Two months down in the year. Mentally I am still back in January! I haven't been posting much but I have been lurking and reading your poasts and enjoying seeing all the projects and activities you are participating in. Keep posting projects and travels so those of us who are having trouble getting to the llom can experience weaving vicariously. Weave on all!

Comments

sally orgren

I finally have a new warp on the loom, and initial sampling indicates it might be fun to weave up!

I'd add a photo, but the site is behaving funky, so will try again later...

Char

Sally Orgren--I wove and finished six tea towels for the South Jersey Guild's weavers' study group project on Sara Henderson's loom. I've posted the project here for anyone (especially Jockey Hollow members who knew Sara). The AVL loom is from 1980-82 and is the 129th loom they built. It works beautifully.

Weavolutionary6

Sallly and Char, both great accomplishments! Sally, I hope your upload works nex time, if not e-mail us details of what you're experiencing, so we can trouble shoot!

Erica J

Fun times already Sally and Char! I have a strict daily deadline of how much I need to weave each day this month. I have 2 major weaving projects that I really need to get done by the end of the month and have my daily goal. I'm off to make sur eI meet today's goal. We are alos having to have the floors replaced in the house and much have everything off the floors by Monday. So things will be quite interesting for me. I apologize in advance, if I don't have time to upload photos during the weaving process, but will share when all is done! :)

Erica J

I have made a lot more progress, but have a free most free to post and earlier pic of my samitum. 

Erica J

Here's a bit of nitty gritty on my samitum. Each block of the pattern requires 12 picks to square the block. I need to weave 4 blocks a day to finish on time. Despite this weekend being primarily taken up with hosue rennovation prep, I've managed to get my daily weaverliness in and stay on track! Our friend who came to help Oli move the heavy furniture asked if he needed to sign a waiver before moving the 16 shaft table loom I'm using for the samitum, lol.

Erica J

Here's a bit of nitty gritty on my samitum. Each block of the pattern requires 12 picks to square the block. I need to weave 4 blocks a day to finish on time. Despite this weekend being primarily taken up with hosue rennovation prep, I've managed to get my daily weaverliness in and stay on track! Our friend who came to help Oli move the heavy furniture asked if he needed to sign a waiver before moving the 16 shaft table loom I'm using for the samitum, lol.

Queezle

I finally cleared off my dining room table enough for a photo with the new runner. But the icon for photo upload has disappeared!

endorph

consisted of a a coupls of vivists to Fiber Crafts to visit with Joanne Hall and drool over the fun projects being woven up as part of a weeklong workshop. I did not get to participate this week but wanted to go out and vicariously experience everyhing, and chat a bit with Joanne!!

I have been dealiung with dual knee issues for the last month that have made weaving or spinning extremely painful so have been oing a lot of knitting. I think I will try the loom again in a week or so. At the very least I need to get a couple of warps wound.

laurafry

Working on building up my inventory of place mats.  Cut one warp off earlier.  Getting the next ready to go into the loom. 

sally orgren

My problem exactly. However, I was able to load this photo from my phone. 

SusanBH

I'm in love with your new project. Can you tell us about it?

sally orgren

I need to make 32 samples, and then I will weave up towels for our guild sale.

One of the things I am interested in when sampling is separating out the different motifs possible in this draft. The overall pattern is really nice, but I am having fun isolating and highlighting the edges with a medium value blue.

I also have tried medium value backgrounds and the gold-orange band seen in the warping image included with the project post. I'll post more photos of the variations as soon as I cut off the samples.

 

jj50 (not verified)

Editing my post of yesterday about the total buzzkill.

csparkle

I recently began weaving as an addition to my sewing. I was interested in something to compliment my sewing and add a new level to the "me made life" I am striving for. Now I can't stop. I grudgingly finished sewing a shirt for DH but that has been the extent of my sewing since I purchased the loom 2 months ago. Scarves, plate holders, placemats, samples, mug rugs, a shawl and a currently warped cat mat. My hands hurt, my back and shoulders ache and I have a bruise on the front of my thigh from learning to use the loom. Nearly every day I say "I'll take a day off today, I'm behind on my spring wardrobe." But every day I weave and I love it. I plan my next warp and read about weaving and look up blogs about other peoples weaving. I began weaving as an addition but it has quickly become an addiction.

