Networked Twill ~ Finished and Started

I have the treadling for the Polka Dot pattern committed to memory…or so I thought!  I pulled the painted silk scarf off the loom I just loved it.  After wet finishing and hanging to dry I put started to twist the fringe and that’s when it appeared, a whopping big error.

On this side everything looks great, and this is what I saw on the loom. 

This is the reverse side and there it is….a three thread treadling error right across the scarf (about half way up on the left side)!  Just as well that I love this pattern and don’t have a scarf like this because this one is mine, yet again!  I seem to be the recipient of more and more of my scarves lately.  Not sure what that says about my concentration of late.

Since I’m not one to give in, I immediately put on another silk warp using the same pattern.  This warp is hand spun silk that I blogged about spinning here. 

I have used this silk to weave a scarf before and I found that the sweet pastel tones really didn’t leap to the fore, so I decided to add a bit more colour to the warp and I dropped, green, purple, turquoise and navy onto the pulled warp during my last ProcionMX dye day in August.

There was no question regarding the weft this time.  I decided to use 2/16 Bamboo in navy and I couldn’t be happier with the outcome. The weft is really fine so the painted silk really pops.

This scarf looks just like a painting of dappled water; it is without a doubt one of my favourite painted warps!  Hopefully, this silk scarf with come off without an error and I’ll be able to list it on Etsy.

Undulating and Networked Twill Projects

The undulating twill shawl is finished and I couldn’t be happier with it!  The buttons that I ordered online were a perfect fit and the subdued copper finish on the metal buttons is a wonderful addition to the soft rust and copper tones in the shawl.  This undulating twill is a real joy to weave and has a wonderful soft drape ~ perfect for a cape or shawl.  You can’t see me, but I’m doing a happy dance!  You can see more photos here.  

At the bottom of the last post I showed you the painted silk scarf that I had just started weaving.  I have been having my recurring difficulty with weft colours.  I was sure, and I mean sure that the Azure blue weft would compliment the various purples and highlight the turquoise in the warp, well, I couldn’t have been more wrong.  What the Azure did was completely masked the turquoise and hide the variegation in the purple warp.  I also found that the 2/8 grist of the tencel over powered the 2/22 silk.  

My goal was to feature the wonderful colours of the warp, so I went to my stash and found this lovely single magenta silk.  It’s probably 1/30 ish and has long slubs that appear randomly. I was sure that this fresh colour would be perfect to show off the turquoise and that it would make the purple warp glow ~ right?  Wrong.  It just covered everything up and I couldn’t even see the polka dot pattern!

After much angst I settled on using a 2/10 black tencel weft.  The black toned down the luminosity and freshness of the warp, but it shows the pattern well and showcases the warp colours beautifully.  This scarf is still on the loom so it looks a bit loosey goosey right now but once wet finished it will be a stunner.

This is not the scarf that I envisioned at all, but it’s a real beauty nonetheless.

Monday is Canadian Thanksgiving day, so, 'Happy Turkey Day Everyone!'

Undulating Twill Shawl

September was one of those months that just seemed to fly by! We've taken plenty of day trips around Vancouver Island as well as a longer trip ‘off the rock’ to the Interior of BC to visit family, so weaving has taken a bit of a back burner.

Although I've not been blogging, I have been weaving in fits and starts.  Mid month I put on a warp in lovely rich rust and brown. I used two different colours of brown and a deep russet colour which I pulled together and randomly threaded through the heddles.

The warp is 24 inches wide and 100 inches long and I plan to make a hemmed shawl.  I chose to use an undulating twill pattern to enhance the fabrics drape and the random colour breaks really add interest to the pattern. 

To temper the earthiness of the browns I added 3 stripes on each side using a colour that Webs calls Adobe. I liked it so much that I used it as the weft too, it really pulls the brown up from drab to dazzling!

