The pink hearts have a pale pink binding, the blue hearts a pale blue binding, and the cranberry & aqua have white binding. I did get these up on my website, as this is the time [...]]]>
I promised to show you the four handwoven baby blankets when I finally had the binding on them.

The pink hearts have a pale pink binding, the blue hearts a pale blue binding, and the cranberry & aqua have white binding. I did get these up on my website, as this is the time of the year that I tend to get more orders for or sales of my handwoven baby blankets. (I do realize that the blue & aqua look pretty similar in the photo, but they’re not so much in real life. The aqua has much more green in it.)

In addition to the four heart blankies, I also wove three cotton flannel baby blankets in a variegated yarn. These were really popular last time I had them. The cotton flannel is so very soft, and the colors are just right for baby.

I wove these blankets in doubleweave, since I wanted them to be wider than either of my looms would accommodate. I’ve done this before on my sweet, little counterbalance loom without difficulty. But I’d just finished the heart blankets, which required all 8 harnesses of my Macomber, and so decided to do the doubleweave on the Mac, too, even though I only needed 4 harnesses. I knew I’d get a better shed, and it would just make my job easier.

I admit it, I’m getting used to the Mac. I still love my counterbalance, and hope that it remains my favorite; only time will tell, I guess.

Back to the topic I wanted to talk about – binding these baby blankets. I admit it: I hate sewing on the binding. Previously, I’ve sewed it on and then taken it all off and re-done it. I’ve lived with binding that looked less-than-professional, reducing the overall look of my carefully woven blanket. At my show last weekend, I even tried to get one of the other women there, whose product is handsewn purses and bags, to do the binding for me. She wasn’t having any of that. So I wasn’t looking forward to the task of binding 7 blankets. YUCK!

I did one each of the hearts and the cotton flannel prior to the show. I hated it as much as I’d anticipated. And I still had 5 more blankets to go.

Then I got a brainstorm: I can’t be the only one who has difficulty with this slippery fabric. I looked online, and found lots of places where people asked the question of how to do this without pulling your hair out. Several of the sites didn’t offer me any helpful insights, but a few did. I’m going to pass on to you the information I found useful.

First and foremost, blanket binding has an top and a bottom. For me, with the narrow binding (1″) that I’m using for my baby blankets, the top of the binding is a scant 1/16″ narrower than the bottom. So little difference I’d never noticed it before. Trust me when I tell you this was the most important hint I got! Putting that ever-so-slightly-narrower edge on the top of the blanket as I pinned & sewed completely eliminated the likelihood of missing the edge of the bottom portion of the binding. I can’t believe that it made so much of a difference, but it did.

Second, don’t worry about ‘filling up’ that binding. If you leave a little bit of space at the top of the binding, it’s okay, and gives you a little room to fool around with as you machine stitch.

Third, pull the binding really tight as you pin. (Or baste, if you’re a baster. I’m not.) That way it’ll be tight when you sew and not bunch up.

Not from hints online, I also did three other things.

• I used a layer of tissue paper underneath the binding as I sewed – between the feed dogs and the presser foot. This helped ensure that I wouldn’t have slippage there, and the tissue rips off cleanly when you’re done sewing.
• I used a sort of long stitch length – a bit higher than the middle of my stitch length options on my machine. I also sewed sort of slowly, not at my usual get-’er-done speed.
• I pulled the blanket-and-binding combination rather tightly both in front of and behind the presser foot. My goal was to maintain the same tension as I did with my pinning.

The result? The binding on those 5 blankets went on like a dream! Not a snag, not a bunch, not a curse word while sewing on 10 ends. Yippee! I’ve apparently found the magic combination of techniques to make this once-horrible task not bad at all. I’m really pleased with the results. If I was a bit more obsessive than I am, I’d rip the binding off those first two blankets and redo them. (You can see how much smoother the binding is on the heart blankets than on that cotton flannel.) But I won’t. I may be crazy, but not that crazy.

Your turn: have you used online tips to make your life easier?

Three of us were working on floor looms, three on [...]]]> I spent Saturday & Sunday at a workshop the Southern Tier Fiberarts Guild sponsored. It was all about doubleweave. We had a small group – only 6 of us, so we were each able to get all sorts of guidance from Pat Edwards, our teacher.

