BOUNDWEAVE with Tom Knisely

 I recently completed a 3 day workshop with Tom Knisely on Boundweave.  It was a great workshop, primarily because Tom is such an entertaining teacher and also because I will definitely weave a rug or two using the techniques learned during the workshop.



For the class, we each brought our own loom to the Folk Art Center, warped with doubled carpet warp at 6 working epi in a rosepath threading.  We used either rug wool or mop cotton yarns for the weft in a variety of treadling sequences.  I ended up with a sample piece that is about 70 inches long and thick and sturdy enough for a rug using rug wool as weft.  The weft yarns were mill ends from R & M Yarns in Tennessee and some beautiful wool yarns picked up during my recent trip to New Mexico at Tapetes de Lana.

Exercise 1, shown in the top photo in cream and camel, is a two color treadling woven on opposites.

Exercise 2, 3 color with the treadling reversed to create "eyeballs".

Exercise 3, with 4 colors, resulting in a flame stctch look.  

Exercise 4 with 3 colors

Exercise 5 with 4 colors and the treadling reversed to create diamonds

Exercise 6, 2 colors

Placemats to Match

My weaving guild, the Western North Carolina Fiber/Handweavers Guild, had a napkin exchange this summer.  The finished napkins will be exchanged at our Guild meeting in November.  Since I am weaving napkins, I decided to weave matching placemats using the same color, Mediterranean Blue.  The placemats are woven using a huck boxes pattern.  For some reason the placement of the boxes is not centered on the placemat.  Next time, I will change the threading to provide more symmetry in the design.

The placemats are woven with a thick 3/2 cotton set at 12 epi, so they weave up very fast.  I ended up with 10 placemats and I will have 10 napkins (7 from the guild exchange and 3 extras that I finished).  I have woven these placemats before in Amber Gold and I plan to weave up some napkins to match. However, I recently tried to re-order the yarn from WEBS, and that color is not available in 8/2 cotton, so I will need to weave with the finer 10/2 cotton.

Napkin Exchange

The Western North Carolina Handweavers/Fiber Guild is hosting a napkin exchange.  There are three groups of eight weavers participating, with our finished napkins completed by November.  Each weaver selects a draft or pattern and a color for their napkins and then distributes 325 yds of yarn for weft to the other seven members in the group.  I have picked a medium blue with a little turquoise in it called Mediterranean Blue.

All of us will warp our loom with natural 8/2 cotton and thread it based on the pattern we have selected. I will weave up the yarn from each of my group members and return to them finished napkins.  At the end of the exchange in November, I will have eight napkins woven in Mediterranean Blue and natural, in eight different patterns. The napkins should be about 18" square when finished, so they need to be 20" wide on the loom with a woven length of 22" to allow for hemming.

The first challenge was measuring out eight packets of yarn, 325 yards long into a ball.  I don't have a ball winder so I borrowed one from my knitting friend Liz.  I also don't have a yardage counter, so I needed to improvise.  We have a very old skein winder that has been in Gary's family for generations.  I counted out the needed revolutions for each ball on the skein winder and then wound it into individual balls on the ball winder.

The next challenge was selecting a draft that would be interesting yet relatively easy to follow the treadling sequence.  Making eight napkins requires 7 yards of finished cloth.  I had enough warp on the loom when I finished the 7 napkins for the other members of my group to make three napkins for myself in 3 different patterns on the same threading.

Date Finished  Septermber 2014

Loom  Baby Wolf

Weave Structure  twill

Reed   12, 23 epi

Warp     Fiber   cotton

              Count  8/2

              Color  natural

              Mfr  Valley

              Source   WEBS

Warp     Width in Reed  20 inch

              Ends  460

              Length  7 yds

Weft      Fiber  cotton

              Count  8/2

              Color  Mediterranean Blue

              Mfr  Valley

              Source  WEBS

Beat                       50/50                     

Size

New Mexico Fiber Trail

New Mexico has been the home of generations of weavers and spinners, working to make blankets and rugs from homespun wool.  The state tourism office has identified handcrafters throughout the state and put together three separate Fiber Arts Trails, some of the sites follow the traditional methods and some produce more contemporary crafts.  I had a work trip planned for Santa Fe last month and flew in a day early to visit old friends and find a few of the sites on the Trail.