laurafry

Coming out of my fog of stress to begin dealing with spring deadlines... Just got confirmation from Olds College that I will be teaching level one master weaving there in June. Registration for the two classes here in PG are open and deadline for that is mid-April. I'm hoping both levels will run, but need a minimum of six for them to 'go'. The level one class in Cape Breton is full. Now to start crunching numbers and order in the class supplies. In between trying to get some weaving done. At least the days are noticeably longer and that helps. :) https://www.oldscollege.ca/continuing-education/fibre/master-weaver-program/

Missus T.

Hello weavers!

I've been away from my loom a long time but am back at it.  Still working on a 58" wide piece of "lace" curtaining made from cotton seine -- a project from the book Happy Weaving.  All of the reasons not to weave -- kid going off to college soon, and another kid on deck to launch as well -- mean that I spend time gazing at their lovely faces like some fool instead of beavering away at my long warp. 

This project has been a huge learning experience for me.  The width and relatively fine thread meant that I had to install a fly shuttle.  I tried weaving with various other shuttles in my stash, but it was not happy weaving for sure!   Instead of breezy throws, with my stash shuttles, it was more like poke-a-little, sigh-a-little, cuss-a-little.   The fly shuttle kit had to be ordered from Finland via Webs to fit the Toika Liisa (with underslung beater), and then the retrofit kit was not perfectly matched for a flush mounting to my beater, so, in order to bolt on the fly shuttle boxes, I had to get creative with my drill. 

There was a learning curve with this new tool, and fortunately, I had an extra yard of warp to learn on.  I have not computerized my Liisa, and what I learned is that even a four-shaft pattern with a 10 line treadle repeat can be easy to get lost in -- especially as warp and weft are the same fiber.  Also, that I blow through light rubber bands!  These are used on either end of the fly shuttle box to retract the throwers.  At least with the wide warp, the fly shuttle is staying on the race and flying off and hitting the wall! 

Note to self:  the bolted on fly shuttle attachment narrows the field for weaving.  I have to advance the warp frequently (another place to get lost)!  Also, I am using a temple, and have to clip on pieces of felt on each end of the temple over the teeth to protect the shuttle race from being scratched).

Fly shuttle bobbins empty fast when you are weaving wide.... All those trips to the winder present another oppotunity to get lost in the pattern.  So I pinned a copy of my draft to the handy corkboard which is mounted on the castle and move a sewing pin up and down to indicate which pick is next.....

I also learned that getting an even beat on lacy, netting fabrics is very difficult.  At first I was constantly checking with my little photo loupe which has scalings on the sides to help count the picks per cm, but I found that after awhile, the "stress" of constantly checking was slowing me down so much that I wasn't developing a relaxed rhythm.  I started improving the minute I started chilling out.  I figure that the Cloth Inspectors are not coming to my house -- a freeing thought.

Another insight:  cotton seine warps are slippery.  One of my warp threads broke early on, in the sampling yardage, and I repaired it in the usual way with wrapping the ends around a straight pin which I left in the cloth.  I then had to rig up a weight for this replaced broken end.  Ok, fine.  As I advanced the warp and the finished cloth was wrapping 'round the knee beam, I didn't notice that the warp end had slipped out and was unweaving itself as I advanced the cloth!  Naughty, slippery, tricky warp.  Arg. 

Because of the airy sett and light beat, I was able to use a tapestry needle to reweave my lost warp end through almost a yard of cloth.  But the initial problem I faced was locating an analogous warp thread to "copy" and then not scrambling my eyes looking at the overs and unders and skips.  Because the seine twine was unbleached, I was able to use a sewing notion -- a blue, water-dissolvable marking pen -- to trace the analogous warp so that I could easily find it and copy its tracing. 

Of course, once the warp thread was replaced, I had to face the reality that there was a right way and a wrong way to secure broken warps.  I improved my pin holding scheme and so far, so good.

So, this project, which I hope will be a delightful curtain, has been quite a handful of troubleshooting opportunities.....  I included a photo of the cloth with a piece of contrasting felt tucked behind so that you can see what I'm talking about!

