Swedish Weave and Cookbook

At our January 2017 meeting, Diva Linda, shared her exploration with "Swedish Weave". She found that it appears to be an all encompassing, almost the 'mother' of decorative weaving. She explained 'drall', 'true drall', 'simplified dralls', 'daldrall', 'salldrall' and 'kuvikas'. Her samples were great and her handouts were very informative. This blogger was so enthralled in her program she forgot to take pictures!

Also at the meeting we were given a 'cook book' compiled by Kayla. This had the recipes for food brought to the Christmas party along with pictures of members from throughout the year. A great memento to keep for years to come.

And just to add a bit of color. Here are tiny bears I am knitting for charity.

Theo Moorman and Katie

WOW! What exciting pieces that Katie wove for us at our Cabool May 2016 meeting.

Well, I think they were really for her and her family. She asked her kids and brothers to give her a sketch to use with this technique. These pieces she has used silk and her copier machine.

Now this piece she used fabric. Just awesome!!

Broken Twill

"Broken Twill - or if it isn't broken should we try to fix it?"

Those were the words Marilynn started with when giving her program on Broken Twills. She discussed the standard 2/2 twill, broken twill, Dornick twill, and Crystal twill. We learned the rules that must be followed for a twill to be called 'broken' or 'dornick' or 'crystal'.

Broken twill

A discussion and note taking

Dornick twill

Crystal Twill

The different yarns (some are not really different) from different vendors!  

Transparent Weaving

Transparencies was the topic of Melissa's February program for the Divas. She presented several webs of multi-hued gossamer suspended in space transparencies.

The weave, characterized by an open tabby ground and colorful weaver-controlled inlay blew our socks off! Experimenting with 4/1 and 20/1 linen, she produced a great variety of exciting textiles.

Basically using this one book for reference, Melissa taught herself this technique. ("Sheer Delight" by Doramay Keasbey)  

Here is has worked on creating curves.

She worked with a cartoon to to create her transpareccies. 

This shows the gossamer effect.

She used positive and negative space and combined it creating effects to truly amaze. Just take a look at her examples.The hand on the left she used the negative space to inlay her yarn. The hand on the right she used the positive. 

Woven Shibori Program

After 6 months of prep work, I gave my Woven Shibori program yesterday. I was a little worried that the way I learned might not be how the "books" say to do it. But I gave it my best shot. My way works for me and I guess that is all I can hope for. I try to put on more warp than my project requires, then I work some 'woven shibori magic' on it.

A friend sewed together my fabric Shibori 'samples' into a blouse. I call it "My Blouse Of Many Samples". Thank you friend! For you see, I can make the cloth, I just can't sew the cloth into anything!!!

Here are a few of the samples I showed and discussed with the guild.

These two are kitchen towels.Showing your resist threads do not always have to go from selvage to selvage. 

This is a few scarves with some smaller samples. Some times the warp or weft  can be 'a color' and not just white (red sample).

More scarves and small samples. Sometimes you can use a rubber stamp to get the look you want. 

I find that the weaving isn't as challenging as the dying. The weaving was pretty simple- in I would do some plain weave rows with a resist rows between. But the playing around with the color and then when opening the fabric...... now that was exciting! Deciding if I want to use more than one color, which sides get which color, questions like that. And I found that if I didn't like the result, I could over-dye it or stamp on it, or even put some more resist threads using a needle and thread and dye some more....... This is not a subject I will abandon. I see lots more Woven Shibori in my future.

Weaving with Novelty Yarns

The Cabool weaving guild got together and worked at winding a warp using novelty knitting yarns and regular weaving threads.  Everyone helped. No one was allowed to just observe. It was like 'weaving camp' !!!

We all helped pick colors, yarns, and then pulled them through the reed in a random order. It was very interesting to see how everyone did each step a little differently. Some used a heddle hook, others did not. Since not all of us 'lash on', Dawn showed us how to do that. Becky showed us how to make 'doups' for the front beam. After is was all on the loom and ready for the weft, we left that part for Becky to do. Can't wait to see the final scarf! It will be awesome!!

Weaving Diva November 2015 Meeting

Giving the program this month, Marty pulled out an interesting subject to discuss. "Diversified Plain Weave. She made this look like a fun weave to try.

Diversified plain weave (DPW) is a weave that has two different sizes of threads in both the warp and the weft. The find threads weave the foundation and the thick threads create the design. Marty was interested in using her hand spun yarns and this weave structure allowed those hand spun yarns to shine while the thinner, less noticeable yarn could be a commercial yarn.

DPW is a balanced block weave. It can be woven on a 4 shaft loom, but with 4 or more shafts the versatility in creating patterns truly shines. The floats in the warp and weft are never more than two ends long! Marty says a great resource for this is A Weaver's Book of 8 Shaft Patterns by Carol Strickler.