I flew into Albuquerque on Sunday and the first stop was Las Vegas, New Mexico.  My friends lived about twenty miles north of Las Vegas and there was a weaving shop listed in the Trail Guide in Las Vegas.  However, the guide was out of date and this shop was no longer a weaving studio, but instead a coffee shop that had a single loom and was also closed on Sunday.

However, the shop was located in the Las Vegas' Historic Plaza.  I walked around the plaza which had wonderful historic buildings facing the square, including the Plaza Hotel.  I learned later that the Longmire TV series is frequently filmed on the Plaza and the filming of the sheriff's office is in the second floor of one of the buildings on the Plaza.  Next stop, Canoncito de las Manuelitas.






Monday morning I headed out to see a few more spots on the Trail, first stop Mora, NM and the Tapetes de Lana spinning mill and retail shop in Mora.  Tapetes is a nonprofit in the area established to help folks in this very poor, very rural area with employment at their small spinning mill and through selling handwoven rugs and blankets in the store in Mora.  The wool comes from churro sheep, a breed that has been raised in this area for generations.  In Mora, I purchased 3 skeins of wool for a rug workshop I will be taking in a few weeks. The other great thing about Tapetes is they also have a coffee bar, so I could refuel for the trip over the mountain to Chimayo.

Next stop on the Trail was Chimayo, to visit Ortega's Weaving Shop.  This store and studio has been in business for over 100 years, weaving blankets, rugs and producing cloth that for vests and coats.

My last stop before heading to Santa Fe and the start of my meeting was in Espanola.  Espanola is known as the heroin capital of New Mexico, not a place that would likely house a very large weaving nonprofit.  The Espanola Valley Fiber Arts Center is located in an old retail store building and full of looms, yarn, a dyeing kitchen.  I would love to live close to this center, because it looks like the facility is frequently filled with weavers.  I purchased 4-5 pounds of Pendleton blanket selvages at EVFAC for making rag rugs.  I could buy these from Pendleton directly but I was able to pick colors and get the right amount for a rug and I didn't have to meet Pendleton's 30 pound minimum order.  I liked them so much I drove the 30 miles back to the Center at the end of the week to buy another 5 pounds in a different colorway.

Tom Knisely Boundweave Workshop

My weaving guild, Western North Carolina Fiber/Handweavers Guild (WNCFHG), is having a 3 day workshop next week in Asheville.  The instructor is Tom Knisely, teaching us techniques in Boundweave.  Tom was chosen Weaving Teacher of the Year by the readers of Handwoven magazine a few years ago.  He is the author of several books and videos and is a frequent contributor to Handwoven.  I am excited about the session and looking forward to learning new tools that will help with rug weaving.

I weave primarily with cottons, and plant based synthetics like tencel and bamboo, but we will be using a heavy weight wool yarn (800-1000 yds/lb.) for the weft for the workshop.  I didn't have any wool yarn so that required adding more yarn to my stash.  I ordered some from R & M Yarns in Tennessee, mostly in neutrals and browns.  To liven things up a bit, I found a few more colors in New Mexico last week along the New Mexico Fiber Trail.

Turned Twill Towels

I recently finished another run of 6 twill towels in a turned twill.  Twill towels seem to be my summer go to project in getting ready for holiday present giving.  However, these have only been off the loom a week and 3 are already gone.  Two for house gifts and one for a birthday present for our niece.  So much for getting Christmas presents done early this year.

I do not have a 12 dent reed in Montana and so used a 10 dent reed -2-2-3, to get close to 24 epi, resulted in a pretty good weight for the towels.   I used both 10/2 mercerized and 8/2 unmercerized in the weft and once I wet finished them, I like the look and feel of the 10/2 better than the 8/2. They still seem to be pretty absorbent due to the 8/2 cotton in the weft.

