This and That and a Touch of the Other !

Hi there - a mixed bag for the post this week !

To start with, the conclusion of my twelve shaft table runners in the Gebrochene draft. The runners are off the loom and two have been hemmed and washed. I soaked them for thirty minutes in quite hot water and then was quite brave and washed them in the washing machine on the wool cycle. They have survived I'm relieved to say and waiting for me to press them. they have softened up nicely and the rough treatment has helped to even out some of the dent marks so I am pleased with that. Each one has trellis hem stitching at each end and although all that hemstitching was a bit tedious by the time I was on the fourth one I believe it was worthwhile doing it. Here is a close up picture of the hemming before washing.....................

Second thing to update is my 'Danish' jacket ! I finished the body a few weeks ago and then there was a bit of a delay ! The first sleeve is finished now and the second one has reached the half way stage. This is needing to be finished, I hate things not being completed so am determined not to be side tracked this time ! Actually, I am a bit worried about the sewing up and finishing. The final result will depend very much on setting in the sleeves and that is something I am not confident about ! I did find a utube video on how to do it, made it look really easy but I know it isn't. Anyway, with spring threatening to break out before long I need to have it ready to wear. The sleeves are knitted from side to side another new technique for me ! Then there is icord around the cuff, that was easier than I expected and gives a very nice finish to the sleeve.

The other thing to tell you about this week is a new gadget I have !! Whenever I have a skein of wool to wind Tony is always the one to hold the yarn for me. The last one was a large skein of very fine lace weight merino and it went on forever !! Tony decided there must be a mechanical way to do this ! I showed him some pictures of swifts and that got him thinking ! He has a workshop in the loft above our garage, ladder access only so I can't get up there ! Over the last couple of weeks he has been spending quite a few hours up there. Last week he appeared with a prototype of his swift design !!

It works on a 'lazy susan' mechanism and can be adjusted for different sizes of skeins. It did look a bit bulky but I had to admit it did the job ! We wound two skeins in record time and he didn't have sore arms !!  Anyway, another few hours in the loft and today he appeared with the final version.

First picture shows it set for large skeins with its arms out as far as they will go.....................

The second picture (without his specs !!!) shows the gadget in compact mode for small skeins........

So, how lucky am I ? A made to measure swift which I am sure is absolutely unique and which I will enjoy using very much. Mind you, I think I may have to be supervised to be sure I am doing it correctly !

There is talk of another gadget and that involves an electric motor, may be a while to wait as he hasn't found one just yet but you can try guessing what he might be planning.

I do have another warp wound but that can wait for another post.

Hope you have enjoyed this, that and the other. have a good weaving week !

12 Shaft Gebrochene Table Runners

Hi there everyone ! I have got started on my 12 shaft challenge !  You will remember that Susan had challenged me to my first 12 shaft project using her Gebrochene draft for table runners.

My warp is 16/2 natural cotton and 617 ends with 2 floating selvedges. I did find threading 12 shafts to be quite different, it is a long way back to shaft number 12. I soon learnt to take care and double check the order each time I tied up a bundle of threads. I threaded three  ends to a dent in a twelve dent reed and this was quite straightforward as I had wound the warp three ends at a time.

Tying up the treadles took me a while ! I didn't have enough cords for all the slots in the lamms so I ordered some texsolv cord and added a lot of short and long cords, this was a fiddly job especially doing the upper lamms ! However, it is done and hopefully I won't have to do it again. I used more than thirty metres of cord !

I used a darker thread to check my threading and I couldn't spot any errors. having said that, the pattern is very complex and I could have missed something ! My weft for the first runner was to be the pale green linen I had used on the last runner project. The pirns were wound and wrapped in damp dishcloths and put in a ziplock bag in the fridge. This linen is quite fine although it has three strands, not exactly sure of the weight but it worked well on the last project.

So here goes with my first picture of the design. I have five repeats across the runner and it measures 17" in the reed.

