Remembering Mondrian

Sometimes when much of life is completely beyond my control I tend to obsess. One way to combat obsessive thoughts is to occupy my brain with complex tasks that don’t allow much room for other activity. That’s what I did for the past several days.

I’ve long wanted to do a different kind of doubleweave. My first doubleweave, accomplished back in 2009, just 2 years after I ha my first weaving lesson ever, was a double width baby blanket. I did a few more double width things, then got away from doubleweave for a bit. Recently I used doubleweave to weave the tubes that ended up being those little treasure pouches.

Although as a concept doubleweave takes a while to wrap your head around, for me, neither weaving double wide nor tubes is particularly difficult or time consuming. This project was different. I wanted to weave what’s typically called color windows. I can show you much better than I can explain what this means.

So the photo up top is an example of color windows. Each of the colored squares is surrounded by black, on the order of a bloc y stained glass. This is cool enough, but it’s double cool when you look at the other side. The design flips to black windows with colored borders!

I enjoyed watching the patterns build as I wove. What I didn’t enjoy was all of the bobbin-changing required in this piece. It’s a two-shuttle weave — one for the black thread & one for the colored thread — so it’s automatically slower, more than twice as slow for me, than using a single shuttle. But with these ‘perfect’ little squares, every time I got to the next square, approximately every inch, I had to change the thread in my colored bobbin to the next color. This dramatically slowed the process down even more. I used the warp color order forward & reverse for my weft colors. That is, I wove the colors as follows: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, F, E, D, C, B, A.

Then, I’m weaving along, and realize that I have miscalculated. When considering how much yarn I needed for the weft for each scarf, I did the calculations as if I was weaving a single layer. With doubleweave, the scarf is 2 layers thick, so you need twice a much yarn. For the colors, no problem. For the black, though....I ran out after about 66′′. I had more black rayon, but I’ve ‘been there done that’ enough to know that all blacks are not created equal. The other rayon was not just a different dye lot, it was a different manufacturer. Although they looked to same to my eyes on the cone, I wasn’t going to take a chance that the last 10′′ would look different and would therefore ruin the looks of the entire piece I’d already spent so much time on. So I decided that a well-done shorter scarf was better than a longer one that caught your eye with an error.

Ok, on to scarf #2. I didn’t want to change my bobbin every inch or so, so decided to alter the pattern slightly. I’d alternate the lengths of my windows and only change bobbins every 3′′ or so. I was surprised at how much quicker this was! I stuck with my color order though, with the weft colors following the same order as the warp colors, without reversing. I decided I didn’t want th much of the light colors grouped together, so wove with colors A-G, then started again at A.

I enjoyed weaving this scarf so much more that I figured I’d get a bit looser still for scarf #3, and change the size of the windows and the colors as my weaving muse saw fit at the moment. Sometimes there’s only 3′′ of color, sometimes more than 5′′. As I wa weaving this scarf it reminded me of Mondrian, a painter many of us became familiar with in the 60s. Although Mondrian had already been dead for 80 years, that was when Yves St. Laurent used his color block style in dresses. I couldn’t change the wid of my blocks, only their lengths.

I’ve now fringed and washed these 3 scarves. I’ve put them outside to dry, but may end up having to toss them in the dryer if the sun and/or breeze doesn’t appear. I’ve hung them on this rack so you can see part of both front and back of each.

I wove these scarves in 8/2 rayon, sett at 18 ends per inch per layer, so 36 ends per inch total. We’ll see how they feel and drap when they’re dry and pressed. I may need to use finer yarn next time. The woman who now, after seeing the time commitment, blows my mind even more with her work uses 60/2 silk – almost 15,000 yards of silk in one pound, compared to about 3,300 yards per pound in my 8/2 rayon. I think I showed an image of one of her shawls before, but here’s a treat for your eyes again.

Some day, when I’m not weaving baby wraps..........

June 25th, 2015 |

Silk waves

I used a nice, soft celery color for the first of those waves & corkscrews scarves I wove. Although I didn’t start it with the treadlin pattern I’d intended, I just LOVE the color. And the sheen of the silk. Even though green is not my color, this scarf knocks my socks off.

Next up I wove with a dark berry wine color. Thought I’d love it, but not so much. Ditto with the intended treadling pattern at both ends of the scarf. Huh. Once again, what I think I’ll like and what I do like aren’t always the same.

So for the third scarf I wanted another soft color, and chose a slate blue. This yarn is a 70/30 silk/linen blend, so it’s a bit stiffer than the 100% silk and doesn’t have the same sheen as 100% silk. I opted no alternate treadling at the ends, instead treadling for the waves throughout the length.

I’ll be amazed if I don’t sell the green and blue scarves at my first show, just about 10 days away. Then again, I almost never accurately predict with will sell.

June 17th, 2015 | 

Zing Bling

 

Some months ago I bought some ‘zing string’ — cotton thread with hand-tied beads strung along it. I haven’t had time to use it t now. This is a plain weave scarf, cotton warp, rayon weft, with the zing string adding some bling at random intervals. I wove two scarves with the silver rayon weft & plain weave.

Actually, the first one on the warp had a black cotton weft and I wove in lace blocks with the bling randomly placed. It was fine, but when I tried the tabby with the silver rayon, I knew I’d do the other 2 scarves in that.

Off the loom, I like them both. I like the black better than I thought I would, actually. But I showed you the tabby first because the bling shows up better. I sewed all 3 into infinity scarves.

I did a bunch of ‘not-weaving’ today. Although I wasn’t wasting time, I’ll be darned if I can tell you exactly how the day went – beyond seeing a black bear cross the road 63 steps in front of me on my morning walk!

I’m calling this weaving draft I came up with for my next warp of 3 scarves corkscrews & waves.

I got 262 ends of 20/2 natural silk measured, beamed, and threaded on the Macomber. I have all of about 6′′ woven...enough to know I don’t have any threading errors. I hope I can get all 3 scarves woven tomorrow.

Here’s a funny thing....I intended to start & end the scarves with the ‘corkscrews’ at the top of the draft because I like them bette than the ones on the bottom; I think they have more movement. But is that how I treadled the beginning of the first scarf? Noooo I’ll end it the same way I started, and do the 2nd scarf in the way I intended. I hope.

June 10th, 2015 |