Date Finished    September 2014

Loom      Baby Wolf

Weave Structure  Turned Twill

Reed   10, 23 epi

Warp     Fiber  cotton

              Count  8/2

              Color  yellow

              Mfr   Valley

              Source    Webs

Warp     Width in Reed  21"

              Ends  484

              Length  6 yds

Weft      Fiber  cotton

              Count  8/2and 10/2

              Color

              Mfr

              Source

Beat                       50/50                     

Size

Notes  I like the 10/2 cotton better

Shadow Weave in Bamboo

Georgia Yarns had a special on bamboo yarns and I couldn't resist.  The yarn is fairly heavy, comparable to a 3/2 or a 5/2.  I had some natural bamboo in my stash so weaving a two color cloth made sense.  The pattern was published in Handwoven March/April 2005 for a scarf and the larger yarn and the looser set meant the structure would work well for a shawl.

Date Finished  May 2014

Loom  Baby Wolf

Weave Structure  Shadow Weave

Reed

Warp     Fiber  Bamboo

              Count  5.2/4

              Color  blue

              Mfr

              Source  Georgia Yarn

Warp     Fiber  Bamboo

              Count  5/2

              Color  white  

              Mfr

              Source  WEBS

Warp     Width in Reed

              Ends  349

              Length  3 yds

Weft     Same as weft

Beat                       50/50                     

Size

Notes

More Handmade Weaving Tools

Weaver's can't resist the lure of new yarn, no matter how much yarn we have in our stash, it's never enough.  What we have may not be the right color, the right size, or have the right qualities for the project in mind.  Sometimes it's the fact that it is on sale, even though we don't have a clue what we will do with it.  My yarn stash had expanded to the point it was falling off the shelves and I needed a new system.  A yarn tree seemed to be a good solution.

At the same time, I was offered a couple of spinner racks from my dear friends at the local independent bookstore. They were replacing racks and were going to throw out these racks, one was an old card rack and the other held T-shirts.  The T-shirt rack already had oval slots on the sides and all that we needed to do was add 6" metal pegboard hooks to hold the cones.  The yarn tree holds 90 cones, and it's already full.




The other spinner rack was built on a base with great casters and a smooth spinning action, perfect to turn into a warping mill.  We removed the plastic slides that held the cards from the base.  DH set to work and put together this mill, it has a 2 yard circumference and has adjustable sliding pegs on 3 sides, which should give maximum flexibility in measuring out warps.

Crackle Weave Workshop

Teena Tuenge of Western North Carolina Fiber/Handweavers Guild recently taught a weekend workshop on crackle weave.  The workshop was a fundraiser for the Blue Ridge Fiber Show which will be held in the fall of 2014 at the WNC Arboretum.  The workshop was attended by about 20 participants in the auditorium of the Folk Art Center. This was a workshop where we all warped our looms in advance and then spent two days playing with weave structure, treadling, and color sampling.  Teena provided us with treadling and tie up instructions for about 20 different weave structures, all using the same crackle threading.

By the end of Sunday, I had woven over twenty different samples using the crackle threading, mostly crackle tie-up but a wide variety of treadlings.  Granted most of the samples were only a few inches long, but enough to tell how the different treadling affects the final cloth.  The crackle notebook that I created with the samples and treadling instructions, finally inspired me to wet finish the samples and finish the notebook for a class I took a year ago at Arrowmont on Turned Beiderwand.







After weaving the samples, I wove off the balance of the warp in the classic crackle treadling and created a lovely piece of cloth, 8" by 30 inches.  Once again, I am not sure what the future life of the is will be - a tablet cover, a small purse, or will it stay in place as an unfinished table runner.

