Fancy Twill Cloth Off the Loom

I’ve finished weaving the six yards of cloth that I put on Avril, my purpose is to try my hand at making a few garments. It was really fun to weave, especially as my Mum filled all the pirns for me – all 14 of them! This is pretty amazing number as most scarves only take 1.5 pirns.
I had to pull some threads out to make the yardage fit the loom as 36 inch loom isn’t actually 36 inches! There is a total of 144 threads at 6 yards so there is going to be two very pretty teal blue scarves in my future.
I have only used the AVL a couple of times so getting the tension and the beat correct can be a challenge but it seems that I was doing pretty well as the cloth looks just great. My beat is very consistent, I’m pleased to say. Here is the yardage fresh off the loom and ready to wet finish.
I’m looking forward to seeing the finished product but it won’t be for a while as I have to relearn to sew first! I haven’t sat at a sewing machine since high school, so another challenge ahead.

I already have a new project on the loom, no moss on this stone!

Can't Get Going!

Not too much happening on the weaving front for me this week. It seems that summer and the long sunny days in the garden are taking priority right now! I’m overwhelmed with French filet beans at the moment!
I thought I’d show you how the studio looks today.I have one inch woven on the Jane loom, this is yet another rug sample that I don’t want to do! I just can’t seem to get enthusiastic about this warp at all! I’ve made a promise to myself to get it done by the end of the month….mmmmm, well, maybe! This is the warp I've pulled for placemats sitting on Lily Louet. I have never tried weaving placemats in 4/8 cotton so this should be interesting. I’ve chosen this lovely warm yellow for the warp and a sweet milky chocolate for the weft. The pattern promises to look something like a sunburst or a sunflower – wish me luck! This should be up and going in a few days; but not too soon as I’ve given Ngaire the use of my warp protector for her yardage warp….need to source another 36” length of cardboard for her!I am actively working on yet another Overshot piece. This is a modification from my previous Overshot and is working out splendidly. The LeClerc Minerva jack loom allows me to get a really good strong beat to push all that wool down and make a 50/50 cloth. If you remember I moved the 2/8 cotton warp from the Spring loom to the LeClerc a few weeks ago and it was a very good call. Ngaire, my daughter, and I did a crazy day trip to Vancouver last Thursday; we drove to Vancouver (373 km) and back again in one day; trading the driving between us, it wasn’t bad at all! My son popped home for a surprise visit and using it as an excuse we decided to drive him home to save him airfare. Well, it wasn’t completely altruistic…I got to hit Maiwa and pick up a few bits and pieces at the same time. I was in a real rush so just bought every Procion MX dye colour that they had in stock, some Urea, Synthrapol and Soda Ash. Now I’m really ready to take advantage of the summer weather and get some dyeing done.I also found two lovely hand carved wooden print blocks at Maiwa. I’m hoping to try them out on the natural silk scarves that Ngaire wove.

Weaving Words
Diaper – is any turned twill as long as it is not proper damask. Thus both dimity and dornick are diapers.

Fancy Twill Woven Fabric

I decided to do some yardage because . . . well I wanted to use the entire width of the loom – all 36 inches! The purpose of the yardage is for a jacket or vest, not quite sure at this point. There was a lot of pre planning that had to go into the project. I wanted to have lots of interesting designs and colours so I choose to do a variation on a twill gamp.
The stripes are all different widths but to make things easier when pulling the warp I made sure that each stripe has an even number of ends, it took more fiddling with the pattern than you think! When the garment is cut out I want to have the front panels of the vest or jacket match so the pattern has been mirrored with a delineating line of black in the centre. The warp is a mixture of 2/8 Orlec and 2/8 Tencel and the weft is black 2/10 Tencel. Originally the yardage was to be 36 inches but it turns out that a 36 inch reed isn’t really that long, more like 35.75 inches. Consequently I’ve had to drop a few ends off the back beam to make it work out. I did remember to keep the cross in the dropped ends and I’ll make sure to use them in my next yardage project.
There are 5 distinct stripes’, each stripe has a mixture of yarn colours. This was to give depth and interest to each stripe. The outside is a 1/1 mixture of soft green and soft blue. The next is pure pink. The wide one is dark teal on the outside blending through two shades of light teal in the centre. The next is purple, lavender then silver in the centre. The final stripe is a Fibonacci mixture of pink and rose.
I am really enjoying the weaving; the width is just at the edge of my reach. And it is amazing how fast I am going through pirns! Thankfully Mum is doing the hard work of filling them up with the electric bobbin winder.

