I'm keeping busy this January between school, the new studio, and weaving. This week I've been organizing my new studio and getting exciting to finally have a dedicated space. I've also almost finished weaving my table runner but I hate it when my loom is bare so I switched over to designing my next project.The new studio is mostly complete. We had a long and heavy rain storm and found out one of the windows in the new building leaked. They came out and fixed it but now we have to wait for it to dry completely before we finish the painting and finally the window molding. In the mean time I organized all of my yarn up in the attic. All of my books are on the work table awaiting a huge bookshelf. And all my gadgets and looms are in the spots ready for assembly. There's extra stuff in there right now too since Danny's studio isn't complete yet but soon!! I'm weaving the plain weave portion of the table runner, or the back portion however you want to say it. Since I'm using doubled up thread it is a little slower than I usually go but I don't mind having something to weave any time is nice. Now I have about 10 inches left and I hate the idea of not having anything on the loom so I started designing some napkins that may or may not be napkins and may or may not match the table runner, ha! Basically, I took the pattern from Handwoven (Royal Table Runner N/D 2016) and I wrote down all of the blocks. Since it's an overshot pattern ever pair made a block so I had 8-7 , 6-5, 4-3 , 2-1 , 1-8 then made a simple block pattern. From there I used my fancy Fiberworks software to turn it into a Summer and Winter weave. Basically, I have the same pattern from the table runner but it is now turned into a napkin. Figured an overshot napkin would just catch on everything and I wanted something that would be structurally sound and show off a motif. The thing I'm worried about is the density. Summer and Winter tends to make a firmer fabric and I don't like the idea of napkins that hold their shape when wiping your chin. When I did my napkins last year with 20/2 cotton verses 10/2 cotton I turned out loving the 20/2 so much I gave up making the 5/2 that were apart of the experiment. That is why I'm a bit worried that a summer and winter weave might be too dense. With that said I'll be using a 10/2 warp and 20/2 weft. So maybe it will work out just right, except with Summer and Winter the weft threads slide behind each other almost like a doubleweave...but even then I'm dealing with a faux 10/2 weft (20/2 threads sliding next to each other). Hmmmm.... I wonder what would happen if I used the sewing thread for a weft??? Suppose I should at least warp the loom before I start over thinking the project any more.
Happy Weaving!
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We landed back in Santa Rosa on Thursday and I finally get to start weaving on the warp I made before we left. Now I have to decide what my weft yarns are using yarn that I can still get to.We left Washington at 9am on Thursday and drove straight through to our home. Since we had two cats I really didn't want to figure out a hotel room and both of them very much wanted to be home. Turned out that there is an 'Atmospheric River' going through California during our drive so we drove through the pass north of Redding, CA with high winds, rain, and too many semi trucks. We finally made it home around midnight where I got cleaned up and instantly fell asleep! Before we went north I had warped the loom with a table runner project I found in Handwoven Nov/Dec 2016 issue called the 'Royal Holiday Runner.' (this link goes to the Handwoven WIF library, not sure it works without a subscription??) I've been looking at this runner for a long time because I love the color play with the intricate patterning. Oh Bother! Looking at this image and relating it to what I have on the loom shows me that my yarn sizes are still off. Ugh! Since we're still in the midst of building my studio my yarn isn't readily available so I decided to use what was in the house and what was on my 20/2 or smaller shelf (since that was easy to get to). The warp is 10/2 cotton yarns and I got to use up some of the cones, woohoo! The background weft is sewing thread doubled and some 20/2 cotton yarn, and the pattern weft has been changed a couple times. First it was a variegated yellow/gold 5/2 acrylic yarn and now it is 10/2 cotton yarn doubled up, and now that I'm looking at the published image maybe I should change it again.
Guess, I'll continue to weave with what I have chosen as my weft and if it still doesn't work out at least I'll get some stress out with weaving something.
I do like how this project has you weaving up the overshot and then half way through you switch to just a plain weave with the main background weft only. Then you fold it in half and you have a backing already made in your chosen colorway. Great idea! Though I think I will want a longer table runner so I may just weave all the warp up in overshot and then find a fabric with similar colors. Or maybe make another warp and use the rest of the yarns to make a separate plain weave fabric for the backing. We'll see how much warp I have. Guess, I have a knack for half Saori weaving and half precision weaving! Ha! The title is a bit dramatic but it had to be said after this adventure of a project. Initially, I wanted to make an advancing twill with some burnt orange and turquoise perle cotton I had leftover from the rainbow bright project and a long ago project of some plain weave napkins. Well thanks to my favorite weaver, Sheila O'Hara, it turns out that when you have complimentary colored yarns blended together they will look grey from far away. I believe this is because of the subtractive color mixing but I still need to explore the concept further. Which Sheila sent me a pamphlet written by Robyn Glade-Wright titled 'Colour Mixing for Textiles' so maybe I'll learn something. Anyway, I really wanted to do orange and blue. And of course I started to see the colors everywhere! In fact right by my computer is a picture of the volcano goddess Pele which is orange and blue. And purusing Handwoven I found an article about complimentary colors. Then at the book store I was seeing orange and blue mixes. But in all of the examples I saw there was no true blending of the two colors. If the image had orange and blue they were very distinct from each other not mixed. Like in this picture of a hot springs at Yellowstone the blue is distinct from the surrounding orange. Well needless to say my advancing twill that mixed orange and blue together wouldn't do for the next project so I started looking into something else. Since I'm reading about blocks and my painting from last week contained blocks I decided to start playing with blocks of Overshot. Since overshot is comprised of two solid blocks; pattern and background, and some halftone blocks. I decided to give it a try. The colors are not distinctly different like in the Pele's volcano or the hot springs image but there is a clear dominance of orange on the front, and a dominance of blue/turquoise on the back. Well the color play wasn't the only thing I got to learn on this piece. Lesson two was Overshot and sett. At least with the way I beat the weft I needed a more open sett to really push the background yarn into place. So after sampling I had to rethread the reed. Lesson three was how I tie the yarns to the back apron rod isn't foolproof. Found this out about three quarters of the way though the piece when half the warp went completely slack! When I tie the yarn onto to the back apron rod I just slide a metal rod through the yarns and then tie the metal rod onto the apron rod. Well, make sure you use high tensile yarn because if it breaks bad things happen. Like the giant run you see in the image above on the right. After washing and fiddling it's not crazy noticeable in the final piece but I'll forever know it's there. After all my crazy lessons on this piece I decided to finish the project it was intended for, a drawstring bag. I didn't really follow the directions but I did use this website to help me plan the bag: Sewingfromhome I also added a lining since I didn't want the handwoven fabric to stretch with usage. But with a lining there will be a side that is never seen. I chose the bright orange with all its floats to be on the inside. So here's my picture saying goodbye to this beautiful side. Guess I should show off the lining since it is a crazy fun batik. My sewing skills are lacking a bit but hey this is about weaving not sewing! Ha! Well I haven't officially added the drawstring yet but I'm finished sewing. And I finally found some lighting that hopefully shows off the shimmer of the fabric. That's all for now, happy weaving!
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Author: Vader
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