Weaving A Gem Of A Life

Hand Painted Weft

I finished KM’s custom baby wrap so it was time to start SB’s. She’s my first mom who decided on hand painted yarn for her weft.

This yarn was custom dyed for us by Susan at iowaweaver – the same woman who inspired my turned taquete towels! How cool is that?!

Looking at a single skein of hand painted yarn helps explain how the painting is done.

Before I can weave with the skeins I have to wind them into balls. I admit, I’d forgotten about the time this can take. I’ll have to work that time into the price of the wrap next time.

I enjoy using hand painted yarn – it’s always fun to see how the color repeats work out. The number of colors, length of the skein, and width of the woven piece all have an impact on the outcome.

This looks particularly great on the black sections of the warp. And especially on the underside, which I can’t show you till it’s off the loom.

Tomorrow I’ll figure out my order of cotton for the next customs – 2 wraps and a baby blanket.

New wraps, new method

I got KM’s wrap started. She asked me to weave the tails with a different color pattern. The rest of the weft is all black.

I’m now about halfway through the weaving. I have a long meeting to go to tomorrow, so I don’t expect to be able to finish it and move on to SB’s till Wednesday.

A few posts ago I mentioned Kati Reeder Meek‘s book and her live weight tensioning system. I wasn’t able to try it immediately, but I’m using it on this warp.

Oh. My. God. It is such a beautifully simple concept, so wonderful to weave with, so much easier on me, my warp, and probably my loom. It basically replaces the brake on your loom during weaving, although you still use the brake during beaming, threading, & tie on. I won’t explain exactly how to do it here — Kati’s book does it beautifully, plus she’s great at responding to email questions.

I’m using a broom handle I had hanging around with a total of about 22.5 pounds on it, with counterweights of only 1.25 pounds on each end. This is on a warp of 760 ends of 8/2 cotton, 31″ wide, 18 yards long. I admit it would have been easier to set up initially with another pair of hands, but it obviously wasn’t impossible to do alone. Although this is my first use of the live weight tensioning system, I am positive I’ll be using it in the future – maybe for every warp on the Macomber. So thanks to Kati for the concept & help, and Laura Fry to pointing me to her. Other weavers are a constant source of inspiration, instruction, and support.

Done…and starting

I’ve wet finished those blue towels, although they still need to be pressed. With these and the other towels I’ll have to make an appointment with my iron very soon.

I wove 5 of the towels with multi-color wefts. They’re all a bit different but very similar, so here’s one of them.

I like them, a lot, but we’ll see how they sell. May not go with people’s kitchen decor.

I wove the other 3 towels with a single color weft, using the same treadling pattern for each of them. Here’s the one with the darkest weft, my personal favorite.

Then I got the warp wound for KM & SB’s baby wraps. This is the first bout.

I’ve since got it all wound, beamed, and I’m half way through the threading. The warp is cottolin. This was the first time I’ve used it for warp, and I was a bit worried that the linen would make it challenging to beam, but it went on as smoothly as 100% cotton. Whew!

Today I also made 85 mini meatbulbs (as my grandson calls meatballs), a pot of homemade spaghetti sauce for them to simmer in, and 2 casseroles full of eggplant parmesan. I have company coming on Sunday & didn’t want to cook then, and I’ll be out for a bit at my fiber arts guild tomorrow, so today was the day.

Towels on the lawn

This afternoon I got the warp of 8 turned taquete towels woven off. Here they all are laid out on my lawn.

I’ve since done the machine hemming. I’ve yet to do the hand hemming, washing, drying, and pressing. I can’t wait to show them to you individually.

Tomorrow I start winding the warp for baby wraps.

I am LOVING it!

This turned taquete blues warp is amazing!

I like it with a solid color weft.

But I love, love LOVE it with a multi-colored weft.

I’m half way through my warp of 8 towels. The yarn arrived for the next pair of custom baby wraps, and as soon as I get the towels off the loom I’ll start winding the warp for that.

Weaving A Gem Of A Life

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Hand Painted Weft

New wraps, new method

Done…and starting

Towels on the lawn

I am LOVING it!

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