Fleur de Lis Diversified Plain Weave Again

 There is so much going on around here that I completely forgot to write about the progress on my Fleur de Lis in Diversified Plain Weave this week.

It certainly has been a voyage of discovery for me beginning with the ‘aha’ moment when I discovered that my treadling was upside down!

I guess that my usual style of pattern motif is symmetrical and this Fleur de Lis is definitely not that.  I printed the treadling off of Fibreworks and got down to weaving and although I thought the motif was weird, I was so focused on the selvedges that it didn’t click right away that it was upside down.

Once the entire motif was woven, it was apparent that I had forgotten that the pattern is pictured on Fiberworks from behind the loom, not from in front of the loom.

I know that it really doesn’t matter in which direction the pattern appears since it will the same from top to bottom on the runner.  I just didn’t like weaving it upside down, it messed with my thought pattern (I really am a linear kind of gal!)  So, I unwove the pattern and re-wove it from the bottom of the pattern to the top and I’m much happier.

Usually I am meticulous about when and how I add new threads to the web, habitually I add at the selvedges.  For some reason,  I decided to add the new fine thread whilst in the midst of the runner.....why, why, a thousand times why?   You can barely notice it on this side of the cloth (about 10 threads to the left of the flower), but I got a glimpse of the other side while advancing the warp and yup, there is was, front and centre!  

As I near the end of the runner, yet another problem has appeared.  My hanging selvedge threads which were made out of the ‘not cotton’ thick warp threads have started to fuzz and fray and snap. 

I have had to re-hang the selvedges twice on the right hand side so, I will be pulling off these ‘not cotton’ selvedges and replacing them with 2/8 cotton for the next runner.

Speaking of the next runner, while I was weaving this runner I noticed that treadle #5 and treadle #14 were the same. I haven't a clue why I didn’t see it before.  Regardless, I went back to the computer and with some fiddling around I was able to amend my Fleur de Lis and make just a wee improvement now that I had another treadle to play with.

I think that the little drop near the bottom of the motif takes it out of ‘possible space ship’ motif and firmly anchors it in Fleur de Lis!

The garden shot today is of the greenhouses’ progress with our Vanilla Strawberry hydrangea (Hydrangea paniculata’Renhy’) in the foreground.

Grey Striped Tea Towels Part 2

I started weaving the grey and blue striped tea towels, and as always they are a joy to weave.  I like to give each tea towel a unique band of colours which add interest to the tea towel.  

I was weaving the main body of the tea towel, when I noticed that there was a threading issue with one of the stripes.  It is the dark grey stripe to the right of the blue stripe, there is a weird float in the middle of the stripe.

It was hard to see in the beginning with the colour changes but at 15 inches, almost to the middle of the tea towel it was clear to see.  I decided to unweave the tea towel.  It took longer to unweave then to weave, it also took more pirns!  I had to borrow some of Mom’s red pirns.

I was able to quickly fix the threading mistake but I had neglected to tie slip knots to keep the rest of the warp from pulling through the reed.  So I also had to resley the warp.  A silly mistake! 

So I am back at the beginning, ready to start weaving the first tea towel.

Final Garden Photo is the Persian Silk Tree (Albizia julibrissin).  It is blooming with fluffy pink clouds of blossoms.  The smell of the flowers is absolutely lovely.  It is also called a Mimosa tree or, my favourite, the Sleeping tree.  It is called Sleeping tree because it will close its leaves during the night, so cute!  Last week I noticed a lady with a huge professional camera taking photos of this tree, the tree is a beauty and we are at the very end of it's northern range!

Diversified Plain Weave Fleur de Lis

 I’ve decided that it’s time to tackle a project that is quite challenging and that has been on my bucket list for awhile.

A couple of years ago my guild study group project was to explore Diversified Plain Weave.  The end result of my study was that I developed a pattern for a Fleur de Lis.  Ngaire posted a really good explaination of the ins and outs of diversified plain weave here.

I wanted to weave this pattern as a table runner so I began hunting through my yarn ‘stash’ for an appropriate warp yarn.  I found a 2/8 mercerized cotton and a 2/16 orlec in white that will do nicely.  The warp for diversified plain weave is two thin ends followed by 2 thick ends; the best ratio is that the thin ends should be 1/2 the grist of the thick ends.

I pulled the warp of 746 ends in three bouts, alternating 2 thin and 2 thick ends.  I had 372 ends in 2/8 cotton and 374 2/16 orlec ends by the end of it.  

I was well into pulling the warp and I thought that my 2/8 cotton (it was labled that way) just felt ‘un-cottony’.  So I did a burn test and, it was definately not cotton, the melted blob at the end proves it isn’t cotton at all!  I was much too far along to do anything but to proceed.