The fabric wove up very quickly and I have it off the loom, washed, hemmed and pressed.  I want to add buttons to this shawl but couldn't find any in my local Fabricland, so I ordered some for the shawl from a supplier on Etsy and had to await their arrival.

The buttons came in 10 days beautifully packaged!  These buttons cannot be found in local shops and that’s for sure!  I added a few exta buttons to my order for a raw silk blouse that I plan on sewing soon.

These copper metal buttons are the ones that will go on the shawl to allow it to be worn as a capelet.  Ngaire has already made one of these shawls and you can see it here.

 I've just started weaving one of the silk scarves that I painted in August….this one is purple and turquoise and I've chosen Azure for the weft.  This will be a polka dot scarf ~ a pattern that I go back to time and again….I love it!

Lashing On A Warp ~ or ~ Lashing Out About Lashing On

 Ngaire just put on a project using Bambu7 and she found that getting perfect tension was problematic using our tried and true method shown here.  The Bambu7 is a fairly thick yarn that has 6 strands and very little twist and frankly it’s really pricey, so lashing on was the solution to fix the problem and to save warp!

The fist step is to tie overhand knots.  The knots are tied using the number of ends in about a half inch of reed.  In this case the sett was 20 epi, so there are 10 ends in each knotted bout.

All the knots are done and you can see that Ngaire made every effort to get the knots about the same length from the ends.  Taking time now to keep them even really helps later on.

On the right hand side you can see a stick holding up the front apron rod.  Ngaire put one of these small lease sticks on each end of the loom and the purpose is to hold the apron rod in place while you lash on, making it hands free.   Ngaire made sure that the apron rod started out about 3 inches away from the knots to ensure that there was enough room to tighten the bouts after lashing on.

The yarn you use to lash on is another variable.  You need to choose a yarn that has hardly any stretch and is very, very strong because you will be pulling on it quite hard and you don't want it to snap half way through!  Ngaire decided to use 2/8 Orlec, but any synthetic will do nicely.  You need to start out with enough yarn to go over and through each knotted bout, so make sure you have at least 8 or 9 times the width of your cloth.

To start lashing on you need to tie the end of the lashing yarn onto the apron rod and go through the centre of the knot and then back around the apron rod.

You go around the rod and then up through each and every knot.

Every 5 or 6 knotted bouts stop and pull the tension fairly tight before proceeding forward.  This is another little step that makes it easier in the end.  When you have reached the end of the knots you tie off the lashing yarn and then pull or press on the lashing yarn until they feel even.

The knots should be in a fairly even line in the front, so go around to the back of the loom and walk your hand across the warp to futher even the tension.  Just gently push down and rock your hand on any tight feeling ends.  You may want to close your eyes to help you ‘feel’ the tension better.

Walk back around to the front and using the tension brake tighten up the warp to remove all the slack.  Now run your hand along the warp in front of the heddles and behind the reed to make sure the warp is evenly tensioned.  Leave the warp to rest with the tension on for twenty minutes or so, to make sure no new tension problems develop.

Here it is all done, evenly tensioned and ready to weave!  This is a great technique to use on those 'spendy' yarns because there is hardly any waste.

Sunny Day ~ Dye Day

What the heck has happened to Blogger???  This post took me 6 days, 2 computers, 3 browsers, 1 long distance phone call to a friend, 1 computer whiz and exiting and signing back in at least 30 times!

 A few months ago I bought 400 grams of natural coloured 2/22 silk on eBay. After a few blocks of time in and out of my freezer, we are ready to add some colour!

In the past I’ve just skeined off hunks of silk willy-nilly, dyed it, and then tried to figure out the best way to use it. This time I thought I’d take a different and I hope a smarter approach and pre-made warps. The entire 400 grams made warps for 9 scarves, 8 have 182 ends and 1 has 145 ends and will need to be supplemented to get to scarf width.

Here we are set up in the garage on a nice warm August afternoon!

The warps are basking in soda ash solution while they wait their turn.

As we pulled the warps we secured them with Weft Twining so they would lay flat for painting.

