On the upright loom I began another Turkish knotted rug after completing ‘Denim’ last year. This one is called ‘Te Aruhe Kowhaiwhai’. Te Aruhe is ‘the fern’ and Kowhaiwhai is a style of decoration common in Maori meeting houses. It’s my own design and represents the winding fern fronds of our forest home which we call The Oak and Fern. Possibly that means I’ll have to create an acorn pattern for the next one.
Handspun 2 ply cotton woven in tabby on ‘Dot’.
I began learning how to spin cotton a few months back and this woven test is from the first skeins I produced. Lots of ‘character’. I have improved enough that I am now producing a relatively even 3 ply that should weave up more neatly.
Variegated yarn table runner, birds eye twill on ‘George’.
The first table runner from the yarn brought back from NZ is complete. I’ll space out enough for fringes then start number 2. It will be different from this one in that it will have just white yarn in the weft to pick out the birds eye twill a little better.
QR code woven in skip plain weave on ‘Gypsy’.
It’s been slow going on this project as it’s a very manual and intricate process to weave each pick and after I leave it for a while I have to go back and try and remember how to do it to maintain a consistent transition from black to white and reverse.
These are the weaving projects. Next I’ll detail the spinning and will also update the Studio build pages with photos of the progress.
We are just back from a very pleasant 3 weeks visiting family and friends in New Zealand. While visiting Havelock in the South Island I found a bag of variegated yarn for $10 and thought it might be ideal for a project.
Some of the polyester yarn
As it turns out that happened faster than I thought as our temporary home while in Wellington belonged to our friend Jinnie who has a table loom that was at the time not being used.
For the first time ever I dressed a loom without doing any real calculations first (apart from checking the WPI of the yarn and the dents per inch of the reed in the loom). I wound the warp around the back of two chairs and tied it on to the warp beam and wound it on under light tension ready to warp back to front. With Anne and I working back and front we had it dressed pretty quickly which was good as we had to pack it up the following day so we could drive it and Jinnie up to where she was currently living in Taupo.
After adding some thick weft to even out the warp I threw a few weft picks to ensure everything was working OK and barring one skipped dent there doesn’t seem to be any problems with the straight twill threading. After we left Taupo to return to Wellington Jinnie has continued weaving and some interesting color striping is starting to appear on the cloth.
I encountered a ‘new’ (to me) weaving technique a couple of months back and incorporated it in my entry for the guild challenge which was primarily about color. I wove my color blocks in three different techniques and one was ‘skip plain weave’ a technique often found in rugs which is ‘one sided’, i.e. the back carries floats over multiple warp threads while the front is woven tabby across the width. More on that later.
While working on that project I thought it might be a way to weave a QR code (for Kiwiweave.com) to hang on the wall behind our stall at the 2024 Birchwood Fiber Festival. After much pontificating I finally kicked the project off a few days back and will document it here.
First step was to generate the QR code. A quick google search will show that there are hundreds of web sites that will generate codes for free. You input the URL you require and the webiste generates it in seconds. You then typically download a jpg or png image of the finished product. Try some out. Go for simple, black and white, and don’t add logos.
KiwiWeave.com QR code
Most modern mobile phone cameras will automatically recognize QR codes and pop up the URL which can be clicked on to bring up the web page. My phone didn’t so I loaded a free app that recognizes QR and bar codes and shows you the appropriate information. Useful for checking, at all stages. Using the jpg generated in the first step I then manually drew up the same information on graph paper which I find easier to ‘count’.
Same QR code copied to graph paper.
The sett of the weaving I did for the guild challenge was 10 epi using 8/2 cotton so I duplicated it for this project but calculated the number of ends needed to give a 15 inch QR code with 1.5 inch borders all around. The size of the logo also dictated that 6 warp ends be used in each ‘box’ of the pattern – either black or white and read one line at a time from the bottom up.
Winding the warp took an hour including setting things up then it was a move out to the studio to dress ‘Gypsey’.
