Category Archives: Uncategorized

Oak & Fern Bathroom rugs

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With left over yarn from the rug commission and the eventual need for a bathroom rug for the studio bathroom I decided to set up and weave a custom rug. The method involved plying three cotton yarns together (two single color and one variegated) to give a ‘random’ patterned thick yarn for the weft. The warp is linen.

To depict the Oak & Fern theme I did stripes of the original brown/tan mix with new yarn in shades of green.

The rug was woven on ‘Pete’, the loom from Townsend that I renovated. It has a nice strong frame so I was able to keep the warp pretty tight and beat the weft heavily to be mostly weft faced. The hem on one rug (I had enough yarn for the planned bathroom rug and a smaller one) was woven with the linen warp yarn, the other I just used a single of the weft cotton. Both look fine.

To keep the joins relatively straight I unwound about 6 inches of each yarn and took each individual yarn out of the weave at about 2 inch intervals then brought the new yarn/color in in reverse order. I then used a darning needle and took each end through the weft following a warp yarn. After darning in all the ends I wet finished in the washing machine and dried them flat.

In the photos above (L-R); the rugs off the loom, hemmed and darning in joins, finished rugs.

Heavy duty cotton and linen should mean we get years of use and easy washing. Time will tell and now all I have to do is finish the bathroom build!

Next Weaving Projects

Project, Uncategorized, Weaving

Planning for the next project is well advanced and in fact the yarn (Vintage DK from Yarn Barn of Kansas. http://www.yarnbarn-ks.com) is on its way as I type this. Another of Anne’s nephews is about to become a father. As we gave his brother a blanket when they had their baby recently we were pretty well obligated to follow suit. In fact, between these two we also wove a baby blanket for Anne’s younger brother. Yet another tradition is born!

The parents chose pink and grey as the main colors and we have added colors drawn from the Grand Teton Mountains – a place they spent some time in their earlier lives although they now live in North Carolina. The extra colors are white (snow), grey (mountains), and green (forests). The design is done and it will end up yet another tartan/plaid! I have a few months to get it done, but once on the loom it shouldn’t take too long. The fringe twisting is likely to take just as long as the weaving.

I have two other projects to contemplate. The first is a combination of two needs. I need to dress the HD 4 shaft traveling loom ready for the Fiber Festival in April as I will be on the porch demonstrating again. I also need to get something going for the guild challenge which is to create some form of 3 dimensional object using woven materials. I was considering weaving something similar to the wedding scarves as my demo project because of the distinctive colors (reminiscent of abalone shell). The guild challenge might become a wavy ‘ocean’ setting with some shell pieces perhaps? Needs more thought.

Finally; I have always wanted to weave some of the designs my Dad used in his place mats, so I have been looking carefully at some of the structures. One is an overshot trellis style which he used a lot. I should be able to find similar yarn, and it would be great to be able to duplicate some of his work.

Today though is out to the studio build as we have a fine day after a full day of rain yesterday. The weekend was good and we finally finished the garage end wall and have it all wrapped in tyvek. The old tarps have been retired from that area and hopefully we can move on to getting eaves and roof on down this end of the building.

2020 Smoky Mountain Fiber Arts Festival

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I am the Vendor/Volunteer coordinator again this year for the Smoky Mountain Fiber Arts Festival.  This year it is only two days long: Friday and Saturday for vending (Thursday afternoon added in for extra classes). I’ve been working on sending out updates to the vendors on these fairly cold mornings (before heading out to the build).  We have managed to fill all spaces plus a couple of extras this year so the new format has not harmed things.

I will need to visit the Heritage Center shortly to do some final measuring up and then final shuffling to ensure every space is best suited to the vendor.  Around 80% of our vendors are repeat vendors who sign up for the same space before they depart the Festival – that certainly makes my job easier.

I normally head up a day early to help set up and mark out spaces and then through the hectic Thursday set up.  After that it is mainly just regular ‘rounds’ to make sure everyone is happy and things are working smoothly.

I’ll post updates as we finalize details of some of the other ‘events’, like the fashion show, etc.

 

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Volunteer work

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Three Scenic Valley Handweavers Guild members attended the Art for the Heart event at the Morningside of Cleveland, Assisted Living Center. We had been asked through my wife Anne who is the Food Services Manager there. She and the Activities Director were doing a combined event to both entertain the residents and also any other guests/potential residents from the community. We were happy to volunteer and also had the prospect of getting a little publicity for the Guild as there was likely to be newspaper coverage.