Three of us were working on floor looms, three on table looms.
Here Joan’s warping up her little Mountain loom. The swinging beater was fascinating to me. Hinged at the top and moving freely at the bottom, her hand applied all the pressure, not the beater itself. Interesting.

I rarely work on a table loom myself, but didn’t have a reasonable way to get my beloved floor loom to the workshop site. It’s sweet, small, and light, but doesn’t fold at all, so it’s pretty bulky. Carol was very gracious to loan me her table loom, but there’s nothing like working on a loom you’re familiar with. And there’s really little comparison in shed size between most table looms and most floor looms – floor looms have it beat hands down. Weaving puns intended.

Regardless of the loom used, each of us were working with 4 colors, warped in a straight draw. One side of warp was 2 colors, alternately warped ABAB. The other side was all 4 colors, alternately warped ABCD, ABCD. I wanted high contrast in my warp so I could see the impact of what I was doing, not colors that I necessarily liked or would use in other circumstances. My 2 main colors were a bright orangey-red and a basic blue. The other two were pink and dark purple.

With 4 harnesses, there are six color combinations for top & bottom warp colors. We used each of these combinations, using one of our two main colors for weft.

Carlyn chose colors that all look lovely together, not like my gaudiness.

In addition to the six color combination blocks, Pat taught us how to use doubleweave to weave hinges, tubes, and envelopes.

Doubleweave hinges allow you to make a piece that’s twice as wide as your loom. I’ve used this technique before to make some of my handwoven baby blankets.

Woven tubes come in handy. You can easily make bags & pillows, but if you’re clever and creative, you can do lots more. I’m going to think about a new cowl-hood design that’s tube woven.

I’m less clear on how useful a woven envelope is. Or maybe just less creative in my thinking. Regardless, it is an interesting technique.

After learning how to do those three structures, Pat taught us how to do doubleweave pickup. We each created a little design, called a cartoon, that we’d weave into the cloth. It’s very cool, in that what’s light on the front is dark on the back. Pat encouraged us to keep it simple, to start with angles, not curves.

Here’s my second attempt at color blocks.

I kept messing up on the first, so just considered it all a learning experience, but DON’T need to take pictures of it. You’ll see at a glance that my selvedges are a mess and my beat is uneven. You can pay attention to just so much at one time, and the purpose of this part of the workshop was to learn the doubleweave pickup technique, not to produce a finished product.

I did want to see if I could do curves. Tried my hand at the yin-yang symbol.

Again, not work of quality, but that wasn’t the point; learning was the point.

Val was quite brave, making a little running rabbit for her first attempt at pickup.

While we were all busy learning doubleweave in her cozy studio, Carol decided to weave some yardage using a combination of wool, silk, linen, and (I think) cotton. She plans to dye it in her beautiful natural dyes, then make it into a garment. She knows each of the fibers will take the dye differently, making for some interesting variegation. Whew! I don’t think I’d have the oomph to dye it – the undulating twill with those natural colors is too beautiful for me.

Once I get the handwoven hearts baby blankets off the loom, I plan to do some doubleweave double-width baby blankets in a sweet variegated cotton flannel I have. They’re always popular when I have them in stock.

Gotta go back & hit the couch – I’ve been battling the flu for a week, and it struck back today.

The mother-to-be’s requested colors were pink, brown, and green. To be honest, it was a [...]]]> A few months ago some young friends had their first baby. A sweet little girl named Grace. In preparation for this very welcome addition to their family, my son ordered a custom baby blanket as a gift.

The mother-to-be’s requested colors were pink, brown, and green. To be honest, it was a bit of a challenge to me to come up with values of these colors that looked good together, and appropriate for a baby. Fortunately, my friend Tammy at Yarntopia Treasures came through in a handpainted blend using pink and brown in a soft and comfy cotton flannel. I added some stripes of plush green cotton chenille as I wove. Like my other baby blankets, I made this one in doubleweave on my counterbalance loom.

Dad just emailed me photos of Grace going for a ride, wrapped in her blanket for a bit of warmth. I am amazed as how well the colors in the blanket match the other colors she’s wearing — it’s as if I’d seen her little hat in advance!

I love making handwoven baby blankets, and am happy to take orders for custom weaving for a blanket for your special baby. Just give me a few months advance notice and you can wrap your child, grandchild, niece, nephew, or other favorite little one in handwoven warmth.