The photo’s above (from top left corner – clockwise): The warp wound on to the warp beam. The heddles threaded and reed sleyed. Warp tied on. Floating selvedge weights. Floating selvedges. Warp packed and ready to weave. All of the above took another 6 hours.
The structure is weft predominant and woven in 3/2 pearl cotton. The border is silver/grey and the actual code is obviously black and white. As I had not tried this level of trickyness before I decided a test piece was needed so wove some borders and just one row of squares alternating between black and white. This little bit of weaving took longer than setting up and that was mostly because of the ‘mistakes discovered that had to be ‘unwoven’. The mistakes were largely counting errors as each weft shot (black and white) through the same shed needs to go over three under three. I wove this with the pattern to the top and the floats to the bottom which slows things down and easily lends itself to miscounting – on the real QR code I will flip this upside down as it should be easier to count and manipulate the top part of the shed. The other mistakes were twisting either the grey or white with the black or any other combinations which then did not sit flat or neatly with the rest of the color transitions. The test piece has at least allowed me to work out a sequence where this doesn’t occur.
The whole 25 squaresClose up
Even with meticulous checking there are two errors in the left photo where a weft shot goes over one more warp thread than it should, but this doesn’t show too much and I suspect would not interfere with the camera imaging and working out the URL. I used small plastic shuttles as they have a long thin ‘nose’, next I’m going to find some stick shuttles and see if they make the manipulating of warp threads easier.
The guild already think I’m crazy after tackling the hand tied Turkish knot rug because of how slow it was. I suspect the meeting program where I present this method will only reinforce my craziness. ‘Nothing like a challenge’ I say!!
May was the month for our (a small group of Fiber Artists – mostly from our Weaving Guild) inaugural Fiber Festival. Over a year in the planning and perceived to be a replacement in our region for the now significantly changed Townsend event. I had put my name down to be Vendor Chair (after the years I had done this for the Smokey Mountain Fiber Arts Festival) and we also had several other ‘veterans’ on the board.
Initially we did not think we would have a lot of interest from vendors, but we chose the weekend to not clash too badly with any rival festivals. The Maryland Sheep and Wool was on, but that’s way out of our ‘local’ league. We also had to consider Instructors to run interesting courses as the whole package needed to be attractive to the public who we needed to turn up in their hundreds it was all to work.
Our venue was the Birchwood Community Center (where we hold our monthly guild meetings. We know the folk who manage the place and they were super supportive in our planning and as a bonus they would supply all day food from the (ex-school) cafeteria. It is how they make their little bit of profit for their group. They also hold the Sandhill Crane Festival in January each year a very well attended Festival that has been running for many years
Through lots of planning meetings we agreed on strategies to promote and attract Vendors, Instructors, and the public. This included social media (www.birchwoodfiberfestival.com primarily), mail-outs to guilds and fiber related shops, setting up demonstrations at other fesitvals, TV appearances, and as much ‘sharing’ as we could encourage. Things came together slowly and we ended up with a completely full vendor hall, a good variety of courses on offer and quite a bit of interest gathered from our various appearances.
For the actual festival we started the set up on the Thursday, had Vendors arrive to set up on the Friday and much setting up of classrooms based on what the actual lessons would be. The vendor hall (my part of ship) was the gymnasium which meant a relative easy job setting out the spaces. We had decided that we wanted to have at least 8 foot aisles which allow better two way traffic and hence a traffic flow that goes up and back rather than just a quick one way look around.
The photo’s from top left, clockwise are: the gymnasium (tape marks on floor for vendor spaces), vendor spaces filling on Friday, the next three are the Festival about to open on Saturday morning.
We had good crowds on Saturday and less on Sunday, but a lot of people went out the door with shopping bags which apparently was enough for all but two of our vendors saying they want to come back for 2024. Anne I did well with our towels and Para-tassels and will actually have a booth for 2024, so I had better get going on some stock!
