Somthing Old, Something New

Posted on August 21, 2017 by iowaweaver | 1 Comment

You’re looking at our new armrest covers for the couch. Not that a dark purple (officially, Eggplant) couch will show the grime that much, but after a year we wanted to be, uh, proactive.

A little background.

I didn’t weave something specially for this purpose, but I did happen to have a table runner that wasn’t doing anything and that was, lo and behold, the perfect color, and the perfect size, at least width-wise. As soon as I determined that the future of this runner was going to be on the couch I cut it in half and hemmed the cut ends.

Voila!

I wove this runner as a one-off in February 1998. So, almost 20 years ago. The weave came from 8, 12…20 An Introduction to Multishaft Weaving by Kathryn Wertenberger. It’s a double two-tie unit weave woven on 8 shafts with two weights of yarns in both warp and weft: 40/3 cotton and 5/2 cotton. I really love this weave and I go back to to it occasionally. If you can get hold of a copy of this book the photos are on pp. 46-47, and the draft is on p. 117.

A Little Something Extra (but not quite enough)

Posted on July 7, 2017 by iowaweaver | 2 Comments

I’ve had a dishtowel warp on the loom for months. Oh wait, was it only April? That’s not that long…. sigh.

I wound enough warp for six towels, the most I’ve planned for, ever, because I’m not exactly a production weaver. More like a see-where-my-whims-take-me weaver. But, my pattern seems to be that my measuring/estimating skills are not quite up there with the professionals. That last towel turned out to be a placemat. But I love it anyway…. 😉

Truth is, just about all, OK all, of my dishtowel warps have just enough left over for a small mat. My collection is growing.

This warp was threaded in my Circles draft for Turned Taquete. I alternated natural color 10/2 cotton with different color stripes of 10/2 cotton from the stash. The idea was to use up some cones, and I did that. I threaded 32 epi.

Here are a couple of shots of the group:

As you can see I produced dishtowels with the original circles treadling and dishtowels with the checked treadling. I used the 10/2 natural cotton as weft for two of the towels. Then I switched to checks.

As in this drawdown:

I alternated natural and brown on one. On the second I rotated natural, tea rose and camelia.

Then I went back to circles and wove one with all mauve. The short number six was woven with all camelia.

Quite a cheerful bunch, I think. Next up, I will get them photographed and in my etsy shop. It’s a good thing, because I am currently all out of dishtowels and I need to stock up!

Cheers!

Turned Taquete Circles into Checks (oh my!)

Posted on April 13, 2017 by iowaweaver | 3 Comments

You’ve seen this:

And I’ve been weaving circles, quite a lot of them in fact. I have the treadling down cold. All I have to do is press a treadle and I know where I am in the sequence. To date I’ve woven three warps of circle scarfs.

Black and white:

Gray and reds:

And now, gray and greens:

As you know, one of my recurrent themes is trying to find different designs on a threading, making it do double, triple, quadruple duty if I can. So, toward the end of the third warp I started asking myself what else I could weave on the same threading, besides circles. Heck, maybe even the same tie-up so I wouldn’t have to crawl around on the floor. Something that folks like and want.

And just like that, I thought of checks. Sort of the yang to the yin of the circles thing. So I sat down with the weaving software and played with the treadling and came up with this little gem:

Here it is in a different colorway:

So, a dish towel warp could do extra duty and also save the weaver from simple boredom, or, worst case, falling asleep at the loom ;-). I think this design would be fun as bright and colorful placemats as well.

FYI, for those with only four harnesses, there is a nice little draft on handweaving.net for four harness Turned Taquete checks. Shared by Bonnie Inouye, it is # 61535. As for the circles, you’re still gonna need eight.

Circle Scarves in Living Color [Red]

Posted on March 14, 2017 by iowaweaver | 1 Comment

So, I finally finished the first warp of rayon chenille Turned Taquete scarves in my color stripes circle design. I wove two, each with a slightly different gray weft. Then I wove a little end-of-warp piece with a dusty red weft called Geranium and made it into a cowl for me.

Here are the pics for one scarf that is now in my Etsy shop:

I am amazed at how far I have come since I started this project. The results has definitely been worth it!

The next warp is going on the loom now. The neutral is the same gray, but the stripes are in greens, and the width is one stripe wider, up from 7″ in the reed to 9″.