Date Finished  March, 2014

Loom        Baby Wolf

Weave Structure  Crackle threading, many                                           treadlings

Reed  12, 24 epi

Warp     Fiber   Cotton

              Count    10/2

              Color    Pistachio, Avocado, Quarry and                              Yellow

              Mfr  Uki

              Source  Georgia Yarn Co and Yarn Barn

Warp     Width in Reed  9 in

              Ends 222

              Length  4 yards

Weft      Fiber  same

              

Beat       Weft Faced    

John C. Campbell Folk School 2014

I absolutely love spending time at John C. Campbell Folk School.  Last month, Gary and I spent a week there immersing ourselves in all things handmade.  I took a weaving class with Joann Hall and Gary took a class in woodturning, making bark edged bowls.  The theme of the week was Scandinavian Heritage Week, so Swedish weaving was the topic for my week.  The class marketing materials described a class with a variety of projects, using fine threads and warping techniques.  However, the class project was learning a technique called Swedish Art Weaving, which is similar to tapestry weaving.  The class would be weaving a sampler during the week that looked something like the photo below.  The sampler uses a linen weft and 3 strands of wool for the pattern weft.  It is woven from the back, so you need a mirror to see the pattern as it emerges.

Most weaving workshops have at least one student who is "difficult".  Sometimes, it is an intermediate class and someone shows up who has never woven before.  Other times, it is a student that monopolizes the instructor's time, leaving the rest of the class floundering.  I was the difficult student during the week, not because I made demands on the instructor, but just because I was off doing my own thing throughout the week.  I warped the loom for the class project and then decided, I really didn't want to spend the week, weaving something that I didn't like and using a technique that I likely wouldn't use again.  So instead, I toddled off to another loom, picked a pattern and wove some towels.   No new techniques learned, but it was enjoyable to spend the week, planning a project, selecting yarns, throwing the shuttle and not thinking about anything beyond the walls of the Folk School.



I started the project on one of the Folk School's Macomber looms, which is a loom that I have thought might be in my future.  It is a substantial loom and can be used for rugs as well as very fine threads.  Large used Macombers, with a 48-60" weaving width and up to 16 shafts, can be found for reasonable prices around the country.  The one complaint is the hooks attaching the treadles to the lams on the Macombers.  They were cumbersome to change, but I did not have a problem with the hooks jumping off the treadles, of course I only wove about an inch, so not a good test.  But the warping was comfortable for this 100 end warp.

The class had a great group of weavers, from Michigan, New York, Tennessee, Kentucky, DC and of course North Carolina.  Bill, seen below, even brought his monstrous Glimakra with him.  There were several other Glimakra's in the studio and they are amazing looms.  All put together with pegs, so they can be assembled relatively easily.  Joann, our instructor, is the dealer for Glimakra in the US and she was very helpful to the students in the class with Glimakra looms.  I tried out the looms, since I had never woven on a countermarche loom or used a loom with texsolve heddles.



So instead of making a sample, I put on a 5 yard warp to make dish towels.  One of the joys of the Folk School is the yarn room.  The selection of colors and sizes of yarn is amazing.  I selected 6 shades of blue and green for the towels.  I used a summer and winter threading and a crackle treadling for the first two towels.  I liked them a lot, but it was a two shuttle pattern, so it progressed pretty slowly.  By Thursday, I knew I needed to speed things up, so I wove the two remaining towels with one shuttle in twill treadling with different size color blocks.
















Date Finished  March 2014

Loom   Mighty Wolf

Weave Structure  Summer and winter, treadled as crackle

Reed   12 dent, 24 epi

Warp     Fiber  Cotton

              Count   8/2

              Color 6 shades of blue and green

              Source  John C. Campbell Folk School

Warp     Width in Reed  20 inches

              Ends 480

              Length 5 yds

Weft      Fiber same

              

Spring and Fall Scarves

These two scarves have been on the Newcomb since last winter and I finally finished the second one this month. They took quite a long time because of the goose-eye inlay.  The other thing that took quite a while was selecting colors and patterns.  You would think that using random colors and treadling would go faster, but I had to consider each pick and how it fit with the rest of the cloth.  Much of the weft came from cotton sweaters that I had frogged over the past couple of years.  Most of the yarn is cotton, but I had a little raw silk that came on a second hand AVL end feed shuttle that I purchased last year.

The weft for one of the scarves uses blues, greens and yellows - all very spring like colors.  The second scarf is more muted with varying shades of browns and tans.  The sett is 16 epi, which is very loose for 8/2 cotton, so it required a soft touch with the beater.  The resulting cloth is light enough to wear through the summer.  The inspiration for these scarves comes from seeing photographs of the work of Ilse Acke, a handweaver in Bruges, and Susan Johnson of Avalanche Looms in Wisconsin.