With the wedding coming up in mid-April it was a case of rush rush rush to finish the previous tartan so that this one could be put on the loom and woven with time to spare. As it turned out we were well ahead of the game as it was slightly smaller than the last one and that made it far easier and faster to weave.
The colors were chosen and the warp wound.
The warp was tied on to the previous warp and pulled through the reed then heddles. Not the fastest process, but it went smoothly. After tying on to the front apron weaving was underway in just a little over two days (of part time work).
Weaving the Weddint Throw on ‘Big Mac’
It took three days (once again part time) to finish the weaving – it would have been quicker but an unexpected snag turned up. The knots, from tying on to previous warp, had little ‘tails’ and when a group of them came forward in the last pattern run of the throw they would tangle (behind the reed) and stop a clean shed opening! The solution was to spend half a day snipping the ends off. All that to finish the last 5 inches! Lesson learned. I cut the throw off, tied up the end edge fringes, trimmed them then gave it a delicate wash and tumble dry. Finally I combed out the fringes with a hair brush and it is now all ready to wrap up and post off to New York.
Finished Custom Tartan Wedding Throw
The next project is a run of 20+ cotton towels ready for the May Birchwood Fiber Festival. Always good to have a deadline!
The weaving of the Brown tartan finished a little while back, but I kept the finished throw on the loom as we were visited by my sister-in-law and her husband (the new owners of the throw) and I thought it might be nice for them to actually see it on the loom. They were very pleased with how it came out. We’ll now take it off the loom and finish tying up the fringes on either end then wet finish it. Delivery will be next time we visit their Lookout Mountain home some time soon.
Brown tartan on the loom with yarn for the next tartan.
To save just a little time I will cut of the current tartan and leave the remaining warp threaded through the heddles and reed. I am currently winding the warp for the next tartan – a custom design for Anne’s niece and her fiance as a wedding present in April. By tying on to the threaded warp I can slight speed up the process of threading through both the heddles and reed. I have done this before and while it seems like it would be a real time saver – by the time you tie on every warp thread (or almost all – this throw is slightly smaller) it is quicker but not hugely. I think it might be one or two less steps that could introduce threading errors, which is a good thing.
A fairly simple tartan design but it does look good (on the software)
In between tartans I was working on the 2023 Scenic Valley Handweavers guild challenge which is to take analogous colors from a color wheel and also using black; highlight those colors. I was able to find three colors amongst my stash and decided not only to weave them somehow but also to, on the same warp, repeat the pattern three times using three different weaving techniques. A challenge on top of a challenge as it were!
The colors are from a very simple primary and secondary color wheel and are red, orange and yellow. The first technique was completely new to me and is called ‘skip plain weave’. Often seen in rugs (Central Asian), but also European and Southern American woven pieces. It is one sided as the ‘alternate’ colors float across the back behind the weft faced ‘front’. I have begun the second technique which is Turkish knot pile weaving. When I finish, the blocks will have the pile trimmed quite short. The final technique will be tapestry weaving. The warp is 8/2 cotton, the skip plain weave is 3/2 pearl cotton (left over from tartans) and the pile and tapestry are an acrylic knitting yarn left over from the ‘Four Horsemen’ blanket project. I will then mount and frame the whole thing, tentatively called ‘Blocks of Sunrise & Sunset’, before the deadline in June.
Dressing ‘Gypsey’Skip plain weaveStarting the pile weaving
This project will take a pause while I push through the ‘Wedding Tartan’, but should be ready by the reveal date.
After a week of winding warp (an hour or so a day – then on to studio build work) I had all the warp wound and all ready to go on the loom and there it sat, draped over the breast beam of ‘Big Mac’ waiting for action but I became fairly focused on getting the wiring in the studio ready for final inspection.
Nearly a month later I had everything done and arranged for the inspection which went perfectly smoothly, despite all my worries of tiny things that I thought might derail it! So now we have a fresh blue sticker on our meter box signing off the final inspection. Needless to say it has been a frustrating (at times) process and incurred some more expense (not on the wiring side) than planned, but regardless it is nice to see all the light fittings (bought at bargain prices from Lowes where Anne works) in place and working and being able to plug ‘things’ in wherever I like! We raised a glass of bubbly in celebration then I did an immediate pivot to get back to the tartan.
