I had another idea for the third scarf. [...]]]> I recently had a customer who wanted me to weave her a solid black rayon chenille scarf in a specific size. No problem. As usual, I warped for three scarves. I wove my customer’s solid black, plus another solid black, since I had no more of them in stock.

I had another idea for the third scarf. I so love the handwoven shawls I’ve made rayon chenille rainbows, I thought I’d try a different twist. I’d use the same rainbow concept, but switch the colors along the length of the scarf instead of across the width, like the shawls.

Hmph. There’s no comparison. The shawls are so striking, so beautiful, so rich. The scarf? It’s ok. Period. I would not do this again, either in rayon chenille or another fiber. It just doesn’t send me.

Live and learn. As long as I keep learning, and remembering, it’s all good.

I was weaving as fast as I could in preparation for the Roycroft Winter Festival, and barely had time to take photos of the [...]]]> I know, I know, I’ve been away from my blog for weeks. I’m guessing it bothers me more than it bothers my readers, especially since there aren’t thousands of you.

I was weaving as fast as I could in preparation for the Roycroft Winter Festival, and barely had time to take photos of the finished scarves, much less write about them. In between weaving, I was also working feverishly with a score of volunteers to sell, decorate, and distribute 381 wreaths for Pfeiffer Nature Center. So here’s what I got finished in the last weeks before the show.

First I wove up some gorgeous hand painted rayon chenille in a Silver Linings colorway.

On top is a scarf that has the same hand painted yarn for both warp and weft. For the bottom scarf, I used a solid weft in a bluish-grayish color that coordinated perfectly. I sold the one with the solid weft at the show.

Then I wove with another hand painted yarn, this time in an amazingly deep, rich Ocean Waves. I’ve used this colorway before, in a variety of fibers, but this time the dye was darker, deeper, and more luxurious than ever before. The photo doesn’t do it justice.

I sold two of these over the weekend.

Next I had to try a new fiber – bamboo chenille. This was a solid color that the manufacturer called cliff, but I’m calling Sand. I think it will provide the same great wear results as rayon chenille, because I believe that both fibers are created in essentially the same process.

I was surprised that these scarves didn’t attract a lot of attention at the show. I thought their neutrality would be really appealing.

Then I finished up my weaving with another solid color rayon chenille weft, one the manufacturer calls Tangier. From left to right are scarves that use the same weft as warp, a darker solid weft, and a space-dyed weft.

I called the middle one Burnished Copper, and the scarf on the right Fire In The Hills. Again, I was surprised that these scarves didn’t attract more attention over the weekend. Interestingly, my sister (who helps me at many shows) and I had completely different preferences for the scarves. In order, I prefer middle, left, right; she likes right, middle, left. Apparently most folks chose none of the above.

In addition to these scarves, I sold two of the brick cashmere & silk scarves (sorry the photo makes them look more orange than they really are) and one of the dusty rose silks, along with a variety of other scarves. Both of my new rayon chenille shawls (rainbow & gray) jumped off the shelf – I’m sure I could have sold each a few times if I’d had duplicates.

I also sold 4 Victorian Christmas ornaments, including my two most recent creations, and 14 bookmarks – glad I had woven up a 13 the day before set up!

Among other post-show duties, yesterday I made a sterling silver necklace I had an order for — my customer had been waiting patiently for two weeks.

Now I have to buy Christmas gifts, write & send out Christmas cards, and make some more gifts. In between working. And having another show, thankfully small & local, this coming weekend. And trying to eat right, exercise, wash dishes, etc., etc., etc. YOU know how it is! I’ll get back to this as I can, showing you the cool stuff I wove as a demo at the show.

I’d seen some gorgeous weaving with [...]]]> I know I need to make more shawls before the Roycroft Winter Show. I also have a special order for a shawl and three special order scarves. While I was waiting for final input from my customers on the special orders, I decided to make a rayon chenille shawl.

I’d seen some gorgeous weaving with many different colors of yarn, offset by black. I’d not done anything like this, and wanted to give it a try. I ended up with 16 different colors, arranged in a prism fashion. I used 8 strands of black in between each color. (Next time I’d use less black – perhaps 4 strands between each.)

After I got it spread out on the back beam, it was clear to me that my colors needed a bit of adjustment. The orange was way too bright, and there was too much purple.

I was okay simply removing several of the purple threads and having the shawl be 8-10 threads narrower. At the other edge of the shawl, however, I thought that while the orange was too bright and overpowering, I should have had more of the red. So I wanted to insert as many red threads as I removed of the orange. I also wanted to get rid of a few black threads from the right edge; I wanted it clear that I intended the width of the black selvedges to be different, and if they were too close in thread counts, it would look like I’d made a mistake.

After making all those adjustments, and having a few broken threads, here’s what the back of my loom looked like. Pretty ugly.

