The Guild of Canadian Hand Weavers Samples for 2018 Overview

Woven during the Summer of 2017, but we saved the posts until the samples had all been mailed to the Guild members, because  we didn't want to gazump them and spoil the surprise!

The Qualicum Weavers and Spinners Guild decided to do the samples for the Guild of Canadian Hand Weavers newsletter to be mailed out in 2018.  There are four newsletters per year with a weaving sample in each one.

The sample theme we went with is how many different weave structures could we weave using the same threading and tie up?  We decided on a 4 shaft threading and a 2/2 twill tie with plain weave.

The first sample is the base sample, a 4 shaft crackle threading woven as drawn in. This one was Mums.

The second sample is woven as twill, using a M’s and W’s treadling and was woven by Linda Wilson.

The third sample is woven as Swedish Lace and was woven by Pat Collins.

The fourth sample is mine and is woven as polychrome crackle woven with a traditional crackle.  I had intended for this sample to be polychrome crackle with an echo treadling, which it kind of is because the traditional crackle treadling is interleaving of a twill and plain weave but . . . it is stretching the definition of an echo weave.

It was really fun and easy to weave the samples.  In the previous posts I’ve shared how we did it so if anyone is interested in doing the newsletter samples will have an idea of what to expect.

Guild of Canadian Hand Weavers Bulletin Samples Part 2

The samples have been woven and this blog post is about what happens next to the samples.  I put the finished fabric on the counter so I could make sure that I had enough samples.  Thankfully I hadn’t miscounted otherwise I would have had to put on another warp!

Then the monster sample was washed and hung it up to dry.  It quickly dried in the summer sun.

The next step is to iron a small chunk of the samples, I did about 10 rows.  Then place a piece of plastic between the ironing board and the sample fabric.  Make up your glue solution 1/3 Elmer’s School Glue and 2/3 water.  Using a paint brush, brush this solution onto the waste yarn between the samples.  We then used a blow dryer to speed up the drying of the sample.

When the glue is dry remove the plastic sheet and add rotary cutting board in its place.  Cut the small section of samples free.  Repeat the steps of ironing, gluing and cutting until done with the large sample piece.  I have to admit that this took awhile!

Almost done, just need to cover a table with a plastic sheet and place the now small sections of samples on it.  Use the same glue solution to paint the lines of waste yarn between each sample.  The glue will sit on top of the yarn so a paint brush is needed to force the glue between the fibres.  Be generous with the glue.  I placed it outside to dry and move onto the next section.

The sections are dry and now it is time to cut all the samples apart.  We found it was easier to use scissors then a rotary cutter as it dulled the rotary cutter immediately and replacing that can be expensive.  If you have a friend or a loved one to help to it goes quite fast, about an hour.

Now the samples are all separate and  ready to be sent to the Bulletin newsletter editor.

We sent three out of the four draft samples in one box.  Each set of samples was wrapped with plastic to keep the samples dry and a paper copy of the draft was attached.  An email copy of each draft was also sent to the Bulletin newsletter editor.  And that was it, done!

Final Garden Shot is the strikingly veined leaves from the Lords and Ladies (Arum italicum).  Spring is in the air!

Guild of Canadian Hand Weavers Bulletin Samples Part 1

Now that the Guild of Canadian Weavers has had a chance to mail out their newsletter for 2018, I can tell you all about making the samples for the year. A small group of us from the Qualicum Weavers and Spinners Guild decided to volunteer to weave the samples for the year.  We chose to use Orlec for the samples as it has lots of bright and bold colours, it is also very easy to use and readily available in Canada.  Mum did the math and worked out that for each set of samples we would need 3 8oz tubes of warp, 3 8oz tubes of weft and ½ tube of contrast yarn for spacers in both warp and weft.  To be on the safe side we choose to order an extra tube for the warp and weft as it would be the same dye lot if we needed it.

The warp length was 8.5 yards long and 606 ends for each of the samples.  Mum did the Spring 2018 sample and I did the Winter 2018 sample. Each warp was six samples wide.

I pulled each bout of samples separately, 96 threads plus the 6 threads of the separating yarn.  I had two thread colours in the warp so it took a little longer to pull but each bout took me 40 minutes, so fairly time consuming.

The warp pulled on beautifully because of the smoothness of the Orlec, which is orlon fibre.  We did 6 samples across, for a width of 25 inches.  The samples were 4 inches wide in the reed; we decided that we liked large samples, so the recipients could really see a good section of the weave.

The sample is a four shaft crackle but I separated out the samples onto 8 shafts because I don’t have enough heddles on shafts 1-4 to do them all.  The threading took 15 minutes for each set of samples, with only 100 threads and on four shafts it was quick.

As the samples are not much wider than a tea towel warp putting the warp through the reed and tying onto the cloth beam didn’t take too much time, but I forgot to time it, I'd guess it was about an hour in all.
The samples are an absolute joy to weave.  Each four inch sample only takes 10 minutes to weave.  It was really easy to find to time to do a couple of repeats at a sitting.

My sample, Winter 2018 was the polychrome crackle.  The warp colours were purple and green and the weft was orange.  Really bright and cheerful.

I did 55 passes of samples to make a total of 330 samples.  There are a couple of extras which is good because I had 3 samples that had errors.  The samples are great also because you get to leave your ends hanging out as they will be clipped later.

The finished fabric is crumpled up on the counter and you can see some of the iridescence starting to appear.

I will leave the samples here for now.  The next blog post is going to be about preparing the samples for the newsletter.

Final Garden Shot is our first snow of the year on the New Zealand Flax.