Here is a quick iPhone photo:

Because the word needs all the circles we can give it. 🙂

Jitterbug Turned Taquete – It’s not just for 8 harnesses!

Posted on February 18, 2017 by iowaweaver | 1 Comment

About two years ago I blogged about taking an overshot pattern called Jitterbug and converting it to an 8 harness Turned Taquete weaving draft. You can read all about that here. I don’t know why my mind wandered back to that, but I started wondering about how it would work on 4 harnesses. In her article “Turned Taquete: an Introduction” (*see below), Bonnie Inouye describes how it can be done by interleaving a four harness overshot threading with a second threading on opposites. I did not try this method, but I did decide to explore another method.

In her book Weaving with Echo and Iris Marian Stubenitsky suggests some ways to substitute blocks of four harnesses, each arranged in a different order, for the threading blocks in a design line. This means that each block will be switched for a four-thread sequence. Here is the substitution formula from page 71:

For Harness 1 we will substitute 1324

For Harness 2 we will substitute 3124

For Harness 3 we will substitute 3142

For Harness 4 we will substitute 1342

Other sequences of substitution in her book had issues. One could only be used on a rising design line, not descending. Another ended up with many double threads that needed to be deleted. This method had no problems and only the caveat that this threading rubric does not work with iridescent effects (four colors per block), but only with two alternating colors per block.

Off I went. First I re-wrote the design line to the minimum (keeping in mind that it would be expanded by 4x):

FYI– this is what it looks like with two repeats of the threading and treadling:

This is one repeat of the threading draft after four-thread substitutions are made:

And this is one repeat of the threading draft with the tie-up and one repeat of the treadling draft, which includes tabby on alternating picks:

The longest floats are 4 threads according to Fiberworks, which should be fine for most close sets. So, lest you four harness weavers should feel left out of the Turned Taquete craze, this is a perfectly serviceable technique to join in the fun. Enjoy!

*The complete article can be found here: Complex Weavers Journal, June 2014, pp 36-40.

De-Stashing (again)

Posted on February 2, 2017 by iowaweaver | 1 Comment

I finished the black and white Turned Taquete Circles scarfs, and this is the one that I am keeping. It’s on the short side, and I haven’t ruled out whether to turn it into a cowl. A seam would shorten it even more, and it’s currently holding at 35″ not counting fringe.

If I do turn it into a cowl, I’m considering using the technique for seaming used by Sarah Jackson in Handwoven with her Diversified Plain Weave Dancing Circles Scarf that she designed for the Thick and Thin issue (November/December 2016). BTW, my DPW Circles Scarf (Handwoven, May/June 2013) was a resource! And I have another short piece of chenille that I can practice on first, so still mulling that one over.

Meanwhile, I decided to go for color and circles in a big way. I dug into my stash of 1450 ypp rayon chenille and came up with lots of balls of hand dyed chenille leftovers from a multitude of other chenille scarf warps.

I’m using a medium gray for neutral contrast. Here’s the stash after already winding one two-scarf warp:

Here’s the stash after winding two two-scarf warps:

And here’s the stash after winding three two-scarf warps:

That would be six scarfs warped. Then I weighed what was left, and it is still over a pound! Arrrgh!

Circles 3.0: Color and Stripes!

Posted on January 26, 2017 by iowaweaver | 1 Comment

I just finished the first Turned Taquete Circles warp, and I managed to eke out two scarves after all that sampling. One is a bit on the short side, so I guess I’ll save that one for moi. I enjoyed the monochrome project, so different for me, but I found myself plotting how to add color this draft. And lots of it. And fast.

As you can see from this screen shot, the circles are distinctly separate (barely) in the vertical columns, but just a bit overlapping in the horizontal columns. (I’ll have to work on that.) That means that I can change colors vertically, thus adding a whole bunch of interest with very little effort. I’m not sure I would want to change colors in the weft. I rather like weaving with only one color to think about in the shuttle.

Now. Time for a glass of wine.

And we have a winner!

Posted on December 26, 2016 by iowaweaver | 46 Comments

I am not a sampler. But I sampled. And, well, the apocalypse didn’t come. The sky didn’t fall. And it was a good experience. I learned stuff, and I am now ready to weave some Turned Taquete Circles scarves.

I started out with 1450 ypp rayon chenille set at 16 epi. In this photo the bottom sample is woven with 1450 ypp black.