The final result of the shawl is a bit more subdued than I had envisioned, but that’s part of the reason I’d make the bands of black narrower next time around. Other than that, I’m happy with the design. (I’m also happy that the photo shows the sheen of the rayon chenille; that’s usually quite hard for me to achieve. I shot this one on my bathroom counter. I’m going to try the next one there.)

I also enjoyed being a bit random in my planning. I had no preconceived notion of how wide I’d make each color band. I simply picked all the colors first and set them out in the order I’d use them, and wound as many wraps as I thought would look good. This is different than my usual very planned methodology. It felt good, and I’ll do it again.

Your turn: has changing your methods brought you successes?

The first thing I did was tie the fringe and wet finish the log cabin scarf I wove on the rigid heddle loom at my last [...]]]> As planned, I’ve been weaving just as fast as I can. I’ve made 13 scarves in the last six days. Everything’s been wet finished, but nothing’s been pressed yet.

The first thing I did was tie the fringe and wet finish the log cabin scarf I wove on the rigid heddle loom at my last show. The gray is a bamboo, the blues are hand painted rayon boucle.

Although the scarf wove up quickly, getting it on the loom was anything but speedy. I recently bought a second 10 DPI (dents per inch) heddle for the loom so that I could weave fabrics that needed to be sett more closely. With 2 of these heddles, I could make the scarf be between 10 and 20 ends per inch. I wanted this scarf to be 18 ends per inch, so it should be easy to do. I’d never threaded two heddles like this, so I opened my Betty Davenport book, Hands on Rigid Heddle Weaving. I tried to follow her directions to thread both heddles at the same time, but was having difficulty since I had to turn the page in the middle of the process each time till I had it firmly implanted in my brain.

That wasn’t working, so I printed off instructions from Schacht. They seemed easier to follow: thread all of 1 heddle first, then pull them into the 2nd. Sweet.

So I got my first heddle threaded in log cabin pattern, and proceeded to thread the second. This wasn’t working anywhere near as easily as I’d hoped. The fact that I was trying to do 18 ends per inch (EPI) instead of 20, and keep it in log cabin pattern at the same time, wasn’t helping. And it sure wasn’t a good idea to try several new things at once the afternoon before I had to leave for a show. I couldn’t spend any more time on it, so I had to change my plans. I’d use just one heddle and thread at 10 EPI. I’d used the bamboo at this density before, but the rayon boucle was way too thin; I’d have to double it in both warp and weft.

After all that, fortunately the scarf worked up nicely. I do like log cabin and want to weave more of it as soon as I have time. (Because it requires using two colors in the weft, and therefore two shuttles, it takes a little longer than using just one shuttle, so I won’t be doing it in my rush before my next show.)

Then I made six rayon chenille scarves: three in rich red and three in deep blues. I wanted to add that bright red to my stock for the show, and I had an order for the blue; the other 2 would make a nice addition for next weekend.

Although rayon chenille is always more challenging to work with than many other fibers, I just love the finished product and can’t give it up. I’ve used both of these yarns before, both purchased from the same supplier, both made by the same manufacturer. The red worked up beautifully, the blue – not so much. I had an above-average number of broken warp threads. Now, I know how to repair a broken warp thread and have done plenty of it, but I did not want to take the time now to do so.

In addition to the warp breakage, the chenille was massively shedding while I was weaving. So much so that I had to vacuum after weaving each scarf – unheard of for me. Again, I wasn’t happy about having to take the time, but I was mostly concerned that after wet finishing they wouldn’t be as luscious as usual. Thankfully, they are just fine. Why did this yarn behave badly this time? Wish I knew. Actually, if I’m wishing, I’ll skip wishing I knew, and just wish it would never happen again. Why waste a perfectly good wish on knowing why something in the past happened?

I’ll share the next six scarves I wove in the next post.

Your turn: what’s worked well, or not so well, for you lately?

Apparently not.

I had woven two of these beautiful hand painted rayon chenille scarves (top and right). They’re lovely, with the warp being a colorway Tammy calls Visionary – a blend of purples and dark green. I used [...]]]> I don’t know why I always want to do something hard. Isn’t easy good enough?

Apparently not.

I had woven two of these beautiful hand painted rayon chenille scarves (top and right). They’re lovely, with the warp being a colorway Tammy calls Visionary – a blend of purples and dark green. I used a solid purple for the weft.

I wanted to weave the third one using a light green weft, thinking it’d be nice to have something a bit different.

That would have been really easy, if I hadn’t also wanted to add a thin strip of that light green along each edge of the scarf.

I’ve tried adding such strips to an existing warp before.

I’ve simply hung and weighted the added warp – pretty unsuccessful. Way too hard to get good, even tension on it. Ended up with wavy selvedges.

I’ve tried cutting off the scarves that were finished, pulling the remaining warp forward through heddles & reed, tying the new ends on the back beam, and rewinding. Still not good for me…the thread that had been on there were already a bit stretched, so the new threads ended up at a different tension before many inches of weaving anyway.