Divas in October 2015 Program

Have you ever wondered what MOIRE' means? The "morie' effect is a new pattern which appears when two regularly spaced sets of lines are superimposed and cross at small angles. HUH? You say... Moire' is closely related to 'echo' weaving, but you are using two different sets of shafts. If interested in seeing what this is all about, You might try these publications:

1. A Handbook of Weavers, by G.H. Oelsner
2. Mastering Weave Structures, by Sharon Alderman
3. Sandra Rude in the Complex Weavers Journal Issues 79 and 80

You will find words like: NETWORK, INTERLEAVE, SHADOW WEAVE, ECHO............
You can get awesome effects on lots of shafts, but some wonderful examples on 8 shafts too.

Thanks to Rossanna for sharing her awe inspired exploration of Moire'.

8 shaft scarf in Moire'. Notice the two different sides. 

August 2015 in Cabool

What a great day we had for a weaving meeting. What great projects and tips and tricks we saw and learned. So here goes.... Katie had the program on how to wind a two color warp. Excellent demo, excellent questions, great job!!!!!!

Katie is demonstrating how she winds a two color warp. She is tall, so having her warpping board on the table works for her. Besides, she said she learned this way because she didn't have a place to hang it when learning!

We learned how she attaches her threads when switching colors. No cutting, no tying on..... just hitch slip and go!! 

In this photo you can see how fast Katie is. 

Weaving Diva August Program

Tomi is a  fantastic seamstress! Her program was on weaving with handwoven fabric. We learned how to take a rectangle of fabric and turn it into an Origami Top. Using three different weights of threads she found the lighter weight fabric worked best for this technique. We were given a strip of paper and folded it as we would our fabric. Excellent visual aide.

We learned we could sew up the seams as usual and press them open for the seam allowances, or make a flat-fell seam, or overlap the selvages to leave one selvage on the outside as a design element. Or hand-stitch the seams..... The neck treatment is something to explore too!

And you can use most any draft that allows for a short float that won't snag, just as you would for any fabric turned into clothing.

And what would be a meeting of weavers without the sharing of ideas and questions? 

Diva Show and Tell for April 2015

It is fun and a learning activity. It is called : Show-And-Tell. We discuss our pit falls, problems, success stories, and excitement of the finished article. We get tips and tricks and even have a few to share.

Here is some of my show and tell. I still need to hem the purple runner!
The green towel is a sneak peek of next months stripe challenge. 

Rossanna had another awesome Kumihimo necklace. 

Marty used handpainted Tencel for this sweet scarf.

Marty hand spun the wool/silk blend for both warp and weft for this undulating shadow weave bed shawl. 

Just look at the colors! She also hand dyed her fibers.

Marilynn brought two 5-end advancing twill scarfs. She got that awesome blending of colors with a graduation formula she dreamed up.  And the drape is to die for. 

Carol says that Marilynn's scarf is perfect for her outfit. 

Guild Program - Plain Weave

Plain Weave is a vast subject. Linda gave a very informative program on just some of the possibilities of this weave structure.

She did have help when showing her sample of using crammed denting with plain weave.

The plain weave fabric can be altered by color, fiber, twist and thickness and the proportion of warp sett to weft picks. And using warp-faced or weft-faced patterns using plain weave is just a small drop in the plain weave bucket. 

"Plain weave fabrics can tell a story about the weavers who wove them and about the world around them. The special characteristics of different weaves reveal the history of textiles and plain weave fabrics have many names." Linda went on to have a list of 65 different names linked to plain weave. Some were familiar, but most we had never heard of.

Just a few of the names: Batiste, Bainin, Bandle, Cambric, Burlap, Nainsook, Sailcloth...the list goes on and on.......

Lace Weaves

I attended a great guild meeting last night where Kathy gave a program on "Lace Weaves". What a great amount of very helpful information. She touched on mock leno, Swedish lace, Finish lace, Atwater-Bronson lace, barley corn, huckaback, spot Bronson, Huck....... I am just saying..... she blew our socks off with her information and her awesome samples.

True lace is usually 2 types: needle or point lace & bobbin lace. In these types of lace, the threads can be laid out freely in any pattern and can come and go almost anywhere.

Kathy's program was on loom controlled lace. You can either use finger manipulations or doups to achieve one of two major types of loom controlled lace; or a mock leno where the warp threads move sideways, and a weft thread is inserted to hold that position. Both help create the 'holes' we associate with lace. In all loom controlled lace weaves PLAIN WEAVE plays a very important role.

Now that I have touched on just a few key points we learned from Kathy, here are some of her beautiful samples. I believe she said these were all HUCK samples.