It's great to see all the activity here.  I am inspired to weave in the lovely springtime that is almost upon us.... Good evening to you all.

 

sally orgren

and they will be off in the mail later today, before the snow arrives. That was actually 92" of warp, more than 2 yards of the 7 total yards. 4 more towels are next, then a baby blanket series, and a historical draft for the Complex Weavers Early Books & Manuscripts Sample Exchange due in May, which may serve double duty for my guild's color and weave exchange due in June.

Erica J

This is going to be pretty short. I am keeping up with everyone's great progress here. I upped my game plan to 6 blocks a day. I'm 2/3rds of the way through the first cuff!!!

Erica J

I finished weaving sleeve cuff number 1. With the increase in what I'm weaving each day, so the second one should be done in about a week and a half! Apologies, the phone is dead so no photo yet.

PS on my laptop I have the insert photo button again, hopefully everyone has it back. :) We made no changes, I think this issue must have been software update related and it looks like Chrome has fixed it now.

laurafry

Testing...looks sideways on my iPad, but...it was a warp winding kind of day. :)

Erica J

My photo was sideways too! I managed to get 3 sessions of weaving in yesterday! 6 blocks of samitum yesterday.  Plus my local guild's Come and Weave group met yesterday. I went for a few hours and got my next tablet warp threaded up and on the loom.

I got another session  of weaving on the samitum this morning!

Gone

I've been noticbly absent but not from the loom. I'm still getting used to my Liisa. I have a plaine weave warp on for towels. I really like the countermarch now. It took some getting used to, but once things settled down, the weaving is very smooth.  It's also very good to read about the F/S issue from Missus T. Not that I have the room for the additional F/S, but the fit (or lack thereof) surprised me with Toika. I put a treadle gate on mine so I could get my feet between the treadles. Made all the difference. Down the road a piece, I may look into the back tieup system. I really like the loom, but climbing inside may present a problem in a few years I'm sure. But "Marja Lena" weaves good cloth!

 

 

 

Erica J

Missus T. Thank you so much for sharing your experience and what you have learned. Your post is very exciting and informative! I'm sure we all understanding wanting to spend the time you can staring at your kids faces! My son is only 4 and I often do the same thing. 4 years has gone so quickly. I still have at least 14 years with him around the house. I recently got him to promise that when he moves out we'll just buy semi-detached properties next to each other and build a secret door in between. He has agreed to this now, but something tells me this won't appeal to him when he's an adult! :)

Erica J

I know I've said this before, but I really think I've finally caught the tapestry bug. Along with the Samitum cloth I have a tepstry roundel on the go. I could not put down my bobbins yesterday. I am making great progress and it is truly becoming and addiction! Photos the next time I tear myself away from it for anything other than other weaving, coffee, or food! :)

Erica J

Here is my taoestry roundel so far. Please keep in mind my taoestry weaving experience is slim to none!

The photo is sideways, my tapastry weaving is NOT defying gravity. :)

laurafry

As an addition to The Book (when ever I get finished writing it!) I arranged for some scanning electron microscope photos I was going to post some here, but the picture icon isn't showing up for me (I'm on my desktop, so puzzled about the lack of icons). Feel free to visit my blog: http://laurasloom.blogspot.com

Erica J

Thanks for sharing Laura! Those are fascinating photos. I also look forward to The Book! I have your A Good Yarn Webinar and refer to it often! Yarn choice is so crucial!

I had to take a good break from my weaving today to save my neck! I must focus on my posture, or I will never make a good "artist". :)

sally orgren

but the icon to do so is missing.

So I logged out, and logged back in. The icon bar appeared. If you see an image, you know it worked.

Our guild took a guild trip to the National Museum of the American Coverlet in Bedford, PA this weekend. It was a spectacular trip! Above, just a small peek at the coverlets awaiting future exhibitions. Currently, there is a ten year retrospective going on, but hurry if you don't want to miss it. It will be closing soon.

  In addition to browsing the spectacular exhibition of unusual coverlets, the group saw several timber frame looms, one which was accompanied by a jacquard attachment. Executive Director Melinda Zonger provided a description of how the device would work when mounted above a vintage loom, and there were packets of stitched punch cards to show how the design was plotted, exactly like a contemporary dobby loom weaver would peg their lift plan today. It was amazing was to think weavers were using this technology in the first half of the 1800s on primitive-looking 1700s timber frame looms to produce highly ornate and much desired patterns - the figured and fancy coverlets.