Diversified Plain Weave is in no way a balanced weave because of the tie down threads.  My pattern called for 186 ends on shafts 1 and 2 and a whopping 236 on shaft three, the rest have only 16 ends on them.  My loom is set up to have 100 ends on every shaft, so moving heddles was on the agenda.

To move heddles on the Louet Spring Loom is daunting to say the least.  My first job was the count out the heddles to move from the back shafts.  I took 80 each from the back 4 shafts.  To make sure the texsolve heddles don’t twist during transport I put a blue twist tie through the top and bottom of the back of each heddle bundle and a black twist tie through the front. 

Now comes ‘biting penguin’ time.  These little holder/adjuster thingamabobbies are lethal!  To get the heddles off the shaft you have to pull the texsolve shaft lines out of the adjusters, hold the two ends of the shaft open and move over the heddles, then re-affix the shafts.  Let me tell you, there are always tears and broken finger nails!  Now to do the whole process again to add the heddles to the front three shafts.

My plan told me that I was going to beam the runner at 24 ends per inch, so I put the warp threads though the raddle on top of my loom as 6-6-0-6-6 ends to spread it evenly.  I was almost half way done and had far too many ends left.

So I went to the computer and had another look at my plan and saw that I had counted the 2 thick ends as one, since they are duplicates.   In fact I don’t have 24 epi I have 34 epi, so I had to move every thread over.....can you see a pattern here.....gotta check things out before I jump ahead!

The threading was pretty simple because most of the ends are on the first 3 shafts.  I have decided to lash on the warp this time.  Generally I tie on my warps (see here for how I do it), but yet again I hadn’t think things through!  I hadn’t actually thought about how long the runner(s) would be before I pulled the warp.   I wanted to get three runners – small, medium and large out of this warp and so saving as much warp as possible was key.

After the warp was loosely lashed on, I tightened the tension and kept my eye on how tight the lashed on bouts were.  As I started to feel them tighten I checked the overall tension by running my hand on the warp web behind the beater bar.  This gives you the most accurate feel.

Now that a few of the bouts were pretty tight, it was time to play the lashing like a harp.  You find the loosest bouts and pluck the slack up and distribute it to the tighter bouts.  The end result is a very even tension.

To splay the warp web evenly I put in a couple of venetian blinds and then a couple of thick soft yarns and now I’m ready to start.

At this point I know I want three runners.  My table is 71 inches long with a 2 inch drop over the edge; so I knew that my longest runner had to be about 80 inches to allow for hem and take up.  The shortest should be about 50 inches including hems and the middle length is somewhere around 66.  Since I have never woven this pattern I have no idea what height each of Fleur de lis motifs will turn out, so I will start with the smallest runner and figure out how much between each motif by trail and error.

 My garden photo today is of my lovely little garden shed.  My husband built it out of HardiPlank several years ago and here it is on it’s final day before we start tearing it down.  We have ordered a greenhouse and this just had to go!

Grey Striped Tea Towels

I am doing another set of tea towels; they are a great summer weave because you can play in the garden in the morning then in the hot summer afternoons weave a tea towel.  I went back to an old tried and true tea towel draft Mom and I have both used multiple times.  Here it is in an Easter Egg Plaid, here in Grey with Purple Stripes, here in Grey with Yellow Stripes, here in Grey and Red Stripes and here in Caribbean Blue Stripes.  It is a much loved 8 shaft false damask, which is based on a 1/3 broken twill instead of 1 /4 satin like a true damask.

I wanted to do the grey stripes again with a different colour as the accent.  I pulled seven different colours and lined them up with the base colours of white, black and three different greys.

The middle grey was the hardest colour to match with; it is a funny shade of grey with a touch of brown.  I ended up choosing the blue because I liked the bright and clear tone of it.

Pulling the warp is when you get the first glimpse of what the tea towels are going to look like and they are going to look great!

When the warp is this pretty it is amazing how fast the threading can go.

The tea towels warp is now ready for me to start weaving.  

Final Garden Photo is a Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis).  The plant has dark red leaves with these spikes of crimson red flowers.  They are about 3 feet tall and really stand out in the garden.

And an update on the Orange tree (Poncirus trifoliata monstrosa 'Flying Dragon citrus'), we have one orange!

Taco Tea Towel Wrap Up

I finally have the Taco Tea Towels off the loom and washed and dried,  and I am really, really happy with them.

The first two tea towels were woven with wefts of framboise and orange brulee and I really liked them both.   You can see them here.

I decided not to weave any two tea towels the same, so for my third tea towel I chose cerise (cherry) for the weft.  This tea towel is by far the hottest and brightest of the lot.  It is much prettier than the photo because no matter where I put it, the sun mars the true colour.

Tea towel number four was woven in honey yellow and I love the soft glow of this towel.  Because I used honey for one of the warp stripes too, the overall effect is much calmer than the others.