Cotton flannel on warping board

Next steps: tie the warp onto the back beam, thread the heddles, and thread the reed. (With 360 threads, this is a time consuming process, but if you don’t enjoy each step in [...]]]>

Cotton flannel on warping board

Next steps: tie the warp onto the back beam, thread the heddles, and thread the reed. (With 360 threads, this is a time consuming process, but if you don’t enjoy each step in the weaving process, you’d better find another hobby.) I was almost done and had to take out about 40% of the threads. I’d missed heddles 3 & 4 way back then. Damn!

Cotton flannel on loom back beam

On to weaving!

My little loom

It does have its limitations, however, as it’s a counterbalance loom. That means that the harnesses really have to be in balance. [...]]]>

My little loom

It does have its limitations, however, as it’s a counterbalance loom. That means that the harnesses really have to be in balance. On my 4-harness loom, that means 2 harnesses up and 2 harnesses down. Pick 2, any 2. But it can’t do unbalanced weaves – those that require 1 harness up and three down (or vice versa).

Therefore, once I figured out how to understand the directions for doing doubleweave, I had to figure out how to do it on my loom. Doubleweave requires 1 harness to be raised at a time, and that’s not in the nature of counterbalance looms.

Now, I know that there are some companies that make counterbalance looms that can be fitted with a shed regulator – a device that makes it possible to get get a clean shed on an unbalanced weave. So I went online and looked at them, trying to figure out what they did and if one would work on my handmade loom. The best I could determine was that it’d require modifications to the loom that I didn’t know how to make, nor was I sure I wanted them made. (Plus they were fairly costly.)

That was the bad news. The good news was that it appeared to me that the primary thing the shed regulator did was to raise up the entire harness. Could I figure out how to do that on my loom?

Well, since I’d already changed all the cords critical to the loom’s operation to Texsolv, it was a simple matter to shorten the top cords and give it a try. It works! YAY!

Now, it’s true that I don’t get a big shed, so when I’m doing doubleweave I have to work slowly, and I have to advance the warp frequently, but it works!

(For you non-weavers, I’m going to put together a post with weaving terminology, and will explain them with photos.)

I’m not suggesting that this would work on every counterbalance loom, but it works on mine. I wouldn’t do unbalanced weaves all the time, but for the baby blankets, it’s ok. It reinforced once again the lovely, little poem that one of the loom’s prior owners taped to it’s main balance.

My simple pleasures,
my gentle joys
weave a lovely pattern
of contentment in my life.

When I first got my lovely floor loom a few years ago, I was a weaving newbie, or baby, if [...]]]> Wordplay is fun. The title might make someone (from another planet) think that this post was about babies learning to weave. In fact, it’s about weaving things for babies to use, specifically handwoven baby blankets.

When I first got my lovely floor loom a few years ago, I was a weaving newbie, or baby, if you will. It didn’t take me long to be able to produce a decent scarf in either plain weave or twill, but I wasn’t prepared for anything fancy. I remember reading my weaving bible, Learning To Weave by Deborah Chandler, about doubleweave. I knew for a fact that I didn’t even understand the language she was using, much less have any clue about how to implement her directions. (Doubleweave is a way to weave something that’s twice as wide as your loom. Or you can weave tubes, if you want.)

So I decided to simply ignore that section of the book. Along with several other sections I didn’t understand. Hoping that all in good time, it’d make sense to me. Or that I wouldn’t need or want to do it.

Then suddenly one day about a month ago I was in the shower (a place where I often get inspiration) when I said to myself (ostensibly out of the clear blue – I wasn’t consciously thinking about it), “I bet I can understand those doubleweave directions now.”

Amazingly, I was right – I could understand! So I had to figure out what I needed to make to use the technique while it was hot in my brain. My answer – use up some baby acrylic and make a handwoven baby blanket!

I’d woven a blanket for a friend’s baby about a year earlier, and had to weave it in two strips and stitch them together. Although the friend was really gracious, the baby blanket was less than lovely. Weaving a blankie in one piece would be WONDERFUL!

Blue & White Checked Baby Blanket

Imagine my pleasure when it sold at the first show I brought it to!

Having another show the following weekend, I decided that I’d use the intervening days to weave another baby blanket, this time from a lovely handpainted cotton flannel. I was even happier with the results, and brought it to show #2 of the year. IT SOLD!! I didn’t even get a photo of it before it was gone.

cotton flannel yarn