Spinning for the residents

We spent a couple of hours moving around and showing residents various aspects of spinning and weaving. Everyone appreciated the up close demonstrations and samples – everyone loved feeling how soft the alpaca roving was. Several residents had weaving or spinning connections with parents or grandparents.

An added bonus for the event was the custom snacks prepared by Anne and her staff. As something special for the residents (and me) Anne made vegemite sandwiches* and potato savories – both favorites from my childhood in New Zealand and something she quickly learned how to prepare when she worked at the early childhood center in Wellington when we lived there.

The Cleveland Banner turned up as promised and our photo’s appeared in the newspaper last night. The link is: http://clevelandbanner.com/stories/arts-for-your-heart,94835?fbclid=IwAR1_uw0J-5oNxLJq1cU3zvg2_o9E0Phm-NZ3m4EZ3GbRSZXFVExNKgS3Z_Q (I am the third photo) and along with the lead article on Anne’s cooking career a couple of days before, I think we helped Morningside of Cleveland marketing considerably.

*Almost certainly I ate the most!

2018 Christmas Towels

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Another rather long hiatus in blog entries, I’m afraid.  The good news however, is that there has been great progress on the studio build.  The second slab was poured and finished last week so the building there can commence (as soon as the rain stops:  while we are not suffering nearly as much as those to the north of us, we are currently already up 7.5 inches of rain for the year and have 5 days of rain due this week!!).

Anyway, this Christmas, like previous, I made Christmas dish towels for all the family which now includes siblings and their kids, plus a growing list of friends who have ended up on ‘the list.’  It meant this year I had to weave 27 for presents, so I increased the yardage a little and completed 35.  Needless to say I used the section beam to warp direct (as last year).  My original plan for the 2018 design was a Fibonacci sequence in green and red across the whole width and white weft with a plain twill weave structure.  As my sectional beam has 2 inch sections the original idea had to be re-thought to allow me to use the 48 spools in my rack to fill the 2 inch sections so the compromise was a smaller section of the Fibonacci sequence which lasted 48 threads. I filled every other section, reversed the rack (flipping the order) and then filled in the gaps.  Overall this gave a repeat pattern at 96 threads.

Winding the spools went smoothly and winding onto the back beam through the Leclerc Tension Box (with an added counter) was fast.  Dressing the rest of the loom took a couple of days but with a simple twill threading it wasn’t too hard.

Using the large boat shuttle and not having to change for stripes (as I had done in the previous 4 years) meant fairly quick weaving.  I wove the first 7 towels then cut them off.  They were the ones I had to package and send to NZ.  They made it in plenty of time.  The rest were in one single length – zig zag stitched at either end and wet finished before ironing, cutting and machine hemming.

The towels were then packed up with about 6 being mailed to various family spread around the U.S and all the rest hand delivered as we had a family Christmas gathering this year in Knoxville so most could be given out personally.

I already have ideas for the 2019 Christmas towel and rather like the idea of not having to change weft colors (stripes) as much.  I have used huck lace in the past and just might use that again in the next design, although one never knows.  The good thing will be that the looms will all be set up in the new studio well before I have to start, so it won’t involve moving a loom into our spare room to complete the project.

New Hem Style

Uncategorized, Weaving

Last time I wove with the 4.5/4 cotton (2015 Christmas Towels and Indigo dyed towels) I found that because of the thickness of the yarn and hence the woven cloth, the only way to sew the rolled hems at each end was to hand stitch.  They were too thick to go through my old nearly vintage sewing machine!

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After finishing the first Angel Towel you can see the potential solution.  This came from a tip from Phyllus Narus, owner of R&M Yarns in Georgetown, TN and fellow member of the Scenic Valley Handweaver’s Guild.  She too had experienced the problem and suggested using 8/2 cotton at either end, with enough woven for the triple fold but not adding the bulk of the 4.5/4.  I’m hoping it should work a treat.

Between towels I put a red marker thread so I know where to cut.  So far the weaving has been pretty fast (the thick yarn), and the huck lace pattern is not difficult to treddle.  I’m using a temple (from Leclerc) to keep the selvedges neat as the sett is reasonably open (which closes up after wet finishing).

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