At this point I decided that I was going to change it up and do colour blocks.  For this tea towel I decided to go for about 3 inch blocks of honey and framboise.  I wove a 4 inch block to start and at the end so that I would have 1 inch to fold under for the hem.  This ensured that all the blocks on the ‘right’ side of the tea towel are all the same length.  I really like this tea towel but I must admit that all the stopping and starting whilst changing colours really slowed me down.

For the final tea towel I chose to continue weaving in blocks, but made each block 4 inches in width and wove 5 inch starting blocks.  By doing this I went from 12 blocks to 10 blocks.  This tea towel was woven in blocks of honey and orange brulee.

I really departed from my usual cool colours with this batch of tea towels, but now that the colour barrier has been crossed, I have a feeling more of the ‘warm’ colours are in my future!

As I mentions some time ago we painted our house this spring and went from a soft green house to a soft soft grey.  Well, against the new grey our well weathered teak two seater placed on the side passage way looked really sad.  So, we threw caution to the wind and painted it purple.....yup....purple! 

The old cushions were brown tropic themed and really looked weird with the purple, so they got a make over too and we chose to go bold and cheerful and I love it!  Gotta say, making covers for square cushions was a weebit of a challenge, but hopefully no one will inspect my corners!

The garden shot for the week is Clematis ‘Jackmanii’ peeking out from behind the much more aggressive grapes on the pergola in the back garden.

Everything but Weaving

Etsy has a new feature; videos.  I was part of the prototype group, so I got to try it out last month and now it is available to everyone on Etsy.  All of our scarves in the Etsy shop have videos, so, if you want to, go have a look.  It is really surprizing how long it took to do short 15 second videos for each of the scarves, but I think that they are going to be worth it.  It's lovely to see them outside in natural light to get a better idea of their colour and this is especially true for green scarves.  This example is one of my favorites because of the little bird in the background.

I have also been doing product photos for the new sets of tea towels and I have been trying out some different looks for the tea towels.  I am going to redo some photos for the older tea towels because I like using the large wooden bowl instead of the yellow bowl or the silver colander.  I like to have a cohesive look to the shop so some new photos are in order.

I also found that I liked to do a messy stack of the whole set of the tea towels instead of the stacking the in a fan shape.  The colours are Apple Blossom Pink, Pink Lilac, Lavender and Quince Blossom.  So the first two colours of the Spring Flowers cottolin tea towels are up and in the next couple of days the other two colours will be up.  Apple Blossom Pink and Lavender.

We are finally having some summer weather so every chance I get I’m outside.  Here are some garden pictures that I took today.

The Humming bird is hanging out in the Crocosmia 'Lucifer' (Montbretia).

We put down straw in the veg patch to keep the vegetables clean and mulched.  In this photo we have beans, cucumbers, cantaloup, zucchini, cutting celery, shiso leaves in pots, grapes and tomatillos, whew a lot is such a small space!   It has been so cold that nothing is as far along as it should be for this time of year.

This is the new extended area in the back perennial garden that I showed you earlier in the spring.  It always surprises me how fast the garden goes from ‘the plants are too small’ to ‘everything is getting too big’!

Taco Tea Towels

During 2011, I took part in a tea towel exchange and the results were so much fun. One of the tea towels I received was this symphony in warm colours.

This tea towel became my ‘go to’ cloth to wrap up warm corn tortillas on our weekly Mexican Monday, so it is associated with many, many happy memories. Now, after nine years of use wrapping up the hot off the grill tortillas, as well as the obligatory dish drying, it's a tad faded but still in wonderful condition, all soft and absorbent.  Just goes to show that investing in a handmade tea towel is well worth it!

The colours I chose for my Taco Tea Towels are from M. Brassard et fils in Quebec; Orange Fonce, Honey, Brick, Mauve and Cerise.  All are in 2/8 unmercerized cotton, which is the perfect tea towel yarn in my opinion.

The pattern I decided upon is the same pattern I used on my very first project on my Louet Spring Loom in 2008.  It is a 12 shaft pattern that has sections of 2/2 twill, basketweave and plaited twill.  I put on a warp 7 yards long to make 6 tea towels each 36 inches long.   Hmmm, when will I ever go metric....Canada went metric in 1970 and I use metrics for everything except weaving, go figure!

The weft on the first tea towel is Framboise ~ another Canadian foible in that I see framboise, I write framboise but my mind translates it to raspberry right away....ahh the joys of bilingualism.  This weft really highlights the orange plaited twill  and the 2/2 twill sections.

The weft on the second tea towel is Orange Brulee, or burnt orange, and in this tea towel the brick plaited twill sections are the star.  You can really pick up the basket weave in the mauve stripes too.

The garden shot this week is a new addition to my growing love of cone flowers in my perennial borders.  This one is Echinacea purpurea ‘Green Twister’ and what a beauty.