Weaving A Gem Of A Life

Next Up….

EJ’s warp is on the loom. I love the way it looks in real life, and hope that the image does it justice.

It will be interesting to watch this warp take shape. EJ is the first mom to request tabby for her weave, and the first to request 1 light color & 1 medium color for her wefts. I’ll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, mama EC sent me photos of her & baby happy with their brand new custom wrap, and gave me permission to post them.

In this one, I like the addition of the hand print painting behind them. 🙂

I’d love to report that all’s happy in baby-wrap-land. Unfortunately, no. The other wrap I wove on this warp, for A in her hearts & flowers pattern, has issues. Ok, 1 big issue – long floats all along one selvedge.

I didn’t realize it as I was weaving, and mom is understandably quite concerned that the selvedge won’t hold up to the heavy duty usage of a baby wrap. So far we’ve agreed upon a full refund and re-weave. I believe the problem would be avoided by using a floating selvedge on both sides. I only had one on the left, as that’s the only place I needed it for my ‘regular’ heart pattern, and if I can avoid the floater, I do – it just takes a bit more time to weave with one.

Now we’re working on the best solution to the problem wrap. A thinks the best use may be as ring slings, since they’re generally hemmed on all four sides. So we’re offering it to a select few as that. If I don’t have takers, I’m considering two other alternatives…a very narrow and close zigzag along the selvedge, or the application of a handwoven band, sewn on in the same manner as blanket binding, covering both sides of the selvedge. In either case, I’ll have at least one of my gracious testing mamas test it out before it gets sold.

Life, and weaving, moves forward.

EJ’s Yarn

Today I’ll start measuring the warp for EJ’s wraps. She’s ordered two – one with a natural weft, one with peacock.

Here are what her warp yarns look like before I start. Aren’t they lovely?

From left to right it’s mauve, mauve pale, lilac, bleu cobalt, bleu moyen, and jeans. Yummy!

As planned, yesterday I measured a warp for my never-used-by-me rigid heddle loom. It’s much larger than the one I bring to shows – maximum width in the reed is about 24″. My neighbor forced it on me at her yard sale for a grand total of $3 – along with the original instruction booklet and some yarns. It’s an Erica loom, made by the Northfield Loom Company in the 70s.

I threaded the loom, tied it up, and experimented. I learned that it is definitely not as good as my lovely LeClerc rigid heddle, which has rachet & pawl brakes on both front & rear beams. The Erica has neither. But it will hold tension.

I also learned that I need to change plans. Although this loom would, at least theoretically, work as a tapestry loom, that’s not what’s going to work for my community weaving project. Takes too much time and skill. Instead, we’re going to do Saori weaving at the community concerts. It’s much more ‘stream of consciousness’ weaving – which colors & fibers move you right now – which makes much more sense to see if the music impacts the choices. It’s also a simple plain weave, which means it will be infinitely easier for people of all ages and skill levels to be successful. I went back to the project narrative I submitted, and find that this change in plan is just fine with what I wrote. So that’s what we’ll be doing. Feels good to have that decision made.

They’re off!

I shipped off the wraps today to E & A. They should arrive on Monday – yeah!

Here’s E’s:

And A’s:

On an unrelated note, I popped by Halcyonyarn this evening looking for a replacement rigid heddle. Their front page had this adorable image of these three felted dogs.

I think they’re stunning, and am so impressed by the talent that created them.

Hearts & Flowers

A, who’s getting the sister wrap to the gorgeous rainbows you’ve already seen, asked me if I could weave a slightly different design for her. She sent me an image of a hearts & flowers weaving draft, saying she couldn’t find anyone who could weave it for her.

The design required only 8 harnesses, but the way she showed it needed 11 treadles, more than an 8 harness loom has. No problem….several of the treadles were tied up identically. So I modified the tie up and the treadling sequence and we were good to go.

A wanted me to start her wrap with my standard hearts tie up, then switch to her pattern. Look how nicely that worked out.

Isn’t it interesting that the hearts themselves are offset from one pattern to the next?

Then she asked for an alternate treadling for several inches in the center of the wrap. Again, no problem, as long as I didn’t have to change the tie up again. I showed her 7 options, and she picked the one she liked best. I forgot to take a shot showing the transition but here’s the center treadling pattern.

I should be able to finish these two wraps on Friday. Then I have to try something in prep for my community weaving project.

1st Law of Motion

You know Newton’s first law of motion – a body in motion tends to stay in motion; a body at rest tends to stay at rest. You’ve surely had personal experiences to prove this law. It applies in weaving, too.

I am short. I have short arms and short legs, and the fact that my belly is too large shortens my reach. When my warp is as wide as it can be, that adds to the reach challenge. So when I weave baby wraps on the Macomber, I typically get up every time I have to advance the warp and advance it from the side of the loom. This weekend I decided to try doing what I should do – use the foot pedal to release the brake and advance the warp from my weaving stool.

In fact, not only did this work, it saves lots of time. Not because of the few seconds more it takes to stand up, advance the warp, and sit back down, but because of that Newtonian law. Once I stand up, it’s so much easier to add ‘one more thing’ to the movement. “I’ll just ______________.” That might be get a drink, go to the bathroom, load the wood stove, check my email, see what’s on TV, stir the soup, or anything else that jumps to mind.

Then, when I finally sit back down, odds are that I’ve thrown my stool out of alignment. It shifted incrementally to the right, or the left, or lowered slightly, or something. I rarely fixed the adjustment every time, which meant that it wasn’t too long before my body was out of alignment to the loom – never a good idea.

Advancing the warp while still sitting eliminates all of those problems, which means I get more weaving done.

Here’s how great E’s wrap is looking.

Weaving A Gem Of A Life

Categories

Archives

Next Up….

EJ’s Yarn

They’re off!

Hearts & Flowers

1st Law of Motion

Weaving

What Else I'm Reading Now

Tags