People who work in fibre, especially on a loom, struggle with the mechanics of their tools, problems with the fibre they use, solving design issues and colour interactions. Often these challenges are dealt with alone in home studios and sometimes far away on an island. Our long winter isolates us even more so it is great to get an email with a photo of someones latest work. Here are a few of our members winter projects.
Louise’s grand plan was to wind one warp 12 yards long of white 2/8 cotton and wind another 12 yard warp of pastel 3/5 mercerized pastel cotton from ukI. She was going to put the white warp on a secondary warp beam and the coloured cotton on the primary beam. Unfortunately she found she did not have enough of the pastel coloured cotton for 12 yards. She also found her secondary warp brake did not work properly. She ended up cutting the white warp down to 6 yards and combined it on the primary warp beam with the coloured warp sett at 24 epi. She used up the last of her coloured cotton in the weft which was the whole reason for the project. End result was a lovely length of fabric to be cut and finished for tea towels for future sales.
Marian’s towels from photo inspiration to warp reeling to weft sampling to weaving.
The weave structure is Bumberet which groups warp colours in threes. On a warp reeling these groups were arranged using Fibonacci ratios (1:2:3:5) to give a graduated watery effect with the blues and a striated effect with the oranges. This weave structure alternates plain weave with three end floats. The hope was that the long floats would help to keep the oranges and blues distinct. The weft for each towel is simply one colour of blue; one mid blue, one turquoise, one aqua. Quite a lot of designing has gone into this project and there is still one more towel to weave. For the last one Marian hopes to weave it using the Fibonacci ratios in a variety of colours.. Can’t wait to see results.
Carole’s silk and stainless steel silk scarf was a warp and weave challenge. She used a strand of silk and one of the stainless steel silk together. The later is a hair thickness, hard to see and definitely with a life of its own. The warp was sett at 12 ends per inch. After carefully winding the warp she made sure the warp was tied off ever inch or so to keep it under control. As she was only doing one scarf she did not use a second warp beam but noted that even on a short warp the stainless steel warp thread needed a different tension and that the take up resulted in a threads which needed adjusting every once in a while. Otherwise she just let the stainless steel silk do its thing as weaving with the pale pink silk made it hard to see any skips. The finished scarf is a bit kinky and has a slight shimmer. Quite a challenge for a winter weaving project.
While spending the winter on a lovely warm Caribbean island without a loom, Kathleeen spent the months creating woven/plaited baskets out of palm leaves. This is quite a collection of work. It proves that weavers’ hands are always busy taking up the weaving challenge where ever they are.
My long summer at the lake is over for the year. The cottage loom is empty waiting for next year’s projects. It was a productive weaving summer. Two warps finished and a small tapestry.
