Next Project

To-night I will try and post some pictures about the new project !

First though I should say that I am a member of the On-line Guild of Spinners and Weavers and also subscribe to the weavers group on yahoo. I am not very visible though, I learn a lot from the posts ! I did do the inkle loom workshop and learnt to do pick up as the picture below shows !

I will start tonight's blog with a picture of my loom. I sits in the corner of the living room, very tolerant husband ! It is a Harrisville 4 shaft loom and we brought it from New Hampshire to Scotland in kit form and then assembled it. I am really very comfortable with it and have woven many tea towels and woolen scarves over the last four years. However, I will admit that I might quite like to have a go with 8 shafts now !

Probably won't happen though !

Now to the project ! Well it is placemats. Susan sent me a sample of her bird's eye twill patterns and the draft. I have adapted them for my 4 shafts and ordered some 6/2 cotton from a supplier in the UK. I have been a bit disappointed with the yarn as I found a lot of knots when winding the warp and the bobbins. Anyway, the colours are shown below.

I wound a 10 yard warp, the longest yet, and that should give me three sets of four placemats. The sett is 24 epi. and threaded 2 to a dent in a 12 dent reed.

I have done proper samples, a lesson learnt from Susan ! Not 100% happy with the selvedges but I'll work on that ! Pictures of the samples, poor colours I'm afraid !

So, today I have woven one and a half mats only ten and a half to go ! The weaving is much easier than the scarf although still easy to make a mistake. Am thinking I should have used thicker cotton as they seem a bit thin for placemats, probably 3/2 would have been better.

What news to share with you tonight ! Someone has bought one of my scarves ! I can hardly believe it. My daughter did the 'dealings' for me though, I am a bit of a coward in the selling department. However, an end feed shuttle is on the wish list to improve selvedges so I need to get better at it !

It seems there is demand for scarves like the lavender one so now I need to find a supplier of 10/2 dyed tencel ! i got that cone in Halcyon but the only have pearl on the web site. I have a cone of pearl but I believe the youngsters like the bright colours. So if any of you out there know where I can source 10/2 tencel I'd love to hear from you !

Well, that's enough for post number two, can't keep this up every night or I'll never get these placemats finished. Will update progress soon.

First Blog !

Well, this is my first post as a blogger ! I have had such a great time looking at other posts and have learnt so much, I thought it was perhaps time to start on one of my own.
I have spent a lot of time on Susan Harvey's blog 'Thrums' and it will take me a very long time to come anywhere close to her standard.
So a good place to begin is probably our 'international weaving project'.
Susan and I started this project back in August and now in October I have a great result to show.

This is the finest weaving project I have undertaken and used 10/2 Tencel in this lovely lavender/ purple colour. Susan sent me the 4 shaft draft for snowflakes and icicles. This was designed by Laura Fry and published in The Weaver some time ago.

Susan also sent me her article on working with Tencel and through e-mails and loads of encouragement off I went ! The treadling required some serious concentration and my husband, Tony, was banned from speaking in the middle of the extensive repeat sequence ! Once or twice I had to unpick as a result of losing the place but I soon learnt to avoid that unpleasant activity !

In the picture above, you can see the detail of the pattern. I used a sett of 24epi but next time will go to 30epi for this yarn. There is very little shrinkage when wet finished and I would like it to be just a bit more closely woven.

I allowed 6" for fringes, but again with hindsight, that should have been 10" to end up with longer fringes. Each scarf was woven on the loom for 72" and was 13" wide.

Fringe winding was something I wanted to improve on and Susan had a great tutorial on her blog explaining exactly the way she does it.

The picture shows my styrofoam board with the scarf pinned out on it. I have used my fringe winder to twist the groups of 4 ends and then have them all the same length by pinning them to the 3" line below the fell of the scarf. These fringes were a bit short, next time a bit longer maybe !

Then came wet finishing. Not much movement in the weaving, no curing any mistakes ! Two rinses and a bit of fabric conditioner then hung up to dry. A good ironing produced a very soft fabric that draped beautifully.

Final step was to trim off the ends of the fringes to 1/2" using a cutting board and circular cutter. Not sure I managed that very efficiently, the ends wanted to jump about a bit !

Anyway, I have two scarves to be proud of ! One has selvedges I would perhaps not want to show too much but the second one is very acceptable and I might even try to sell it ! Something else I'm new to and haven't yet made a start on !

So there we are, I'm thrilled to bits with my project and so very grateful to Susan for all her help and for the friendship that has developed over the last few months. I feel very lucky !

Here is a link to Susan's blog called Thrums