They picked ME!

 I just received official notification – my application for an Artist in the Community grant was selected for funding!

I am amazed! And a bit in shock. And scared – can I really do what I proposed? Will it take an ungodly amount of hours to accomplish? What will I have to forgo to be successful at this?

YIKES!

I’ve already sent out email notifications to the people who agreed to partner with me – the elementary art teacher and the local library board – to let them know so we can begin planning in earnest.

Here’s the shortest synopsis that explains that plan: About 160 kids in grades 3-5 will each weave a small square (about 3′′) on an individual loom. Then, I’ll set up a larger loom (about 2′ x 3′) at each of 3 community concerts, with musical groups in 3 different genres. People attending the concert will be invited to weave. We’ll see if the musical genre impacts the colors and/or type of weaving people do. After all that, I’ll weave or sew students’ squares into borders for the larger pieces. All will then be in semi-permanent installation outside the library.

Whew! Does that sound ambitious or what?!

Incidentally, the community weaving project from Angelica this past summer made it to my house a few weeks ago. They needed to take it down from the storefont and I was happy to hang it on my porch. I think it looks great. (Not a good photo. I’ll try again on a cloudy day.)

January 30th, 2014 |

More woven skylines

I found enough off-white rayon chenille to warp my loom for 2 more clasped weft skyline scarves. My plan was to weave both as carefully as I could, and trust that one of them would be good enough for the jury.

I wove about 5′′ on the first scarf and then wanted to do a peaked roof. After trying, I realized that I was likely to have the same issues as I did last time – an inability to get those roofs completely symmetrical. So I left the loom and sat in my chair for a few minutes to think about what might help me. I decided I’d make some peak templates with paper, some triangles of different sizes and angles. I’d pin them under the warp and use them as guides, just as I’d been taught in the pick up workshop.

Back to the loom with my paper cut outs. Nope. Pinning them under the warp doesn’t work – the rayon chenille is too fuzzy and densely sett for it to work.

Pin the paper on top of the warp...nope. Can’t see what I’m doing. Go back to the chair and think some more.

Aha! A brainstorm. Buy a washable fabric marking pen and draw on the warp! This takes a few days, since Joann Fabrics is about 40 minutes away from me and I don’t want to make a special trip just for the pen. So my loom sits and waits.

Once I get the pen I’m back at the loom. It is the best alternative, but less than perfect. The line it makes is thicker, and because of the chenille, fuzzier than I’d anticipated or wanted. Still, it’s much better than trying to count threads and/or follow a warp line across the weaving. So I finished weaving cityscape scarf #2.

Then I decided to go back to my computer for a few minutes and grab a few black & white graphic images of city skylines. I wanted to get Buffalo, the city where I lived from age 3 to 24, and another city that I thought was reasonable for my weaving purpose. As it happened, I picked Houston. I printed them both on an 8.5′′ x 11′′ sheet of paper and brought them back to the loom for inspiration.

I decided that I wasn’t in love with the scale of my buildings in skyline #2. Like the buildings in skyline #1, they were wide and to my mind, not as aesthetically pleasing as they might be. So my buildings for skyline #3 would be narrower, and using Buffalo an Houston as inspirations, they would also have more variability in their height.

Making the building narrower would also make it easier to deal with the symmetry issue. I could much more easily count and/or follow a warp thread for a narrow building.

As I wove along, I was really happy with the scarf. Even though as I got near the end of the warp I wasn’t going to be able to make it as long as I usually do. I wasn’t at all concerned with that since it would definitely be long enough for the jury.

I finished, cut the scarves off the loom, took them upstairs and ran my lines of machine stitching, came back downstairs, and did the hand hemming while I watched the red carpet for the Screen Actors Guild.

This morning I tossed them in the washer and dryer. After the dryer I was very disheartened to see that one of the ends of scarf #3 was in trouble. I obviously had cut through the machine stitching before I hemmed. DAMN!! My experience told me that hemming rayon chenille after wet finishing was problematic.

Apprehensively I took out the hand hemming, took the scarf back upstairs, ran twolines of machine stitching, came back down, and cut off the bad part. I carefully hand hemmed again, and am happy with the result. YAY!!! This is a good scarf for the jury!

January 19th, 2014 | 

Handwoven silk shawls

 The cayenne baby wrap finished the warp on the loom, leaving the Macomber empty. As planned, I focused on weaving pieces for my upcoming jurying. I’m getting anxious because time is ticking away and I don’t have the pieces I think will serve me well.

