Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Honeycomb Pattern for 8 Shafts

I wove this fabric for 2 purposes waaayyyyy back in 1999. My friend Louise and I put on three 10 yard warps on the guild owned Baby Wolf for our local weaving guild project. At the same time Louise and I had agreed to produce samples for the Guild of Canadian Weavers Bulletin, a quarterly newsletter, for the year 2000. We chose to feature Honeycomb and this was the sample for Spring. We committed to doing a series of four samples; 700 samples each time along with drawdowns and record cards. It was a big undertaking, but a truly enjoyable one and we both learned lot's about honeycomb.

The warp yarn is 2/8 navy Orlec, the weft is 2/8 Orlec in navy, emerald and teal, the cell is 4 ply turquoise rayon. This piece was sett at 24 epi, and planned for garments. Due to the long floats on the reverse side, we used fuseable interfacing to stabilize the fabric. We found that the rayon was very slippery and had a tendency to unravel on the bobbin, painful, but worth it.
Well, years go by quickly and finally in October 2008 I made my vest! Only 9 years too late! Because I'm a tad wideish, I chose to weave the honeycomb linear rather than offset, anything to minimize the girth!
There were just a few wee scraps leftover and I could not toss them, so here they are, reinvented as sacks for purse hangers.
What's a purse hanger you ask? Only the neatest contraption ever invented...it's a lovely little weighted disk with a hook that wraps around it for storage.
When you need it, you just unfurl and voila! It looks nice on the table, keeps your purse in front of you and best of all; your purse doesn't get dirty on the floor! Now my purse hanger has a nice new bag, one that brings back great memories.

2 comments:

Susan said...

Oh, no... now I have to do something with my honeycomb yardage! Has it really been 9 years?

I love the cut of the vest. What pattern did you use? I'm a bit widish myself.

To others reading this: the colours in this material really sparkle. They were chosen for the local lake near Lynnette called Kalamalka which is a turquoise colour.

Life Looms Large said...

I love how those colors combine. (Plus those colors are some of my faves.)

Is it wrong that I'm captivated by the idea of a purse holder? Wondering how I can get one, and if it would hold up my rather large purse.