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I’ve just spent three days on tasks essential to my weaving business, but not actually weaving.
First, you know all those newly-woven scarves and shawls I’ve been posting here on my blog since early January? Yeah, well, they were all sitting in nice, neat piles on my dining room table, waiting to be tagged and put away.
Each scarf gets a tag that has my logo, identifies the fiber(s) it contains, care instructions, the size, and the color name(s). I hbelieve the law requires most of that information, just like any other garment you buy. Even if it didn’t, I know it’s appreciated by my customers. I haven’t made the transition to tags that have a whole list of fibers and care instructions and I just chedk the appropriate ones – all my tags include the information just about that particular scarf or shawl. So I make them all as needed on my computer. (Not one-by-one. I made a full page of each particular fiber or blend of fibers. I keep a little box with the extras so I don’t have to print every time.)
Then I have to measure each piece, write the size & name on the tag, make a little price tag, and pin them together on the bottom of the scarf. After that, I fold them roughly in half, roll them into a loose jelly roll, and carefully stack them sideways in a plastic bin.
Because I’d waited so long before doing this task, I had to go back into my yarn invoices and/or my blog posts to confirm the fibers on some of them. It was beyond me to tell by look or feel the difference between 100% bamboo, 100% tencel, and a bamboo-tencel blend. So that took more time than necessary. Certainly more time than if I’d tagged them as I went along.
I like the way they look in their little bedroll state. When I’m at a show, I have many scarves draped over rods and the like, some laid casually on tables, and still more on a hanging shelf system in one corner of my booth. I used to group them on those shelves by fiber, but last year another vendor suggested I group them by color, saying, “When you go into the store for towels, you want to look at the purple towels, not all the towels of a particular size or weight.” She was right. We are attracted by the colors that call to us. That being said, I’m still getting used to this, because my weaverly self prefers them grouped by fiber.
Once those scarves were all tagged, I had to face another task I’ve been putting off. Not a single one of those scarves one shawls was put up on my website. This meant I had to go back to my original photos, save it once in the ‘large’ size I use on the web, crop it for detail, and save it again in my ‘small’ size. Since, as I’ve mentioned, my internet speed isn’t really high, uploading photos, even ones that are relatively small and optimized for the web, is painful from home. I opted to spend hours in a little coffee shop that has free WiFi.
After I had all the photos loaded, I could go to my Dreamweaver program and start writing descriptions and laying out the pages. I’d wanted to update the organization of the site for a long time, and decided that if I didn’t do it now, another year would roll by with the same clumsy structure. Simplify, simplify, simplify. Don’t make your customers do a lot of work to see the results of your labor. At least not if you want them to buy from you!
Once again, my trusty MacBook worked just as hard as I did.
So I think I’ve got the pages done and uploaded. But it’s to the point that I can’t know anymore what I’ve already looked at and proofed and checked the links on. I’ll really appreciate it if you have the inclination to look at it and tell me where you find broken links, missing pictures, misspellings (I think I did spell check on them all), or bad grammar. Click around my website to your heart’s content (actually, don’t bother with any of the jewelry pages – they need to come down), then leave me a comment or send me an email (peg at handwovenscarves dot com) with your helpful suggestions. I’ll be grateful for your time and attention.
Now I’m going to get back to my loom!
Those may look like non-traditional weaving tools, but trust me, they are essential when you’re warping with tram silk.
Tram has lots of sheen and very little twist, and mine, purchased from Lunatic Fringe Yarns at last year’s MAFA conference, is really fine. (Maybe tram always is, I don’t know.) It sat in under a table in my weaving room while I gathered the courage to approach it. I decided to start with the color I have the most of, a luscious 12 ply in light gold, with an amazing 18,000 yards per pound. That’s not a typo – it’s 18,000 yards per pound! To give you some comparison, the rayon chenille I work with has around 1,400 yards per pound, the fine tencel has 3,360 yards per pound, and the really fine cashmere-silk blend has 7,200 yards per pound. So this silk is 2-1/2 times finer than anything I’ve worked with before. Add the low twist to it, and you’ve got a real challenge.
The silk catches on every little rough spot on your hands, your warping board, and your lease sticks. I tried using some cotton gloves, which helped a little when I wore them wet, but I couldn’t really feel what I was doing, so I put them aside and decided I had to work with and on my hands. For a few days, whenever I was away from the loom and could remember, I moisturized my hands. That helped. The spray bottle of water was used occasionally to minimize the static electricity that caused the silk to fly away.
The most important tool in getting this yarn on the loom and threaded through heddles and reed?
My MacBook. The excellent weavers at Weavolution and the helpful staff at Lunatic Fringe Yarns were able to offer not only concrete suggestions, but also encouragement – it could be done. And if it could be done, I would do it.
I’ll keep you posted as the project progresses.
