White Linen Table Runners on Eight Shafts

After adding the new videos to our Etsy table runner listings, we have sold 4 table runners in the last month!  We are down to just 7 listings for table runners so I started a new project with white linen from Belgium.  I love the view from the back of the loom where you can see the pattern in the heddles.

I like a neutral table linen, so for the weft I tried a lovely warm beige cottolin.  It is a lovely colour but it brought out the yellow tones in the white linen.  It just made the warp look dirty so onto the next choice.

My next pick for weft is a faded denim blue cottolin which looks fantastic with the warp.  The linen looks white and crisp against the blue cottolin.

The pattern that I picked for the table linens is a classic one for us that I have woven many times and still enjoy weaving.  I last wove this pattern in January of last year and both of those table runners quickly sold.  There will probably always be at least one table linen in the shop with this pattern, it is just that pretty!  It is a snowflake twill with a strong graphic punch of the large X’s.

The faded denim blue cottolin runner quickly wove up and yesterday I finished it.  Next I had to pick a new weft for the second and last table runner for this warp.  I looked through the stash yarn book at all the different yarn choices and colours but this large cone of blue cotton spoke to me!  You may remember it from the wool throw blog post where it had been mislabeled as wool at a yarn sale but a burn test showed that it is cotton.

I am quite surprized by the difference between the two blues.  The cobalt blue of the new warp overwhelms the denim blue cottolin almost making it seem to be grey.  It could also be because of the grey and dreary light we have right now.

I wove a single repeat just so I can see what the new cobalt blue cotton weft is going to look like, and yup it is going to be amazing.

We have three hummingbirds overwintering in the back garden this year.  They are amazingly noisy with their chirping and chasing each other around.  But I caught two of them perching together against the stormy winter sky, staking out the feeder.

Leftover Handwoven Fabric

A number of years ago I took part in a handwoven card exchange and I wove this really lovely twill heart design using ruby and black tencel.  I’ve had a fairly long piece sitting in the bottom of my fabric box since then, as I wove far too much, and this week I decided to do something with it.

I had enough to make three small drawstring bags by cutting pieces 10 inches wide by 17 inches long which were folded in half and pinned.

I did the same with lining; I want a fully lined bag.

Ironing the seams did prove a bit difficult, but my handy dandy point presser helped.

I want these small bags to stand up, so I seamed the corners to give them a flat bottom.  I had a terrible time trying to see my seam line marks on this dark fabric.  My solution was to put painters tape where I should sew.  Odd I know, but it worked.

I did the same with the lining.  To make sure my seams were the same size, I used a little triangle template I made from a post it note.  I pinned it to the fabric lining up the sides and bottom and ran the painters tape along the top edge.

It turned out really well.

I put the lining inside the pouch, right sides together and pinned, matching the seams.

After sewing them together I ‘bagged it out’ or turned one inside the other through a small opening in the lining which I hand sewed closed later.

I top stitched as close to the seam as I could, then to make the channel for the cord I sewed a seam 1 1/2 inches from the top and then another seam 3/8 inch below that.

I used three strands 4/6 black yarn twisted together to make the draw strings.

These turned out exactly as I hoped, I’m really chuffed!

I’ve decided to finish up with the pie we made today.  It is apple and green tomato mincemeat.  The mincemeat was made from the tomatoes in my garden and is super yummm. The little hearts are sprinkled with sanding sugar for crunch.

12 Shaft Fancy Snowflake Twill

I am a little behind on my blog posts; I wove these scarves in October.  But they are so pretty that I still think that they are worth a blog post.

The first scarf is a hand painted silk warp, it is actually the last one from a dye day in 2016.  The bottom two warps have already been woven and blogged about here.  The warp is a really pretty blue and soft green.

I thought that a weft for this warp would be really hard to find, but I really lucked out.  I only had to try two wefts, a dark teal and a light teal.  Right away I could tell that the dark teal was the winner.

The pattern is a 12 Shaft fancy snowflake twill; the pointy jagged diamonds in the dark teal really highlight the shifting colours, especially the green.

The finished scarf is really spectacular.  The pattern definitely highlights the painted silk warp and it is one that I will use again.  It has sold.

The second scarf is from the same dye day but it is a Tencel warp.  We had two large cones of buttercup yellow (I don’t know why) so we pulled yellow Tencel warps to over dye.  This warp was split into five stripes, and then two of the stripes were flipped before dyeing.  After the warp was dyed the two stripes were flipped back and that creates the striped effect.

I like to get out all the bins of Tencel so I can see every colour that we have.  The bins have been separated into colour families.  There is a neutral/yellow bin, a red/orange bin and not shown are the blue/green and purple bins.

This warp was dyed in autumnal colours of brown, orange and gold with some of the original yellow showing through.  The brown dye has broken a little and there is some green too.  There is a lot of brown in the warp so picking a weft colour was a little tricky.  I tried straw, gold, taupe and orange.

I went with the orange, I know that a lot of people hate orange but it was the best choice for the scarf.  The pattern is the same tie up and treadling as the first scarf, but I changed the threading.  I like to change up the threading or treadling and reuse the tie up especially when the tie up is for twelve shafts!

The scarf is very bright and autumnal.  It has also already been sold, but this time at my weaving guilds Christmas Sale.

Final Garden Shot is the two hummingbirds that have staked out our humming bird feeder.  We have two feeders and we switch them out every hour so the hummingbirds can have unfrozen food all during the daylight hours.  We also bring them in at night.  This week is the first cold weather we have had this winter, it is our version of the polar vortex, it is going down to -8 C but feeling like -15 C.