Sunset Shawls

 Like most people (I think), I get my creative inspiration from a variety of places – from seeing what other weavers have made, from books, from looking at my stash, from seeing the world around me. The first and last in that list are what led to me weaving two shawls.

These shawls are quite different for me in two important ways: color and fiber content. The color is most significant. I am very used to working with hand painted fibers to create color interest. I’m very comfortable working with solid colors and using weaving pattern to create the interest. I’m gaining comfort with using stripes of different solid colors in a variety of ways to infuse a different appeal.

In these shawls, however, I used many different colors – I think 10 – in semi-random stripes in an attempt to create the impression I want. I wanted to bring a summer sunset to mind, with all the colors it can include, from orange to pink to blue to green to purple to red and an amazing blending at the intersections of them. I think I was pretty successful for my first attempt.

For the fiber, I used 5/2 cotton for the warp & rayon for the weft – I don’t remember ever mixing these fibers like this before. I was a bit concerned that the fibers wouldn’t play nicely together, that they’d cause unpleasant differential shrinkage or crinkling. I trie it because I knew I wanted to soften the cotton, provide more drape than a cotton this heavy could provide. I also set the thread relatively far apart – at 15 ends per inch – and threaded for a huck lace. I treadled only half of the typical huck pattern – I call it huckish. For all you weavers, here’s part of my draft – repeat as needed for width.

So here’s the first shawl, woven with an orange weft.

It’s my fav, for sure. Doesn’t it look nice on Dolly with all that lovely spring green in the background?

For the second shawl I used a spice weft. It’s much darker – probably 20 minutes later into that sunset.

At the show I was twisting fringe and got a lot of positive comments. I think they’ll be attractive to my customers at my next show Of course, I never really know. I just have to weave things that make me happy, that I like, and trust to the process.

May 19th, 2013 | 

Glam shots

I’ve sent in two applications for shows this year. I’m only applying to three this year — between weaving lots of baby wraps and having my house on the market, it seems like about all I can handle, since those 3 applications represent 5 shows. In fact, I worry about producing enough work for these shows – but I have that same worry every year and it always works out. So just one more application to go.

I got something like 48 images from the professional photographer of the four pieces I took to him; I had to narrow it down to manageable — and affordable — six.

I had brought him two props this year: Dolly and a metal stand I call Rod Man. (Prior years he just draped them all over a bar.) Rod Man was a last minute afterthought on my part – I figured Dolly would be the best. He draped Rod Man with a camera drap to eliminate some of the distraction of the stand itself – a good call on his part.

For jurying, I wanted all the backgrounds to be the same so there was no distraction to the eye. But for 2 of the pieces I really didn’t like the way they looked on Dolly, so I chose all 4 from Rod Man for the jury. You’re seeing 2 of each since they’re my favs

We’ll see how the juries respond.

February 26th, 2015 | 

Color me surprised

Yesterday I finished weaving the second piano, hemmed & wet finished the 2 pianos & the cityscape.

I expected I’d prefer the pianos, that’s why I wove 2 of them and 1 cityscape. But no. When I see them side by side I prefer the cityscape. Just goes to show you, what appeals on the loom isn’t always what appeals off the loom.

I’m sure some people will really like the pianos, especially if I get into one of the shows at Chautauqua Institute, so I’m not worried.

If I do the pianos again I’ll actually follow all the calculations I did ahead of time — this time I went by my eye, what looked good at the loom. The final result looks fine, but has 3 extra octaves. It’s not a big deal, I’m sure, but it’s not an accurate piano keyboard. Hey, it’s art, right?

So tell me — which appeals to you: the cityscape or the piano?

February 15th, 2015 | 

Tickling the keys

Y S-B jumped on the opportunity to buy the wrap with the royal, chambray, & navy weft. So I got both wraps hemmed, washed, dried, pressed, & labelled. Today I mailed out Y’s wrap to Germany and HF’s wrap to New Zealand.

Mailing things out of the U.S. costs SOOO much more than mailing within the States.

Before I start the next baby wrap warp I went back to the rayon chenille warp I have on my counterbalance loom. Instead of weaving another cityscape, I decided to weave a piano scarf. I’ve been wanting to do this for a few years.

I’d love to tell you that this was my idea, but it wasn’t. The talented weavers over at Dust Bunnies Under My Loom did it way back in 2011. It took me a few years to have time to figure out the weaving technique, and then I did my cityscape scarves. They were my own design, & I’ve never seen anything like them. But I couldn’t get that piano out of my mind. And since I’m not lookin for this to be a juried piece, I’m not overly concerned that I borrowed (ok, stole) the idea. I did have to figure out all the measurements and layout myself, but still....not my original idea.

I’ll have to decide if I’ll do another cityscape or a piano for the third scarf on this warp.

February 13th, 2015 | 

Pick one

I gave each of the three red-gradient shawls their hard press today, knowing in advance that this would be where I would decide which was best for a hands-on jury.

I think the gold silk weft is my favorite from a distance of 1-3′.