I did a big sample and realised that I had quite serious dent marks where my three threads were clumping. You can see this in the picture above. Nothing for it but to take the sample off and wash it, hope you are listening Susan !! The clumping improved a bit but not altogether. I guess this means that if I am going to weave with finer threads I need a finer reed. maybe 15 or 18 dent. This warp is 36 epi so an 18 would have been ideal. It's a long time 'til Santa comes again, not sure I can wait that long ! So these table runners will be vertically challenged with some 'stripes' !! 

I was very pleased with my ladder hemstitching on the last project so decided to have a go at Trellis hemstitching on this one. I wove two and a half inches of pattern for the hem allowance and then did my first row of hemstitching catching groups of six threads. Then I inserted two cords and started on the main weaving. Stopped at the end of a pattern and removed the spacer cords. then, I hemstitched groups of six but moved along by three threads so that the groups were off-set like this................  (the darker thread at the front is scarp yarn)

I used the linen weft to do the hemstitching and was very careful to watch for it fraying. I didn't have to do any joins on either trip across !! The result is very pleasing and it really didn't take long. The linen holds the groups in place very well.

I have finished the first of four table runners. the length on the loom is about 44" including hems.

The weaving process is going well, in fact I haven't really had to think too much about the 12 shafts it seems to fall into place alright. I thought I would struggle to reach from 1 to 12 but it seems quite easy. The shafts don't seem difficult to lift although just sometimes they seem to get a bit stuck. I just press the treadle before and the one after and that clears whatever the problem is.

Last picture for today is a close up of the pattern detail. The colours in the pictures have been poor today I'm afraid. We have had very grey weather and so the light has not been good ! Poor excuse I know, will try and do better for next time !

So far so good with the 12 shafts ! Just a bit disappointed with my clumping but otherwise project making good progress. Will have an update next week hopefully !

Runner Finishings

Hi there - yes, I did have a productive week, thanks to some very wet and windy weather and a husband full of the cold !! Spent a lot of time at home and so the two runners are completed ! When I left you last week the runners looked liked this .....................

I will start with the easy finish ! The shorter runner is 21" wide and 45" long. I did a straightforward hem stitch on this one and a 1" fringe. Couldn't be easier. I did the hem stitching with the linen weft and I did learn that the linen thread frayed when I was about 10" into the hem. I carefully renewed the thread but my eye will always be drawn to that slightly thicker bit of the hem. I did use Thread Heaven but both ends have a join. You can't see them in this picture though !

The completed runner looked like this................

Now to the 'posher' version with the ladder hemstitching. If you remember, I had followed Susan's instructions from her blog to complete the two rows of hemstitching for the ladder finish. Now came the hemming and again  there is an excellent tutorial on Susan's Blog Thrums. So, here goes, I am all set with my needle and thread and Thread Heaven........................

The raw edge was straight stitched on the sewing machine and then folded over twice and very heavily pressed into place and pinned just for good measure. I started at the very edge and this time, no 'sticky out bits', I must have done something right !

The edge looked good so here I am on my way across the runner doing blind hemming...................

I found the heavy pressing made the hemming much easier and I was very pleased with the way the hems looked after I had finished. Nothing drastic happened to them in the wash either although I will confess to hand washing both runners rather than risking all that hemming in the machine. Such care may not last when the next wash is due. The pain of all that hem stitching will have passed.

Anyway the finished article is looking good on the desktop in front of the window. It measures 21" by 75" so quite long. Husband seems pleased with it and at last I feel as if I have done something for the house. How long before he spills something on it !!

I really like this Drall pattern and I am sure I will come back to it in some form before too long. It would make nice tea towels I think.

My next warp is under way ! Susan has given me my first 12 shaft challenge ! If you check her blog you will see she has been weaving beautiful scraves using a  12 shaft Gebrochene Hind und Under draft. My challenge is to do table runners in the same draft ! I no Fibonacci stripes though, that sounded far too complicated for me !  My warp is a natural coloured 16/2 cotton purchased on my trip to Denmark back in November. The weft will vary but will be linen in a pale green and maybe a slightly darker neutral. So stand by, I'm off to wind the second half of a 618 end warp.

I hope you have enjoyed seeing these runners finished and maybe I have encouraged you to try out some fancy hemstitching, the extra effort is certainly worthwhile and I might even try something else on these new runners !

