July 4th Color

 Some of my favorite colors are found the loom room.....well, the 'loom house' if we are talking stashes of yarn. I have sock knitting yarns, wool felting yarns, weaving yarns all hither and 'yarn' throughout the house.   

Working on Report

 Working on the report for the Weavers Guild of the North Shore who, with the Handweavers Guild of American, allowed me to attend the Midwest Weavers Pre-Conference. June 2013.

  My pre-conference class with Nadine Sanders on the Theo Moorman technique was very informative and it was exciting to learn a new weaving technique.

This is the perfect medium for using some of those wonderful yarns we have in our stashes. Alpaca, angora, camel, cashmere, qivuit, ramie, rayon, silk, synthetics, Tencel, sticks, beads, rocks, bugs........ you get the picture?????

More Things Learned at Midwest Weavers Conference

Do you know the threading key for 8-shaft crackle? The blocks are below. Crackle is a block weave NOT a unit weave. You many have as many blocks as you have shafts. It is a twill derivative. Your longest float is only three ends long!!!

Block A: 1 2 3 2 (incidental on 1)
Block B: 2 3 4 3 (2)
Block C: 3 4 5 4 (3)
Block D: 4 5 6 5 (4)
Block E: 5 6 7 6 (5)
Block F: 6 7 8 7 (6)
Block G: 7 8 1 8 (7)
Block H: 8 1 2 1 (8)

The end that is in (__), is the incidental that you use when going from one block to the next. You need these to preserve the odd-even threading order. There are other rules that help with these little quarks. Some blocks weave together.... It's true!

There are several different ways to weave crackle: classic, summer and winter, polychrome, lace effect......

More on crackle by Susan Wilson: Weave Classic Crackle & More. Schiffer Publishing. (2011)

Some Things Learned at Midwest Weavers Conference

I have been working on my report to the Weavers of the North Shore who, through the HGA, awarded me the Mearl K. Gable II Memorial Grant to attend the Midwest Weavers Pre-Conference.

As you know, I picked the class offered by Nadine Sanders: Weaving That Sings: Painting with Yarns. I went into this learning environment not knowing very much about the Theo Moorman technique. I have since learned it is a plain weave inlay technique. All you need is a four shaft loom, but now that I think I have the general idea, I see how this inlay technique has lots of design potential. The brain keeps churning and wondering.

A basic draft on a variation of the Theo Moorman technique. Nadine had other sleying options for different projects.

X

X

X

X

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

O

tie up

O= HEAVIER YARN

X

X

X= THIN TIE DOWN YARNS

X

X

plain weave

X

X

X

X

P

G

P

G=ground weft

G

P= pattern weft

P

G

Reed= sleying order

12 dent reed

P

2 ends- 2,1

G

1 end- 3

2 ends- 2,1

1 end-4

Painted Warps Dry

Now for the hard part............ waiting for everything to dry before I really know what I have. You really love the colors when your warp chains are wet, but you really need to wait until they are dry to get the 'real deal'.

I think I was thinking that I would take the fuchsia chain and combine it with the one beside it. It's the purple-ish chain. These were to weave the Bateman Boulevard draft I had picked out. But then again, maybe I will find some other draft to weave before I get them on the loom! Since I have the fustian on the big loom, I will put these colorful chains on the Baby Wolf. I also have some warp left on the table loom for some Theo Moorman.... A happy weaver is one with something on all their looms at the same time!

Dye Day

Mother nature was a very good girl for the dye party. It's always fun to paint a warp, dabble colors on silk, tencel and/or cotton. Part of the fun is the really crazy names..... Wasabi, Stormageddon, Garibaldi, Fatigue Green. Who wouldn't have fun playing around with colors with those names?

 

Even the paper towels turned out pretty!

 

Fustian Cloth -cotton and linen

Did a little weaving on the fustian yardage. It goes pretty fast once I get my rhythm. I think that's one of the things we weavers like about our craft, it can be smooth and rhythmic. Of course there are other times when a thread will snap or we run out of weft and have to stop. Makes me think of the ebbs and flows of life.

It is almost like magic to watch the cloth appear. How can you put threads together at a right angle to each other and have curves and lines and shapes appear?