fine (a "chainette" about the weight of a 10/2 cotton when under tension); but the variegated sparkly yarn is heavier (about the weight of 5/2 perle cotton).
I like this band enough that I now need to make a jacket to go with it!
Dogwood / gold
Spaced linen warp in plain weave, linen, half-bleached, and unbleached. Mixed wefts of colored linen, and Finnish paper yarn (paperilanka) used in rya knots. This is a simple version of a transparency weave I've been making over the last 3 years. My paper rya experiments began after a trip to Finland where I saw paper yarn used in contemporary weaving, especially using rya.
I brought home some of this yarn. It is very tough. In this piece I have brushed the yarn with water and unwound it to create flower petals. The Japanese paper chenille yarn is a rya knot that acts as a stamen for the flower. My first use of rya and linen in a transparency used many mixed paper and silk ribbon and plastic strips.
Dilly Scarf
This is the third in a series of 3-season scarves in a bright & muted color palette, in cotton, linen, and silk.
The name "Dilly" is a small, rural town nearby. The inspiration of the scarf is spring, the mood changeable. The design, as in most of my scarfs, is a story, with asymmetrical motifs, in different colors, each a vignette of a continuing story in my head.
The design is meant to align slightly differently each time the wearer wraps it on, with different areas of the scarf coming together to frame the face, in a subtly different way each time it is worn. The parts not visible when the scarf is worn are its secrets.
The design of this scarf balances areas of plainweave, unbleached and natural, muted color linen and cotton against rosepath details, including inlay. The wefts are mixed fibers. The ends are finished on the loom with hemstitching.
Off the loom, the scarf was handwashed, air dried, and finished in a heatless drier for several minutes to soften.
Triple Dip
I have been weaving longer scarfs--to wrap amply--out of linen on a soft, fine Swedish cotton warp. The scarf is an asymmetrical design, mainly plain weave, unbleached linen, with rosepath details, woven in dyed 5/2 perle cotton.
The finished scarf is washed, then dyed in a series of fiber reactive dye color baths. The first 2 baths are dip dyed, and the final bath is an all-over immersion dye
Easter
We had some leftover Easter egg dye and decided to put it to good use! This was a fun project.