As always, many thanks for coming to visit, please stop by and say 'hello' in the comments section.

Gran Canaria Trip and Weaving Progress

Hi there !
We have been on our travels again with a week in Gran Canaria to get warmed up after our cold winter here in Scotland. Newcastle airport is about an hour and a half from us at home and then a four hour flight to the island, so an easy journey. The temperature when we landed was about 20deg C so much warmer than home. Our hotel was about forty minutes from the airport and this is a view from our balcony..........

Gran Canaria is a good place for walking by the sea, they have very good promenade paths between the towns on the south coast. We walked ten miles each day in quite nice weather. The first day we dodged some rain showers, days two, three and four were nice and sunny and then days five and six were cloudy with rain threatening. It was nice to be out of the winter vest and polo neck and to not have to worry about warm coats etc.

The food in the hotel was very good and served in a buffet style. My ten mile walks meant I didn't need to worry too much about what I ate. I have been working hard to lose my Christmas pounds and had lost six pounds before we left home. I was able to choose lots of protein based meals so didn't undo the good work already done. I had freshly cooked fish or steak for dinner most evenings, just tried to give the dessert section a miss !! The dining room was decorated in my favourite colour, turquoise which looked lovely................

On one of our trips out we came across a team of rowers preparing to row across the Atlantic from Gran Canaria to Barbados. There would be a crew of fourteen on this tiny boat and they were hoping to cross the Atlantic in a record thirty days ! Rather them than me !

On the last day the walking reduced to five miles and then this ....................

I was in good company and this probably sums up a good week in the warmth.................

All too soon we were back home again with very wet and windy weather ! Winds up to seventy miles an hour and some structural damage to houses in Dumfries and a lorry blown over not far from us. Anyway, washing done and summer clothes put away again and time to do some weaving.

Before we went away I had threaded up the loom to weave a runner to cover a shelf where Tony has his computer. I tied up the treadles and got ready to do my sample piece. Before I started though, I checked out my favourite blog for linen tips  Susan at Thrums.  I followed her tips and wrapped the pirns in damp dish cloths, put them in a zip lock bag and into the 'fridge to keep the linen damp.

So I wove a good sample to work out the best way to treadle the pattern and felt quite pleased with the way it looked. However, when I looked at it in the daylight the next morning I found this..........

The colours are not good ! Meant to be terracotta and green ! However, it does show a clump of threads. I checked the threading but no errors, treadling tie up ok also but then I discovered I had ten threads in one dent instead of five !

This was about 4" in from the right hand edge and the only cure was to cut off the sample and re-sley the problem area then re-tie 1,000 ends back on !! Now this will make Susan  laugh !!  In a chat the previous evening Susan had asked me about dent marks in the sample and had I thought of taking it off to wash it and check they would disappear. My answer was, no I hadn't thought of doing that, the thought of 1,000 threads to retie seemed too much. I knew this was the wrong answer !! I'm sure she did something overnight to move those ends around and make it that I had to take the sample off ! Anyway, I did wash the sample and the dent marks did disappear I'm glad to say !!

So, having fixed the problem I got started on the runner. I do like a hemstitched finish so decided to follow Susan's ladder hemstitching tutorial . Here I am on the bottom row after weaving the hem allowance. I am going into the third row of weft on each group.

I promise this is the same project just different light when I took the picture. My loom is right beside a window and  the light varies a lot ! The next picture shows my three strands of cord to act as the spacer for the 'ladder'.

And then, here I am on the top of the 'ladder'

I made the hem allowance all terracotta and the first half inch of the main part also terracotta, mainly to allow me to do the two rows of hemstitching with the same thread. I didn't fancy hemstitching with the linen weft.

I have woven about eighteen inches now and this is what it looks like...................

Hopefully I will have a productive week and next time be able to show you a finished runner or at least some pictures of me finishing of the hem. Many thanks Susan for an excellent tutorial, it worked very well !!

My thanks to all my visitors and as always I look forward to your comments, ideas or suggestions.

Bye for now