So I thought I’d try another strategy.

Make pretend I had a second warp beam by using my rigid heddle loom. Here’s a shot from the top…

And the side…

With my rigid heddle loom on a TV tray, it was almost exactly the right height. And the RH loom would apply sufficient tension, plus it had its own brake, so I could adjust the green warp threads as we moved forward.

I have to say that for me, it did work better than the other two methods. But it wasn’t ideal. When I needed to advance the yarn, it wasn’t necessarily easy to adjust the two brakes to provide the same tension.

Far worse, every time I beat the weft in, the TV tray and RH loom banged on the back beam of my counterbalance loom. I tried removing the TV tray and hanging the RH loom over the back beam; that didn’t work — the balance was completely off.

I tried tying the front beam of the RH to the back beam of the counterbalance. That was less successful – no way could I get it tied tightly enough. I thought about using clamps instead, but I don’t have the kind of clamps that could have done that.

So I learned another strategy that wasn’t great. I still don’t have one that is. Maybe when my clever son moves back to the region next month I’ll have him look at it and see if he can fashion a sometimes-used supplementary warp beam for me that I will like. (I can imagine that I might hate what it would do to my beloved little loom.)

Join the V7N Challenge – learn something new every day

This [...]]]>
I’ve said it often enough – I’m into the gem tone colors. Purples, blues, greens, reds – they just call to me. I realize that other people have different color preferences, so I do try to pick yarns that will please other palettes, too. Sometimes I really like them, sometimes not so much.

This new-to-me colorway that Tammy hand painted is just stunning! This is one of the few times that I think Tammy missed on the name of her colors. She calls this one cappucino, which to me has no gold in it.

Weaving with it was like basking in the sunshine, just making me smile the entire time. And the finished scarf is equally as bright and pleasing. It doesn’t go with most of my clothes, but I’m pretty sure will draw lots of attention at shows.

Like all my rayon chenille, it’s quite difficult to photograph — the natural sheen of the fibers causes light to bounce around like crazy. Despite many attempts in all sorts of different lighting conditions, I don’t feel like a did a great job of capturing the true colors of these scarves. I’m certain they’ll make a much bigger hit in person than in the photo, and will be surprised if they sell from my website.

There was one interesting thing about these scarves. I’ve learned that when I’m using a variegated yarn for the warp (length) and a solid yarn for the weft (width), I pretty much always like to use the darkest color in the scarf for weft. This time? No. I much prefer the solid golden weft to the dark brown weft. I know that the picture doesn’t show that much difference, but in real life I see a strong difference, and don’t get the same make-me-smile feeling from the scarf on the left with the brown weft.

I’m going to leave you with another photo of this scarf, on the loom. The late afternoon sun (which has been relatively rare for the past few weeks) was streaming in the window, catching my warp beautifully. I took lots of pix of it from different angles, learning just how many possibilities there are for lovely, artistic photos, even if they’re not something I could submit for jurying.

I wove both scarves on the same variegated warp, a hand painted yarn that Tammy calls Twinkle. For the scarf on the [...]]]>
I finished the rayon chenille scarves I put on the loom last week. I’ve already told you that I love gemstone colors, so it’s no surprise that I think these scarves are gorgeous.

I wove both scarves on the same variegated warp, a hand painted yarn that Tammy calls Twinkle. For the scarf on the right I used a solid electric blue weft that Tammy dyed for me to coordinate. On the left, I used a black weft, adding a a few strands of black at each selvedge and between the solid blue and the variegated warp threads.

I can’t pick which one I like better – I find them both really pleasing. It’s clear that the one with the black weft pops the color more, but the blue weft is stunning, too.

All I need to do now is find time to get these, the black rayon chenille, and the white and eggshell bamboo scarves I finished a few weeks ago up on my website. Doing the updating has been on my to-do list for weeks now. I’ll get to it soon!

Now I can get back to weaving with the colors, fibers, and patterns that move me.

At the end of December, Tammy, the talented [...]]]> Last night I finished weaving the solid black rayon chenille scarf, the last of my custom weaving orders. This morning I wet finished it, and I’ve just finished the hand hemming.

Now I can get back to weaving with the colors, fibers, and patterns that move me.

At the end of December, Tammy, the talented woman who hand paints virtually all the variegated yarn I use, had a sale on rayon chenille. Although I sure didn’t need to spend more money on yarn at the end of the year, I couldn’t pass up the sale, so I placed an order. Tammy painted 30 skeins for me in 5 different colorways.

It’s pretty easy to see that I love gemtones. But those golden skeins are really exciting to me. I can’t wait to work with them.

That being said, the first colorway I put on the loom is a gemtones colorway Tammy calls Twinkle. I guess I can’t escape my first love.