Then it is simply a matter of using a foamy brush to put the dye on the silk. You can see step by step photos on my post ‘To Dye For’.

These are some of the reds and yellows, aren't they stunners.

These are the blues and greens. You can see the Weft Twining  on the far left that we used to keep the warps flat.

I hunted through my silk bins and found some handspun tussah about 2/5 size, some handspun 3/30 size that had been dyed in locks and ended up looking washed out after spinning and some 1/30 single silk that was an odd shade, so they too went into the pile. The final addition to the mix was 2 pink shibori scarves that Ngaire wove last March. Don’t they look great drying outside in the shade?

Stripes and Squares Scarf

On this pair of scarves I am weaving specifically to sell on Etsy, so having a variety of scarf styles is very important to the look of the shop. Periodically I have a look at the overall appearance of the pages and try and spot any colour or style voids. Right now I seem to have a need for black and for stripes.

With that in mind I pulled a 2/8 tencel warp that has stripes in the following sequence 8 black, 2 slate grey, 2 blueberry, 4 silver, 2 white, 3 lemon drop and then the reverse. When I move into the next stripe I don’t double the number of black ends. The scarf has 5 stripes in total for a total of 163 ends which ends up as 6.8 inches wide.

I think it looks really neat over the back beam!

The weave structure is modified twill with some of the ends duplicated in the pattern.

Next to decide on the weft colour, after trying some of my other options; slate, black, navy and white….I chose this lovely grayed lavender. My goal was to make the first scarf fairly light coloured and to not hide any of the colours in the warp.

I have woven this pattern before with a different treadling and colour pallet. I found that if I wove long runs treadled 1-2-3-4 it produced stunning hills and valleys that gave an optical illusion but came with a price. Even after extensive wet finishing the weft threads tended to slip on the warp threads due to the smoothness of the tencel!

Needless to say, the scarf couldn’t be sold and I’m thankful for that because it is my very favourite to wear, warts and all it has a wonderful drape.

What I did discover is that if I treadled it in short runs the warp/weft was very stable, so here is a close up!

Back To The Loom

Last week we had a short trip to the Okanagan Valley to visit with my brother who is in the middle of Chemotherapy, so there was no time for weaving. I did pull a new two scarf warp and warped the loom, but  I’ll save that for next time.

I finished the fringes on the ‘Rhubarb’ scarf as soon as I came home and I can’t believe how much I love this colour pallet. The browns were lightened up by the red, lime and yellow and the whole scarf is a fiesta of fire! I’m definitely filing this colour combination away to work with again.

The Crackle weave pattern is so supple; the drape of this scarf is magical.

Since the Okanagan Valley is noted for it’s orchards I didn’t return home empty handed. I bought a flat of peaches, a flat of apricots and half a flat of lapin cherries. We immediately canned the peaches, made two batches of apricot jam and ate cherries like there was no tomorrow!

Just to fill up our spare time we went raspberry picking the day after our return, the berries were huge and don't they look pretty? We made two batches of jam and have these lovely berries ready to freeze. The blueberries were just starting to ripen, so these are just for eating with breakfast.

The same day, the two dozen French Filet bean plants that we threw into the garden in May decided that they were ready. This is what we didn’t give to our friends and neighbours ~ so lovely, and already blanched and ready to be put in the freezer. We have since done two more batches of about the same size and I swear my neighbours are hiding when we come with our hands full! I sort them into sizes and freeze the smallest ones whole for quick sautéing in the winter. The medium sized ones are cut in half and packaged ready for Greek bean and tomato casserole and the wonky curled up ones and the largest are cut up and frozen ready for soup. I love to be organized!

We stayed with my brother who lives on Predator Ridge Golf Course in Vernon while we were in the Okanagan,and we woke up on Sunday morning to these wee fellas just steps off the patio ~ their mother had stashed them in the shade while she foraged. They were there snoozing in the cool dirt for most of the day. Gotta love it!