The dressing has been relatively quick and was threaded front to back. I now just have to tie on to the warp beam, wind it through and tie to the cloth beam – I hope to be weaving over the weekend.
After setting up for the Guild Christmas party and having projects on 5 of my looms I had no choice but to get stuck in and get some results. Two projects could definitely be classed as ‘faster’. The cotton towels and the Abalone colored scarf were both straight weaving with easy treadling and minimum weft color changes.
So while I concentrated on finishing them, Anne took up the weaving on ‘Bernie’ – the tufted rug and I took occasional breaks to make progress on the Tartan throw. First finished were the cotton towels on ‘Big Mac’. I had allowed for 6 towels as a test run for a larger run this year. Unfortunately and despite my careful counting I had wound on the warp in sections and miscounted one section by one turn so it being short limited me to just 5 towels. I thought of trying to tie on enough for one more towel with the knots at the join between two towels, but the amount of work for one more towel changed my mind quickly.
Cotton Towels
The idea behind these towels was to use the same design as the 2021 Christmas Towels but re-sleyed to open up the weave a little and using just one weft color per towel. They worked out well with some of the bold colors I had sitting around in the stash. The huck lace gives them a nice texture overall.
Abalone Scarf
The second project finished was the Scarf in Abalone colors. The warp was variegated black, grey, white and the weft variegated blues and greens. Both in 8/2 tencel. With long twisted fringes and a long scarf it looked great and after wet finishing it softened up even more. Anne claimed this one! I’ll now go ahead with a run of 3 or 4 in a slightly modified design.
Work has continued on the tufted rug with both of us working on it when we have time and we are now at just over 13 inches (of 50 inches total. Once the fingers develop some muscle memory you can speed up to a reasonable 11 knots per minute, with up to 2 inches a day achieved (weaving about 4-5 hours on this project). As this speed falls within Peter Collingwood’s ‘reasonable’ rate I’m happy enough. I shan’t be going into intricate designs a la Middle Eastern hand knotted silk rugs, I think some geometric shapes and colors should be achievable and a complete 4 x 8 foot rug in 2-3 months a reasonable goal. The tartan throw is now half complete and now that I’ve worked out the ‘throw’ to take the shuttle across the full width of the loom, it’s going easier.
We also acquired a commercial rug for the floor of the studio. It was straight concrete and needless to say rather cold if you are working in socks (necessary when treadles are close together (Big Mac mostly). Anne found a large rug down from $350 to $70 plus her work discount on top of that!
Left to right: the new rug and weaving progress in December. Tufted rug, and Tartan throw as of today. I put the heater on when I went to take the photo’s above so it should be warming up enough to head out and get some more weaving done.
This year I was way ahead of the game on getting towels woven and shipped to US and NZ destinations (more on that later in the post). I began playing around with a huck lace design – influenced by me seeing my sister-in-law using my woven towels as a bread cloth, which is perfectly acceptable – but not the ideal. A huck lace design has larger air gaps to release steam and has the bonus that the weave has a more structured, bumpy surface so still acts perfectly as a towel.
I found a very nice diamond pattern that would be fairly straightforward to weave and incorporate some green and red Christmas color stripes into a predominantly white towel. The warp is entirely white. As usual I chose 8/2 cotton for the yarn. Initial planning was for a sett of 20 epi, but after sampling I decided to re-sley at 24 epi. The huck pattern worked out way better at 24 after wet finishing.
20 epi to the left, 24 to the right
As with previous runs of 30 or so towels the only choice is to us the sectional warp beam on Big Mac and fill enough bobbins to wind the 2 inch sections (48 as the sett was now 24 epi). The process went smoothly and with a different method for keeping tension on the yarn as it went through the counter I was way more consistent. The winding on to the beam was also pretty straight forward as now I have more room (in the studio for the first time doing Christmas towels) I could expand the distance between the bobbins and the tension box on the back beam of the loom. This kept the angle of the yarn coming off the bobbins less extreme which led to no snags or breaks. Once wound on I set up for threading back to front then tied-on.