Crackle Weave ~ Still Crack-a-Lakin'

After my last horrible warp, I decided to put on something that would give me some positive reinforcement. Well, this 2/8 tencel shawl is just that. It was quick, fun and very rewarding to weave! Everything I was looking for! The warp is sett at 24 epi on 8 shafts and is 2/8 black tencel. The weft is the same 2/8 tencel in scarlet. I put a straight twill border of 8 ends in red on the selvedges to keep the weft turns looking good. The weave structure I used is a modified crackle, which is my structure of choice at the moment. So pretty! I could not believe how quickly this 80” x 24” shawl wove up. No kidding, it took no time at all even though the pattern repeat was a whopping 293 picks long. The treadling was slightly modified from the regular advancing twill so it was very quick to fall into the swing of it.There is a definite right light side (red) and dark side (black) to this shawl. I think of it as giving garment options to its eventual owner!

I decided to put very long – 14” fringes on this shawl. I wanted to make a big bold statement with this shawl and since my virtual customer is a statuesque woman; I feel that the length of the fringe can really push it up a notch. No fancy beading yet, but that too shall come! I thought I’d show you what’s been keeping me away from the loom lately. Yup, that’s me up about 25 feet painting the eves…..scary doesn’t even begin to cover it! The change in our house is remarkable, from this… To this….

We chose to work on the hardest parts of the house first. All the trim work and frankly the learning curve we had working with the HardiPlank…..it all takes time! The house should look great by September! We can only work in the cool of the morning as the 35C+ temperature stops work by 11:00.

Crackle Weave on Eight Shafts

I really like the first project I did on the AVL. The green Crackle scarf with the tone on tone colour way really made the Crackle pattern pop. So I decided to do another scarf in the same pattern with 2/8 Tencel using Adobe for the warp and Sea Coral as the weft.
The above picture is quite purple but the scarf is more rosy in colour like the below picture. While I was weaving a way my loom made a horrible crunching sound and I wasn’t sure what happened. It turned out that one of the bars skipped; of course I didn’t figure it out until quite a bit later when I could see the mistake in the pattern. I haven’t quite figured out how to go backward yet, so I decided to weave a few more picks and then to fix the miss while still on the loom and under tension by needle weaving in the missing weft pick.
I used blue thread to follow the correct thread in the next pattern repeat. It really helped to keep track of the pattern pick that I needed to copy.

I finished the needle weaving and it was apparent right away that there had been a fix because of the density of the picks, it just looked crammed in there. I was hoping that washing the scarf would ease the picks apart, but it didn’t and so now the scarf is mine! I really love the pattern and the tone on tone is lovely, and who doesn’t need another scarf!

Here is a sneak peek at my next project; colourful doesn’t even begin to cover it!

Life is Just Too Darn Short So Cut It Off!

I realized that my weaving had gone pear shaped about 1 inch into the 12 Shaft Drall piece. I planned the runner meticulously and on paper it looked wonderful. I was going to use fine black linen as a weft, but I was still weaving in my header when things went dreadfully wrong. This photo is in front of the heddles.

It was soon apparent that the singles linens just didn’t want to separate even after going through the heddles. As soon as the shaft lifted each thread seemed to grab onto its’ neighbour like a life line. No amount of strumming or moving the beater made a difference. It was just as bad behind the heddles, except I had the added advantage of nice little pills of linen being produced to make nice snarls and uneven tension for me!So, without further ado and as cavalierly as possible; I cut it off!!!

So from ‘golden hair’ to ‘gone in there’ what a blessed relief! Going to put something really, really slippery on now and know I added several hours to my life!

Moving Warp From Loom to Loom

Seems that everything I touch lately becomes an ugly problem! Lily Louet, my Spring Loom, just doesn’t have the ability to take a very hard beat. A hard beat is paramount to weaving good overshot and Lily just can’t take it, so what to do with the remaining Overshot warp? I decided to move the 2 yard warp from the Louet to my good old faithful Leclerc Minerva which is a much sturdier loom and to weave another piece.I still had the warp through my reed and well secured, so before I did anything else I put Minervas’ least sticks in the warp and tied them well to the Spring loom. Then I pulled the remaining warp off the back beam to the front of the loom so I could get to where it was attached to the Spring loom back beam. I pulled the Leclerc loom back to back with the Spring loom and inserted Minerva’s back rod next to the one on Lily Louet capturing the warp, luckily, I wind on back to front so there was a lovely loop to catch. I then pulled Lily’s rod out. Then crossing my fingers and toes, Ngaire and I started to wind the warp which was still through the Springs’ heddles and reed onto the Minerva’s back beam. Surprisingly, it went very smoothly. I stopped just before the warp got to the lease sticks. After untying the lease sticks we flipped them from the Spring Loom over to the Leclerc and tied them to the castle and I was ready to start threading again. I decided to take a break from Overshot at this point and here it sits! Since my lovely Lily Louet was bare now I decided to try something completely different! I have pulled 935 ends of 1 ply fine linen for a 20” runner…..yup that’s 48 epi! I used 4 different 16/1 linen yarns which I blended on the warping board. I have had these kicking around my stash for yonks and they were looking a bit sad, so I thought that now was the time. Oh crap…..they bridge like crazy!!!! I’ve now got 2/3 of the warp through the heddles and hopefully I’ll finish today and have some weaving to show for the next blog.