Date Finished   April, 2014

Loom   Newcomb Studio

Weave Structure  Plain, twill

Reed   8, 16 epi

Warp     Fiber  cotton

              Count  8/2 and 8/4

              Color  natural and eggplant
Warp     Width in Reed  9"

              Ends  152

              Length 6 yds

Weft      Fiber  various cotton, silk

              

Beat                       50/50                     

Log Cabin Placemats - NOT

This winter I finished up a pretty piece of cloth, woven in Color and Weave, log cabin pattern.  I planned to make a set of placemats, but unfortunately didn't plan for a wide enough warp.  I now have 3 yards of cloth, 10 inches wide.  I don't have a clue what to do with it, but as a temporary measure it makes a nice table runner with the unfinished edges tucked under.  I could hem a section for a table runner, or use it to sew a vest, or make a whole lot of bags.  Inspiration may come one day on just what this cloth should become.

Gary's recent woodturnings, a set of candlesticks and a bark edged bowl, look wonderful on the cloth.

Date Finished  January 2014

Loom   Baby Wolf

Weave Structure  Log Cabin

Reed  8, 16 epi

Warp     Fiber  Cotton

              Count  5/2

              Color  Burgundy and Black

              Mfr  Valley

              Source   Webs

                  

Notes

Doubleweave Mug Rugs

Doubleweave is one of the structures that I have wanted to explore since I started weaving again.  I was teaching a friend to weave recently and she picked doubleweave from a project in Handwoven as the weave structure she wanted to use for her second project.  The Handwoven project used rayon chenille and she wanted to make cloth using a heavier weight cotton to make a tote bag.  I wasn't sure what sett we would need to use for 5/2 cotton, so I decided to put a short warp on to sample and found this pattern for mug rugs, so we could kill two stones with one bird.  Glad that we sampled, cause her structure didn't look so good, the colors ended up pretty muddy, but the mug rugs came out great.

Date Finished  February 2014

Loom    Baby Wolf

Weave Structure  Doubleweave

Reed  8 dent, 32 epi

Warp     Fiber  cotton

              Count   5/2

              Color  yellow, orange, burgundy

              Mfr  Valley Yarns

              Source  Webs

Warp     Width in Reed  5"

              Ends   168

              Length  3 yds

Weft      Fiber  same as warp

              Count

              Color

              Mfr

              Source

Beat                       50/50                     

Christmas Rosepath

Last year I wove an overshot table runner in red and white, that I had hoped to get finished by Christmas.  Well, I didn't get it completed till January, so I called it a Valentine's Day table runner.  I had similar plans this year to weave small figures using an 8 shaft rosepath threading, including Christmas trees, stars, hearts and gingerbread people.  I was not sure exactly what I would do with the cloth, but thought that it could be cut up and made into flat Christmas tree ornaments each about 2 or 3 inches square.  My other plan was to make Christmas cards with a cutout in the front cover peeking through to a woven tree or heart as shown on Amanda Cutler's blogpost here.  I ended up with Christmas trees, stars, and hearts.  I couldn't find a draft for a gingerbread man that would use only 10 treadles and 8 shafts.  I had to change the tie-up for each of these designs.  Tim's Treadle reducer program was helpful to reduce some of the drafts from 12 or 13 treadles to the 10 treadles on my loom.

Date Finished  December 2013

Loom  Baby Wolf

Weave Structure Rosepath

Reed  8, 24 epi

Warp     Fiber cotton

              Count  8/2

              Color  natural

              Mfr  Valley Yanr

              Source  Webs

Warp     Width in Reed  6.6"

              Ends  160 plus 2 floating selvedges

              Length  3 yds

Weft      Fiber  cotton

              Count  8/2 cotton

Pattern Weft      Fiber  cotton

              Frogged cotton in red, green
              5/2 perle cotton in blue
Beat       50/50                     

Size

Notes  The 5/2 was not thick enough to make a good pattern.  3/2 would be a better choice.