The photo’s arrived a little out of order so starting from bottom left and going clockwise, winding bobbins, full bobbin rack, first yarn pulled, winding on through Tension box, and center; sections full.
Once I had the pattern repeat and color swaps worked out I could weave relatively quickly at about 45 minutes per towel. I didn’t trim the color join threads while weaving – leaving that for once they were cut off.
I averaged about 5 per day, up or down a bit, but pretty much as planned to give me plenty of time for finishing. Once off the loom the ends of the strip were sewn and the whole thing was wet finished then ironed. Each towel was then hemmed (machine sewing with finishing of the ends of the fold by hand).
As mentioned at the beginning this was the earliest I had ever had all the towels finished and way ahead of the normal shipping deadlines for NZ. Unfortunately it turns out that the US Postal Service is not sending packages to NZ (or 20 other countries) as they claim they cannot find services that are affordable or even available!! So I have a pack of towels all wrapped and ready to go, but no easy way to send them! The US post towels are gone, leaving only the local deliveries to go. It was great to get ahead of the normal November rush I typically have, and now knowing how easy it was to set up, weave, finish I may plan to fit the Christmas towels in even earlier next year.
The Scenic Valley Handweavers 2019 Guild Challenge was to produce something woven but in 3D rather than just flat cloth. Needless to say the pandemic played havoc with the timing and the final ‘reveal’ was not until September 2021.
I had planned something to use the variegated tencel I had used to make scarves for a New Zealand couple – in colors that reminded me of the local Paua shell (known as Abalone here). Combining it with a copper wire in the warp and weft I hoped I might be able to form it into the shape of a Paua shell and then finish the outside with some needle felted wool to imitate the real outer shell.
I was able to order the wire (armature winding wire) in a similar thickness to the tencel – maybe a little more, but fairly flexible. The downside was, of course, the copper wire does not stretch in any way – so conventional weaving where the warp ‘stretches’ enough to form the shed was not going to be simple. The solution was to warp the table loom with alternating copper and tencel and every other copper wire connected to a completely independent warp bar directly behind and at the same level as the back beam. These two bars were then connected with a bungy cord that wrapped around another fixed bar. The tie-up allowed me to weave a tabby cloth that lifted one or the other sets of copper warp wires and when one lifted, the bungy stretched one way allowing half to lift. The opposite shed lifted the other wires.
I had one shuttle with copper wire and one with tencel. Needless to say the tencel behaved as normal – the copper could be pulled out by hand and carefully wrapped around the selvedge which didn’t end up as particularly neat but given that it would eventually be trimmed and then covered as the felt ‘wrapped around’ it wasn’t going to be to much of a problem.
Starting to weave copper/tencel
It was fairly evident early on that the copper wire was the ‘controlling’ warp and weft and while behaving as woven cloth it would not allow beating up to the picks I expected – but this was pretty well flying by the seat of my pants. Should I ever use this technique again I’d add more tencel shots between each wire.
The first critical test was once I had woven ‘enough’ for the shell and removed it from the loom – I had to form a bowl and see whether it stayed in place and retained the relative spacing between wire and tencel in warp and weft. Luckily – it did
The next step was to trim the edge (to be more shell-like) and start applying washed wool locks and needle felt them together (and onto the woven surface). I used some ‘slightly’ washed locks to add a little bit of ‘roughness’. I also added some dark wool lines to add some character. The more needle felting the tighter the ‘shell’ got and I carried the outside around the shell edges into the inside – as I recall paua shells tend to do.
A one off effort that turned out pretty well as I expected, although the whole process was definitely learning as I went along. Needless to say a very enjoyable ‘challenge’ and gives me plenty of ideas for improvements for ‘Mk II’
