It's Together - I Think

I finished putting together the new loom, with all of the electronics, etc. I put a 10/2 white cotton warp in a 16-shaft point pattern to try it out. I have a great flower-like pattern that was part of JoAnn's Diaper class that I want to try out, but thepoint threading will allow a lot of experimentation.

Now I have to figure out the Comby Dobby! :-)

Tis the Season - a Little Late

Finally I've gotten my Christmas towels finished. I wove this pattern about 10 years ago and dug it out again for this year.

I have several IOU's out for presents. At least it will be before Valentine's Day. ;-)

This is an example of an unwashed towel. I used 12/2 unmercerized cotton - natural, sett at 24 epi. The pattern is

done with #5 perle mercerized embroidery cotton.

This is a washed sample.

New Toy Coming Together

I am finally assembling my new (to me) loom. Thanks Sue!

I managed to get this far in one day.

Fortunately the sides were already assembled,
so there wasn't as much to do.

Also everything was well labeled, so even I could figure out

what piece was what.

The frame is all put together. The rest, according to the

instructions is "All down hill."

Blankets, Blankets and More Blankets

I have actually gotten busy after much non-weaving. I am currently working on boy baby blankets. I picked up quite a bit of cotton yarn on my travels this summer and decided to use some of it.

The warp colors range from green and blue green to purple. I have two finished already and still on the loom. The first has a purple slubby weft and looks purple all over. The second is green with slubs of blue, green and pink. The last is underway.

I wrote this up and saved it to draft and forgot about it.

The blankets are all finished. Here are a few.

More Hearts

I finally got back to the loom to work on the huck heart towels. I got four out of the remaining warp - plus on that is short with white and brown stripes. They turned out pretty well and I am going to use them in a towel exchange the discussion group is having.

Here is a little closer look at the hearts. The larger ones have warp floats and the smaller ones, weft floats. The warp was white 10/2 cotton and the wefts different colors of 10/2.

Experiments in Huck

While studying The Complete Book of Drafting for Handweavers by Madelyn Van Der Hoogt with my virtual study group, we finally got to the Lace chapter. I've done huck before, mainly by following someone else's draft and was a bit stumped by the section. So, I decided to figure it out.

I designed an 8-shaft pattern threaded to a point, with shafts 3 through 8 for the pattern. There were huck hearts with weft floats centered on shaft 8 and smaller warp float hearts, centered on shaft 3. The rest is plain weave.

This is the reverse side of the sample:










These picture's don't show the fabric very closely, but the hearts look like hearts and having floats go in different directions and the hearts in different sizes adds interest. I used white warp and white, yellow, pink and dark pink in 10/2 cotton and 12/2 cotton in natural for the weft. I like the white and lighter pink. The darker pink might be create too great of a contrast with the white, but it does show off the huck pattern.

I will probably weave a few hand towels with this pattern all over and as just a boarder with plain weave for the towel. I might get adventurous enough to design new pattern that I can weave with the current threading. We'll have to see what happens.

Happy Spring,
Ingrid

Getting Back to Weaving

I finally got back into the studio to do some weaving. I put on enough warp for four baby blankets. So much for good calculations, I thought I had only enough for three and a little bit. I have a bunch of 1/3 or 2/3rds of blankets. I am planning to some day maybe do a patchwork blanket out the the short pieces.

Here are pictures with more detail of two of the blankets:

I used mostly cotton for the warp and synthetic baby yarn for the weft. It gives a nice hand to the blankets.

I am currently planning hand towels with some sort of huck motifs. Also I still working on "The Complete Book of Drafting for Handweavers" by Madelyn Van Der Hoogt with three other weaving friends. We've gotten to the Tied Weaves chapter.