{"id":4786,"date":"2013-09-17T18:04:53","date_gmt":"2013-09-17T23:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/?p=4786"},"modified":"2013-09-17T18:06:48","modified_gmt":"2013-09-17T23:06:48","slug":"keep-on-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/2013\/09\/keep-on-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"Keep on Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"

I do love to learn new things. I know that sometimes I’m resistant, but that’s usually only when someone else, or life, imposes that learning on me. When it’s my idea, I’m all over it.<\/p>\n

\"rayon<\/a><\/p>\n

When I first learned to weave, taking a total of about 12 hours of classes from a man in his 80s who specialized in rag rugs, I knew that I wanted to weave with rayon chenille. He knew nothing about it. My naive self thought it would be just like weaving with any other fiber. Little did I know that rayon chenille presents its own unique challenges and gratifications.<\/p>\n

Since then I’ve woven a LOT of rayon chenille scarves & shawls. But still, when I took a class with Su Butler<\/a>, the goddess of rayon chenille, even though the class was on an entirely different topic, I had to pick her brain. That’s when I learned how Su finishes her rayon chenille.<\/p>\n

I totally understand the importance of wet finishing, thanks in large part to Laura Fry<\/a>. I do wash all my scarves after they come off the loom – generally by hand to save water – and after they’re dry, or almost dry, I give them a hard press. But you can’t do THAT with rayon chenille! A hard press would destroy that luxurious depth of the chenille. So I figured I simply had to let the heat part go.<\/p>\n

Not so, said Su! Heat is a must! “Toss those scarves in the washer and the dryer,” she insisted. “But” I protested, “the dryer usually destroys my double-twisted fringes I took so long to make.” Su explained that she never fringes her rayon chenille any more. If I recall correctly, that’s partly in response to changes in what industry has used for core fibers over the years, and partly (I think) a personal preference of Su’s.<\/p>\n

Ok, I thought, I’ll give it a shot. So I’ve recently woven a dozen rayon chenille scarves in 4 different warps. I fringed one of them and hand hemmed the others. I tossed them in the washer and dryer as directed.<\/p>\n

And they’re all LOVELY! The photo is of Tammy<\/a>‘s lovely hand painted colorways – Ocean Waves.<\/p>\n

Plus, as an added bonus, hand hemming takes me less time than double-twisting. I’ll be interested to get customer’s reactions in October. I’m thinking that the hemmed scarves, particularly in the darker colors, will be more appealing to men. We’ll see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I do love to learn new things. I know that sometimes I’m resistant, but that’s usually only when someone else, or life, imposes that learning on me. When it’s my idea, I’m all over it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

When I first learned to weave, taking a total of about 12 hours of classes from a man in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[227,249],"class_list":["post-4786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weaving","tag-handwoven-scarves","tag-rayon-chenille","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4786"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4790,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4786\/revisions\/4790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}