Finished Weaving to Frame

I have finally finished the guild study group challenge to weave something ‘frame able’ and it was not easy!

I wove a piece of cotton yardage with the idea of painting on it and was frankly underwhelmed by the result (check it out here).  Then I tried distorting the fabric to make rusching and again, hmmmm, not so much.

I started out with a piece of fabric twenty inches long and ten inches wide and used some iron on Pelon to stabilize it.  Then I cut it into three equal pieces to give myself plenty of chances to actually succeed in this endeavour.

My husband Michael found this product called Fabri Ink which promises to ‘create beautiful Watercolor effects on fabric’.  I finally got a glimmer of an idea and jumped right in.  The product comes in two parts; a refillable water brush and some concentrated ink.

I decided to do something simple and opted for ‘mountainish’ lines which I painted on dry fabric.

I then sprayed it with water to encourage bleeding.

I went a tad to far with the spraying and got a bit more bleeding than I had hoped for, but I could live with it by applying a few more lines of ink.

Here they are all in a row and as good as I'm going to get them.

This one lookes pretty mountainy, with a bit of cloud at the peak.

This one is almost mountain ranges and I'm liking it.

Number three and it is the most literal of the three.

Together they make a very satisfying triptich and I can finally put this project to bed with the knowledge that I met my commitment.  After Christmas I will hang them in my studio beside my loom.

Here is my kitchen Christmas tree all decked out in fine blown glass vegetables and pastries, every time I look up on top of the kitchen armoir I feel happy.

Collapse Weave ~ Lesson Learned

I think that the old adage of ‘less haste more speed’ is true of my last couple of projects on the loom!  I really enjoyed weaving the rose collapse weave scarf and thought that I’d do another.  When I cut the soft rose scarf off I had heaps of warp left on the loom, so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to tie on the new warp.

I wanted to use 2/12 cream merino as the base.  I only had 2 ounces in the stash  and when I pulled the warp I ended up with 78 ends.

So I went hunting through the bins and found that I had a few ounces of 50/50 silk and merino blend in cream that I could add to the mix.  I managed to eke out 35 ends of this.

As in the soft rose scarf I wanted to use a knotty rayon that has great lustre and heaps of interest, so out came the big cone of cream and soft gold yarn.  I pulled 96 ends of this so I had enough for every alternate end.

I decided that I could handle a quick 'down and dirty' tie up and so I pulled some knitting stitch holders out and used them to hold my crosses….not the best idea in the world!  I tied on the 35 silk/merino ends first, then the merino and then the rayon.

Basically after that, chaos ensued, I was trying to tie the merino alternately with the rayon, skipping the already tied ends.  This instantly became a hot mess of knots and dropped and missed ends!

Thankfully, after much pfaffing around it pulled through the reed and the heddles fairly easily and it wove up beautifully; you can hardly see the fell line as it is being woven.

The cream scarf came off the loom yesterday and still needs finishing, but I’m so loving this weaving, so I decided to pull another warp in blue.  This time I’m using 2/18 porcelain blue merino as the base.  For texture and colour I’m using 2/8 tencel in two colours ~ soft blue and azure and an amazing multi coloured cotton novelty yarn.

I told you I learned my lesson; so this time I pulled the base 2/18 warp first and holding the cross with lease stick tied to my beater I tied on to the existing warp in a very orderly way ~  I tied onto every alternate warp end.

I then pulled the other 4 yarns together as a warp and using another set of lease sticks tied to the beater; I tied these on to the left over warp ends. I felt that I had corralled those cats!

This was so much easier and so much faster than my chaotic effort with the cream scarf! I kept the lease sticks in place while I pulled on the warp and it ran on in a lovely controlled manner! I am already weaving away happily!

The garden shot today is from my neighbours yard late last night, so please forgive the poor quality; but it was dark!  Our deer on Vancouver Island are so small that they are almost the same size as the lawn ornaments.

I have been knitting in the evenings and this is the latest off my needles, such a fun scarf to knit!

10 Shaft Free Form Scarf

I feel like I am on a very slow train lately.  It takes me forever to finish things on the loom; projects that should take a couple of days stretch into a week. Then once it is off the loom the project seems to kick around the studio for awhile before I actually get it finished.

Even though we are in a house that is under 4 years old, we are constantly making changes and the big change right now is that we are pulling up the floors from the only two bedrooms that were carpeted.  After much hunting around we finally found hardwood floor that is a close match to the dark maple floors in the rest of the house.  It seems that whatever we have; it’s out of stock or no longer made, or out of business, why is that?

So baseboards have been removed, tack strips pulled out and tomorrow someone is coming to take it all away to their home.  Then the installers arrive and we can put the rooms back together again!

That’s my excuse for showing you yet another scarf that has been woven and cut off but not pressed or finished.

This scarf came off the loom as stiff as a board.  The silk was washed after I hand spun it to set the twist, then again after the dyeing process, so I set the scarf quite closely as I had no expectation of shrinkage and didn’t want to end up with a sleazy scarf.  The warp width was 8 1/8 inches on the loom and the finished scarf is 7 7/8 wide.

The warp I pulled was 100 inches long and the scarf with fringe now measures 96 inches, so somewhere along the line I lost 4 inches.  Since the scarf has yet to be washed, I think this is take-up lost as the warp threads interact with the weft threads….but it is a surprising amount considering only 71 inches have been woven.

I love this free form pattern; the random waves across the width are truly lovely. Once I have twisted the fringe and given this a good wash I think that I’ll try whacking the scarf on the table a few times to soften it up ~ fingers crossed!

The garden shot for today is a big beautiful Dahlia from my back garden, what a looker!