So I spent some time creating a draft for an 8-shaft undulating twill.

Then I measured 528 ends of 20/2 undyed silk a bit over 6 yards long and warped up the loom at 24EPI. For weft I wanted to us some 20/2 silk I’d dyed with indigo last year at my guild‘s natural dye workshop. I hand hemmed the beginning edge and set of weaving. I loved the way the weaving looked, and got a bit over a foot woven when I took a whole bunch of measurements and realized that I would not have enough yarn to complete the piece. Damn, damn, double damn! I couldn’t bear to waste the silk, either the undyed or the indigo dyed, so I painstakingly unwove 12+”. What a drag!

Then I tried four different colors of silk and silk-blend yarn I had. I wasn’t excited about any of them. Must be time to walk away from the loom for the night.

Next day after playing around some more I decided to use some custom-dyed 20/2 silk I had in Twilight blue. I knew the colors would have more contrast than I wanted, but I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I went for it. I tried and tried to get the colors accurat but couldn’t really – it’s much more blue in real life.

I could tell even on the loom that the beat was not perfectly even, despite my best attempts, so I knew this wasn’t going to be a jury piece.

That meant I really needed the second shawl to be beautiful. I decided to use some 6/60 silk-linen yarn, since the color was similar to the natural-dyed indigo. This color is way off, too, showing much grayer than in real life.

I was happy with how it looked on the loom and hoped I would feel the same after wet finishing. I did, yay! This shawl will go to the jury.

I like both of the sides, where the cream makes the wavy lines and where the winter blue does. A bit closer to the real color, but still not right.

Then I got stalled on my next skyline and had to walk away from the loom on that, too. So while I was not weaving I decided to bead the ends of the shawl. I used pale blue seed beads and gray freshwater pearls. Here’s the entire width of the shawl.

I did notice as I was beading that about 1/4′′ of the width is pulled in a bit on the end, and I’m sure the jury will, too, but if that’s the only criticism on the piece, I’ll be okay with it.

Now for a closeup of the beading.

Back to the re-do of the skyline!

January 16th, 2014 | 

Twill clasped weft

 I finally got some decent pictures of that cayenne baby wrap. Natural light is what it’s all about, for sure, especially with some colors and designs.

Here’s the wrap, showing both sides of it.

Again, I wove a different design on the ends. I’m less enthusiastic about these than I was about the zig zags on the green diamonds, but they’re okay.

Moving on, I mentioned that I wove two clasped weft scarves with a natural ecru baby alpaca weft. After I got the loom warped and wove a bit to look at things, I decided I liked the look of straight twill with the alpaca instead of tabby like the rayon chenille.

For the first scarf I paired the ecru with a periwinkle alpaca-silk weft, and clasped the weft at random points across the width of the scarf.

Here’s a close up of it.

I decided to actually braid the fringes of this scarf instead of my usual double twisting.

After I’d woven this scarf I decided that I’d do another variation. This time I used a variegated unmercerized cotton. Using a poin treadling, I created what I thought of as hills but my friend saw as trees. Either way, I’m happy with this scarf, too.

Here’s a close up of that one.

I’m off to those 8 harness silk shawls on the Macomber now.

January 11th, 2014 | 

Woven skyline

I’m going to start by saying that I am happy with this clasped weft scarf, but not happy enough to send it to the Roycroft jury. I plan to make another, going even slower and more carefully. I do think it’s a great concept, and I am definitely not done with clasped weft. (I wove 2 clasped weft scarf with baby alpaca after this. Both much quicker and easier to get right, neither my ultimate show piece for the jury. I’ll probably show you these later.)

Without further ado, here’s the entire length of Skyline #1. I took this shot before wet finishing.

After wet finishing, I decided you might like to see details. I’m showing you from one end to the other, but you’ll notice it’s backwards from the full-length view; I wasn’t careful for the photo set up and laid it out the other way for the photos.

I purposely ‘overlapped’ the images by one building so you can see how it all fits together. Here goes.

You might notice that I hadn’t yet hemmed the scarf when I took the photos. This was a mistake. I should have done the hemming prior to washing and drying. I am not happy with the hem, even though I did each end twice, cutting off and running another machine stitch when I didn’t like it the first time. Again, good enough to sell for sure, not good enough for the hands-on Roycroft jury.

January 4th, 2014 |