Closer than that I think the beat looks a bit uneven. Worse, in the photo you can see a treadling error. So it’s out. Next up for me is the silver silk weft. I like the contrast with the reds and the beat is nice and even.

Unfortunately there’s some kind of imperfection. I can’t figure out what caused it, but it’s really obvious up close. So it’s out, too.

That leaves the navy rayon weft.

Although I don’t think it’s the most photogenic, it has an even beat and no imperfections. That’s the one I’ll submit for hands-on jurying.

Thought you might like to see how different the two sides of this weaving look...this happens to be the gold weft.

Tobie asked for the draft of this pattern. Here’s a bit of it.

I thought I could upload and link to a wif file, but apparently I can’t. So if you want the full wif download, email me (peg dot cherre at gmail dot com) and I’ll send it to you.

February 3rd, 2015 | 

Transitions

I have one more hands-on jury piece to weave. I had 4 ideas: one I needed to order a cone of rayon to implement, two I thought would require a few tries to get it right, and one that I thought I could implement relatively quickly. So I ordered that cone of yarn and while I was waiting went ahead with the 4th idea.

I measured out a 3-color gradient rayon warp & set up the little counterbalance loom. I cut a stiff but not too thick piece of cardboard into a few free-form curves. I sat down at the loom, hemmed the edge as always when I’m going to fringe the piece, and started weaving. Awful! Not at all what I had in my mind. Ignoring color for the moment, I tried with a few different weights of yarn to see if that would provide the results. Nope.

Walk away. Think. What else could I do with this warp that might be good enough? How about beaded leno? Give it a shot.

This involves threading tiny beads on my weft thread, winding it by hand onto a shuttle, and slowly, painstakingly, push the beads back when I don’t want them and carefully place them when I do. These are my sample beads. They helped me decide that I needed to use the larger size bead. (Can you even see the tiny beads in the 2 top rows? They are exactly the right color, but not the right size.)

So I left space for a fringe and hemmed again. I didn’t have enough of the color beads I wanted, so went with a silver-lined clea bead. I wove about 15′′ – 8 rows of leno, 4 of them with the beads, 4 without. After all that tedious, time-consuming work, I decided this would not do. It was pretty impossible for me to keep my selvedges nice and straight, so a jury would be decidedly unimpressed.

Crap! Walk away from the loom for the night. The cone of yarn will arrive on Monday. Will I wait for that? The mail won’t get here till late afternoon, so I’d have to ‘waste’ two whole days. The yarn for my next baby wraps isn’t here yet either, and that’ll probab arrive the same day. I’ll feel really pressured to do the jury piece AND to do the baby wraps. I hate being in that position!

Still I spent a few hours in front of my weaving software playing with drafts to get what I thought would be a winning weave pattern. By then it was 11:30. Stop the madness and go to bed! I read for a bit to turn off the brain whirring and got to sleep.

I got up this morning, went for my walk, did my yoga, took a shower, made my Sunday morning phone call to my friend, and suddenly got a flash.

I bet I know why that wave didn’t work the first time! Two reasons: I was treadling in twill when I should treadle tabby, and I mad my curves too deep & too varied. Cut new ones in very gentle lines, went back to the loom and tried out the revised concept.

Yeah – that’ll work!
So I left space for a fringe and did hem #3. I started weaving and was happy with what I was producing.

How do I do this? S...L...O...W...L...Y. Here’s a shot of one of my cardboard ‘reeds’ in place.

The routine is throw the shuttle, leave the shed open, insert one of the handmade reeds, close the shed, beat it in. Every single time. As I go I have to decide when & where to shift the reed or switch to a different reed.

Here’s another shot of several inches.

As I was weaving it became clear that I wasn’t willing to risk the kind of thread shifting that might happen during a wet finishing process, even a gentle one. Or what would happen as a scarf like this was worn. Plus the selvedges were a little wavy because the weft wasn’t a consistent tension near the edges.

So I changed my plans only slightly. Instead of making this a wearable, I’ll frame a section of it. I might be able to use a panoramic frame, or I might have to have it custom framed. I’ll choose the section of weaving that I think looks best.

That assumes, of course, that it will still make me happy when it comes off the loom. I’ve woven about 50′′ so far. I’m going to keep going for at least another foot, then I’ll cut it off & see where I’m at. Keep your fingers crossed.

January 25th, 2015 | 

Scarf bling

Now why would I have these 2 tiny dishes of sequins on the stool next to my loom? Could it be I’m using them to add a little blin to a scarf?

I warped my loom with 6.5 yards of twilight silk, threading & treadling to insert sequins as I went. Hopefully one of these will wor for my jurying this year.

At the beginning and end of each scarf I’ve inserted 5 rows of 7 sequins each, then randomly inserting 2 sequins in each of the interim rows. I had to cut off the first scarf, twist the fringe, and gently wet finish it to see if it was going to work or if I needed to make modifications before I wove the second one.

Here’s how it looks on Dolly.

It worked well! I’m almost done weaving the second scarf. As you can imagine, it’s a s..l..o...w weave.

January 14th, 2015 |