Small bags

I put a short warp on the Baby Wolf in Montana for weaving small bags.  I planned to use a warp dominant structure, since the weft might be plarn (plastic yarn - cut up plastic grocery bags). Another requirement was to utilize cotton yarn that I had in my stash, so either 8/2 or 5/2 cotton.  Searching through the warp rep projects in old Handwoven magazines, I found this 6 shaft plain weave, using thick and thin weft to create different warp stripe or block patterns.  I wove enough for 6 small bags, 5 which had flaps of handwoven fabric and one used a button closure.  All had straps made from the same 5/2 cotton doubled in an 8 strand kumihimo pattern.  I wove several using plastic bags for the thick weft and several with 3/2 cotton doubled as the thick weft.  All used a 20/2 cotton for the thin weft.  I liked the look and feel of the bags with the 3/2 cotton weft better than the plarn bags.

Structure   Almost Rep Weave
Source       Handwoven Sept 2005
Date Finished Sept 2015

Loom     Baby Wolf

Reed      12, 24 epi

Warp     Fiber   5/2 cotton

              Count

              Color  red, orange, yellow, blue
Warp     Width in Reed  8.5

              Ends  220

              Length  4 yds

Weft      3 with  plarn (plastic grocery bag yarn) and 20/2 cotton                 orange
              3 with 3/2 cotton doubled, navy blue and 20/2 cotton      

Beat       Warp Faced

Cafe Grande Mug Rugs

I decided I needed to make some little gifty things for the coffee group this year and came up with the idea of Mug Rugs.  I saw these in an old issue of Handwoven, and the pattern called for using 3/2 cotton for warp and weft.  However, I have plenty of colors of 5/2 cotton in my stash, and decided that the 5/2 would make them a little smaller, closer to the size of a coffee cup or wine glass.  The 5/2 cotton in my stash comes from other projects and some arrived through a Facebook purchase.  A fellow weaver in Red Lodge, advertised a box of weaving supplies, which included loads of yarn, an inkle loom, a Schacht End Feed Shuttle, a double shuttle and lots of stick shuttles.  Oh happy day. The Carolina Blue, turquoise and grey all came from that purchase.

I will need 10 or 11, if I am counting right, but I ended up with 22.  These were begun on one of the looms in Red Lodge and only 7 were completed before we left for the fall.  So the one weekend I was in Red Lodge before Christmas, I was weaving in every spare moment.

If I were to make these again, I would do a couple of things differently. First, I would not use white as the warp and tabby weft.  White just gets dirty too easily and I can envision lots of coffee stains on these.  I would also use a pattern weft that is a little heavier than the warp, so if 5/2 is warp, use 3/2 for the pattern weft.

Structure  Crackle, treadled as summer and winter
Source   Handwoven, May 2006
Date Finished  December 2015

Loom   Baby Wolf

Reed  8, 16 epi

Warp     Fiber  cotton

              Count  5/2

              Color  white
Warp     Width in Reed 5.5"

              Ends 89

              Length 6 yds(?)

Weft      Fiber  cotton

              Count  5/2

              Color  white for tabby and other colors (red, blue, grey, turquoise) for pattern weft

             

                   

Baby Blankets

I have reached the age where many of my friends are having grandkids, and I have been having fun making baby blankets for the little ones.  The last couple that I made were delivered after the babies were born, so I decided I needed to have an "inventory" of blankets on hand.  

In looking for baby blanket patterns and designs, I ran across a publication from the Indiana Weaving Guild that published all of the drafts from a guild show of blankets in 2009.  click here.  One of these drafts was for a Houndstooth Huck woven in three colors of 5/2 cotton by Phillip Ewart.  I liked the draft and the changes in patterns made by the 3 colors.  This was the first project woven on my new to me Norwood 8 harness loom.  Baby blankets need a wider width than my Baby Wolf can handle and this was the first time I could weave an 8 shaft pattern over 25 inches.  The loom did well, but the operator had a few issues with beaming, since the Norwood warp beam runs the reverse of my other looms. The blankets were slow to weave since they required three shuttles holding the three colors of weft.

The only other issue is that the first baby born was a girl and this blanket was woven in blue and white.  Oh well, I don't think Ella's parents will be raising a girly girl and won't mind a little change up in the nursery.  

Structure   Houndstooth Huck
Source   Indiana Weaving Guild Baby Blankets
Date Finished August 2015

Loom Norwood

Reed 8, 16 epi

Warp     Fiber cotton

              Count 5/2

              Color  Poplin 36, Natural 79, Nassau 23

              Mfr Valley

              Source Webs

Warp     Width in Reed

              Ends 594

              Length 7 yds

Weft     Same as warp

Beat                       50/50                     

Size 37 X 55 after finishing and hemming

Notes

More Twill Towels

This summer I made a run of towels on a 7 yard warp in a straight twill.  I loved the opportunity to try out 7 different tie-ups and treadling.  Using a white warp and different colors of weft and different treadling resulted in very different towels.  I blogged about those towels here in an earlier post.

Fancy Twill
Handweaving.net
Draft 13916

I decided that I wanted to try the same thing with a point twill.  The patterns included some that I found on pinterest, handweaving.net and A Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns. The warp is an 8/4 matt cotton available from Earth Guild.  It is a very soft, not highly twisted cotton, that results in a very lush fabric that I hope is absorbent for towels.  However, set at 20 epi, some of the floats were pretty long on the cloth.  A couple of the tie-ups had floats that were 5 pics long. Hopefully, the stickiness of the yarn will keep the warp from snagging.

One of my favorites in this set uses several different weft colors in random patterns and stripes.  It reminds me of a Fair Isle sweater.  The weft for this towel was frogged from thrift store sweaters.

                                             Fancy Twill
A Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns
Draft 323-2

Snowflake

Twill Thrills

Page 7

Snowflake Twill Thrills
Page 7

Loom  Baby Wolf

Weave Structure  Point Twill

Reed  12, 20 epi

Warp     Fiber  Matt Cotton

              Count  8/4

              Color  Natural

              Source  Earthguild

Warp     Width in Reed  20 "

              Ends  402

              Length  7 yds

Weft      5/2 and 8/2 cottons and some frogged cottons

Handweaving.net

Draft 61537
Date Finished  December 2013

Beat       50/50  
Size  17 1/2 x 24 1/2