I was in a shawl mode with the silk & linen ones, so decided to make another handwoven shawl. I love my rayon chenille rainbow shawl so much that I decided I’d weave a shawl for summer weight. I have lots of colors of rayon, plus plenty of black, so I set up the loom and went for it.
I love how well it drapes, and the sheen. For me, I’d still choose the rayon chenille. It’s chilly in the evening out here in the sticks even most summer nights. Plus, the colors in the chenille are much brighter. They weren’t on the cone – it’s a matter of the fuzziness of the chenille that stands up above the weft threads, I think.
Anyway, I’ve received several compliments on it. I put it in the Allegany Arts Association’s Fiber Arts show this weekend, and I think I have a buyer. Glad I made two.
I’ve been on a quest, and I still am. I want to find a silk, already dyed, in roughly a 30/2 size with a great sheen. I can occasionally find a 30/2 undyed, and can always buy undyed silk both larger and smaller sizes – sometimes with sheen, and can usually buy silk that has more texture than sheen. Combining all the qualities I’m looking for seem to elude me. In the meantime, I try a variety of silks to see what has the greatest appeal to me and my customers.
When I think of silk, the words sheen, softness, and drape come to mind. Conversely, when I think of linen, crisp and matte predominate my thoughts. So when I found yarn that combined silk & linen I was intrigued. What would this fiber look like on the cone? (I bought it from colourmart in the UK, so couldn’t see it in person prior to purchase.) How would it work up into a fiber? Which properties would predominate?
I’ve had the yarn for a few months while it was waiting for me to choose the right project. I decided on a shawl. I’d wanted to try a snowflake pattern, and decided this was the perfect opportunity to develop an 8-shaft pattern and show it off in the silk-linen fiber.
So I went to my computer to play with my Fiberworks software, and came up with this draft.
I measured out 480 threads of white silk-linen yarn long enough to weave two shawls, and set up the Macomber loom at 24 ends per inch.
I had a blue in the same fiber that I thought was too bold for my purpose, and a lilac that I thought was too subtle. I decided to start with the blue, and was really amazed at how tame it became with the white in this pattern. (Sorry this picture is so yucky. I only shot two on the loom, and this is the better one. I tried fixing it in Photoshop, but the uneven lighting made it a real challenge.)
It was clear to me that the ‘snowflakes’ themselves – the Xs, didn’t predominate. Instead the diamonds between them did. While this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, I thought the pattern pleasing enough that I wasn’t going to re-design and re-thread. Particularly since I still had no idea how the finished fabric would feel and drape.
I wove both of pieces, took them off the loom, wet finished and pressed, and was happy to see that these handwoven shawls seemed to marry the qualities of the silk and the linen beautifully.
They have a nice drape while still maintaining body. The pattern is much more subtle with the silver lilac, but it’s still a lovely shawl. At least I think so.
I’ve worked on making some changes in the draft so that the X of the snowflake is more predominant (I now have 7 versions saved on my computer), and I’ll try the new draft with another fiber, another day.
My next batch of handwoven scarves was Tammy’s Gems colorway in a bamboo-cotton blend. I don’t think I’ve used this one before, but I’ll definitely use it again. I love the colors!
I use so much of her hand painted yarn, but I think not everyone knows what that means, or how it happens. Here’s a mini-primer.
- Wind yarn off a cone into a skein, tie it in four places to keep it all together.
- Lay the skein on top of a wide piece of saran wrap on the work surface. Paint, or squeeze, concentrated dye onto the skein in a pattern you determine in advance (in this case, three different colors).
- Wrap the sides of the saran wrap over the skein, roll it up like a jelly roll, and steam it for about an hour.
- Remove from the steamer, cool the yarn, and rinse it until the water runs clear. Hang to dry.
Here’s what a skein of the Gems colorway looks like when I get it, and what the same yarn looks like after I’ve wound it into a ball.
After I wound the yarn into balls so that I could work with it, I measured a warp of 180 ends over 11 yards long – enough for 4 scarves. I threaded the loom for a rather random point twill, and used a simple 1-2-3-4 treadling for all 4 scarves.
Tammy had dyed me a solid green to coordinate with the Gems, and I used that for weft for the first scarf. Even though I’m not a green person, I liked this one.
For the second one, I used a dark purple rayon. I liked that, too.
For scarf number three I used a bright blue weft Tammy’s dyed for me, and for the fourth, a lightweight lavender cotton.
It was interesting to watch how the different colors of the weft yarn each brought out a different aspect of that gorgeous hand painted weft.
I like each and every one of these handwoven scarves. They’re all nice and lightweight and drape beautifully. I think the colors are quite like the eggs lots of people are dyeing for Easter.
Speaking of dyed eggs, check out this method of using old silk ties to make really interesting and beautiful Easter eggs.
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