I certainly has been a long time between posts and it’s NOT because I haven’t been doing fiber related activities! But first; to answer the question from the last post… The annual Guild Christmas party is now firmly fixed at the Oak & Fern – I don’t seem to have been given any choice! So, to restart the blogging I’ll bring in a small project, physically small but not in the work involved.
The annual Guild challenge this year was a type of random draw. Each participant had to draw 4 items, with each being a component of the final product. There was: fiber type, color, weave structure, and finishing. I drew 4 which could only be described as relatively easy in: cotton or cotton blend, red, twill, and fringe. Nothing I wasn’t fairly familiar with and I certainly had plenty of yarn to work with – I went with colors of 3/2 pearl cotton left over from weaving tartan throws.
But… this is always supposed to be a challenge so in looking into how I could make it more of a challenge with something I had not done before I thought of advanced twills. Knowing that advanced twills often relied on multi-shaft looms and I only have one 8 shaft loom and all the rest being just 4 I took a leap and decided to do a 16 shaft pattern. This, of course, relies entirely on hand manipulation. So the simple solution was to use NO heddles and effectively hand weave each weft shot! I set up ‘Dot’ (Leclerc Dorothy table loom) with 32 warp threads which will be two repeats of the 16 pattern.
The plan was to print out the draw down for the design which came from an on-line collection of ‘The Fanciest Twills of All” by Irene K. Wood. As each shot was made I crossed off that line with a highlighter as after a few shots I kept mixing up which shot I was on. By doing a shot at a time and leaving yarn out either side I’m able to build up a knotted fringe up the sides as well as the fringes at either end.
Following are some of the photo’s so far. It’s not finished yet but should be before the meeting in a couple of weeks. Photo 1 is the warp through the beater with spacing weft in place. Photo 2 is several weft shots in various bands of colors and photo 3 more of that. Photo 4 has the first 16 weft shots plus some fillers as it’s not perfectly balanced (warp and weft) and I want it to be a square. The second half will be just one color weft (white) vice the multi-color bands of the first half.