 

 

 

[email protected]

The 1700s-1800s direct connection to us is very interesting.  Your tip about getting the icon for uploading pictures to return is very helpful.  What is the secret to your pictures being upright???  Thank you for sharing.

sally orgren

Make sure they are the correct orientation when viewing in your gallery? If you have to rotate your phone to get them to appear in the correct orientation, pehaps they need to be checked in the phone's editing software before upload? Just a guess...

Queezle

Greetings all. I am having a lovely spring break in this city of canals. The weather has been delightful, and I've even done some interesting weaverly things. Sadly, its hard to share my adventures as the photo upload icon is still MIA. Given that photo uploads were always awkward on this site (and for some reason not transferable from one's uploaded projects) is this maybe an omen that the new site upgrade should happen soon?

sally orgren

Then log back in, and see if it reappears?

sally orgren

INCREDIBLE Textile Museum is located there...

Damask a speciality.

It's on my bucket list - Go! Go! Go!

 

laurafry

Icons now on for the iPad.  Im out of town and clueless about getting photos out of my new phone...anywhere...let alone here.  If you are on Facebook, I did figure out how to post there.  ;)

ReedGuy

I'm tackling a 3 panel coverlet in M's O's weave structure. It's a motif familiar to overshot weavers, blooming leaf. Hard to photograph on the loom in so much light. 10/2 cotton warp, 5/2 weft.

sally orgren

Nicely timed post! I think you found the pot 'o gold with this pattern!

sally orgren

FYI: I had to sign out, and sign back in, to load a photo (Get the icons to appear above the message bar). And the dialog boxes were a little funky - I had to close them and reopen them to get the coding to disappear and the selection boxes to appear.

ReedGuy

Wasn't even thinking of St Pat., but it is mineral blue weft and natural warp. First time for me to weave M's and O's, so here we go. :D

Brand new Janone HD3000 , all mechanical, had to go back today to Amazon. Only sewed in reverse. Ordered a Singer 4452 instead, heavy duty and mechanical as well, no computers.

 

ReedGuy

Like your cloth Sally. I to have an X and diamond draft. Andy Liesk wove it and did a youtube video and is having a towel give away. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQZcwWIHcz4 I also have and X's and O's overshot draft.

Erica J

I'm teaching tablet weaving at the Cambridgeshire Guild Day next weekend. I have a basketful of warps to thread! Fun times!

sally orgren

and worked on a quilt. While it was on the ironing board, backlit, I thought it was even prettier than the "right" side.

Erica J

I have not been posting here lately that is because I've been at the loom too much! I set up 7 2 color tablet weaving warps for the Cambridge Guild Day, that was a huge hit. I took my loom and 6 that were up for sale. By the end of the day, I had taught nearly 20 people and sold 5 of the looms! I also finished the samitum weaving and sewed the 2 pieces onto cuffs and sewed on the hooks to make them cuffs. Finally, I finished weaving the tapestry roundel and set up my next Finish Diagonals tablet weaving.

Joanne Hall

Finishing a project may be the hardest part sometime. Even retirement does not give me a lot of extra time, but I am trying to get a few things finished, or at least more organized. So, it is good to hear that you are getting some things finished, especially since you had that unexpected injury this winter. And, you are also teaching. You have been very productive. Joanne

Sue in VT

Hello all!  These last months have been all about packing, moving, unpacking and setting up house (with Thanksgiving and Christmas in between) but my new studio is lovely!  My husband's begun painting, and so the walk-in closet in my studio is now doorless and a teeny-tiny painting spot.  This closet actually has a window!  So I call him "the closet painter".  I've begun weaving daily again and have this to say....When we're the most stressed, we need our weaving the most!  Weaving adds so much balance to my life, and I thank God that he's led me in this direction.  I'm catching up on all your threads and chats,... so much to read!

Erica J

Glad to see you settled in Sue! Thanks for the encouragement Laura!

Here are the photos of my recently finished works.

 

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