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.

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

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                     

Luggage Rack

Gary is a wonderful wood worker and he has added many fine handmade tools to my weaving studio.  He took up woodturning a couple of years ago and now is the proud owner of 3 lathes.  Earlier this year, he made this luggage rack and all it needed were straps to hold up the suitcases. The luggage rack is made from poplar wood.  The turned center piece came from a poplar tree from our yard.   I had planned to weave a rosepath strap with inlaid plants and vegetables using a draft from Handwoven, but the veggies just didn't look realistic.  With an rosepath threading of 8/2 cotton, I wove a fancy twill using a deep red 5/2 cotton as weft.  The pattern is from A Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns, Draft 323-2.

Date Finished  August, 2013

Loom  Baby Wolf

Weave Structure  Fancy Twill on Rosepath threading

Reed  10, 20 epi

Warp     Fiber  Cotton

              Count  8/2

              Color  Natural, with single accent darker green

              Warp     Width in Reed  less tha 3"

              Ends  56

              Length  3 yds

Weft      Fiber  Mercerized cotton

              Count  5/2

              Color  Burgundy

              Mfr

              Source  WEBS

Beat      Weft dominant                     

Many Projects - One Warp

Warping the loom is the part of weaving that I like the least. One of the things I love best about weaving is planning projects and identifying as many projects as possible from a single warp using different weft or different treadlings. Because of this, my recent projects involve putting a 6-7 yard warp on the loom and working on a number of projects.  I recently put on a 7 yard warp of two colors of 8/4 cotton rug yarn, planning to make fabric for a couple of rag rug bags and maybe some placemats.

I ended up making fabric for two bags and not making any placemats.  The bags are lined with fabric and one has cotton webbing straps and the other uses leather belts for handles. The finished size of the bags are 15" X 17" tall.







Fabric to cover the pillow on my weaving bench.

A small rag rug

3 small bags.  More on these bags in a separate post.

Date Finished  October 2013

Loom  Newcomb

Weave Structure  Plain Weave, log cabin thick and thin

Reed  12 epi

Warp     Fiber  Cotton

              Count  8/4

              Color Dusty Rose and Eggplant

              Mfr  Maysville

              Source  Earthguild

Warp     Width in Reed  20"

              Ends  240

              Length  7 yds

Weft      Fiber  blue flowered cotton rags cut in 1 1/2 inch strips and carpet warp alternating

              Count 6 ppi - 3 rags, 3 carpet warp

              Color

              Mfr

              Source  Old Curtains

Beat                       50/50                     

Size

Notes

Huck Lace Bamboo Shawl

Handwoven recently published a pattern for making a shawl with Aunt Lydia's Bamboo.  The big benefit of this yarn is that it is readily available at Michael's and Joann's and many other local craft stores and it is cheap, under $3 per 300 yd ball of yarn.  I purchased 9 balls of white bamboo, hoping to weave two shawls on a single warp.  The bamboo has a wonderful silky feel, however that results in several issues.  The first is that it is hard to beat consistently, because the weft has a tendency to pack down too easily.  The second issue also relates to it's slipperiness.  Even after wet finishing, the warp and weft have a tendency to move around.  This is exacerbated by the Huck Lace weave, which has some longer floats.  And lastly, since the yarn did pack down more than I wanted, I ended up using more in the weft than I had planned.  So when it was time to weave the second shawl, I did not have sufficient white bamboo to complete the shawl.  At that time, I was 70 miles from the closest yarn store, so I used a black 8/2 rayon that I had in my stash for the weft in the second shawl.

The bamboo makes for a wonderfully drape-y fabric, which works as either a shawl or a scarf.  The black and white shawl looks a little like the head gear of Yasser Arafat, a shemagh.

Date Finished  August, 2013

Loom  Baby Wolf

Weave Structure  Huck Lace

Reed   15 epi, 10 dent reed

Warp     Fiber  bamboo

              Count  Crochet 10

              Color  White

              Mfr  Aunt Lydia's

              Source  Joann's

Warp     Width in Reed  17 1/2"

              Ends  262

              Length  5 yds

Weft  #1 - Same as warp
Weft #2   Fiber  Rayon

              Count 8/2

              Color  Black

              Mfr

              Source  Earth Guild

Beat                       50/50                     

Size  15" X 70" not counting 3" fringe

Notes

Snap, Crackle, Pop

I just tackled another new-to-me weave structure, crackle.  Crackle is also known as Jamtlandvaev in Swedish weaving terminology.  The American name for the weave structure comes from the pottery terminology for a type of glaze.  Some of the colors in the woven cloth just barely peak through, like the crackles on a ceramic pot. And crackle is a whole lot easy to spell and pronounce than Jamtlandvaev.

These towels were woven with a 4 block crackle using 4 colors.  In each single color warp block, there are at least 3 options for color - the warp color, the tabby weft and the pattern weft.  Crackle is similar to overshot because you weave a tabby shot and then a pattern shot.  This gives a huge variety of color options once the loom is warped.  I used 4 colors for the warp: tan, pumpkin and burgundy in 8/2 cotton and a navy blue yarn frogged from a cotton sweater.  The pattern weft floats over up to three warp ends at a time.

Researching crackle, the set up sounded complex, but it's actually easier to weave than it is to read the instructions.  It's a block weave, with the rule that at the end of each group of the same blocks, you need to add another warp thread called an "incidental".

A  is threaded: 1, 2, 3, 2
B is threaded:  2, 3, 4, 3
C is threaded: 1, 4, 3, 4
D is threaded: 1, 4, 1, 2

A = 1
B = 2
C = 3

D = 4

In one of the towels, I used the same tabby throughout.  The other three, I just selected colors randomly.  On some, I was consistent in the number of picks per block - 16 tabby and 16 pattern.  On the other towels, I mixed it up, which resulted in thick and thin rectangles in a wide variety of color combinations.  The other benefit is the front and back sides of the cloth can end up with different color variations.

The starting point for these towels came from Country Rustic Towels, Best of Handwoven, A Dozen Projects Using 8/2 Cotton.

Date Finished  March 2013

Loom  Baby Wolf

Weave Structure  Crackle

Reed  12, 16 epi

Warp     Fiber  cotton

              Count  mostly 8/2

              Color tan, burgundy, pumpkin, navy

              Mfr  Dragon Tail

              Source  Earth Guild

Warp     Width in Reed  22 in

              Ends  354

              Length  4 yds

Weft      Same

Beat        More   Weft Faced        

Size  Finished 19 x 24

Notes  - These towels are wider than a typical dish towel.  Next time, I'll narrow the warp.  Ended up with 3 towels and a small handtowel.