The next photo is the top portion of the same 16 epi sample, but woven with 2000 ypp white. I was playing with the treadling, elongating the middle, anticipating that with the release of tension and wet finishing, that the ovals would shrink to circles.

Then I resleyed to 18 epi. And I wove two samples with the same wefts, 1450 ypp black and 2000 ypp white. Again I elongated the middles of the circles pre-wet finishing.

I don’t have a picture of these post-wet finishing, but, trust me, they didn’t shrink as much as I would have anticipated. They remained pretty much as ovals.

So, then I resleyed to 20 epi and changed my reed to a 10. I was tempted not to do it. I was busy with Christmas prep, and I didn’t have a bunch of time. But. I did it anyway! And lo and behold it was the right thing to do.

So I wove this last sample with the same black and white wefts, this time greatly abbreviating the treadling of the middles of the circles. Keep in mind that the circles became thinner as I resleyed. So the treadling of the middles became shorter and shorter.

This is a photo of the sample post-wet finishing.

And the bottom sample is the winner. Even after wet finishing the shrinkage wasn’t much. I find I prefer the hand of the 1450 ypp rayon weft.

Below you will find the now-revised-yet-again Turned Taquete Cirlces draft.

I optimized the tie-up. Originally, there were nine treadles tied, but two were tied to the same harnesses. That’s two too many for me when I have to crawl around on the floor. So that meant that the treadling sequence had to be revised, which I have done as well.

This is the best yet!

Wif files available upon request.

Circles Draft Scarves: Monochrome

Posted on December 12, 2016 by iowaweaver | 3 Comments

Okay, this is how it’s going to go down. I am warping for a small batch (two) of Turned Taquete Circles Scarves, and using yarn on hand (how else?). I decided to go with rayon chenille because it’s easy. I don’t want to wind a warp that’s 60 epi. Au contraire, I’m starting this at 16 epi and will be sampling from there. This is 1450 ypp chenille, and my normal epi for that is 16. I am prepared to go up to 20, but we’ll see how it goes. I have weft of the same size, and I also have weft that is 2000 ypp, which would probably be recommended for drape.

Shockingly enough, I will sample with both!

This is the draft I’ll be using, including color choices. I decided to go full on monochrome, just black and white. My next warp will have color added. This time, I wanted the most contrast I can get, and besides, I like black and white dots.

In other news, I have a batch of Turned Taquete towels off the loom and ready to finish:

Dishtowels off the loom – group portrait

This warp is my standard dishtowels warp: 10/2 cotton sett at 32 epi. 20 inches wide, and woven as close to 30″ long as possible, not counting hems which are another 1 1/2″ each. I say 10/2 cotton is my standard, but as soon as I use up my 10/2 stock, I think I will be switching to 8/2 cotton.

8/2 cotton seems to be a more standard material for dishtowels these days. Plus it’s somewhat less expensive. Can’t argue with that.

So, here are some close-ups just for fun:

I took these shots with my new iPhone, and I have to say that these photos would stand up to my Nikon SLR any day. Just sayin’…

Woven Shibori Scarves – Well, Finally!

Posted on December 7, 2016 by iowaweaver | Leave a comment

(This blog post was originally published August 2, 2016 on my first blog site, which is no longer in existence.)

I was preparing to list these Woven Shibori scarves in my Etsy shop (see button on the right!). As I sometimes do, I got out my trusty weaving notebook to refresh my memory about the details of these scarves. Turns out I started this project in December of 2015. What??? Could that be true?

I started the planning in December. Somehow, during the holidays, I got the warp wound and on the loom and started weaving. I blogged about the weaving on January 2016. And I blogged about the scarves again on March 12. This picture accompanied that post, so clearly I had been working. Off and on.

photo-20160312085750601

It’s all a blur now. There was so much going on at the time with the house sale and all the work that was going on regarding that. I’m surprised I got this much done. Still, it’s shocking how long it all took.

My notebook contains only the bare bones of the project. Warp: 2000 ypp white rayon chenille sett at 20 epi. Advancing twill threading with a 48 end repeat and a total of 192 warp ends. Plus two floating warps that were really unnecessary. I have a printout of a drawdown. And I have three treadling order printouts for the pattern shots. Five scarves. Three printouts. I must have used two of them twice. Who remembers?

And that’s all she wrote. I thought I would have recorded my dye colors. But no. This one is probably melon and overdyed with deep purple. [Ed. note: turns out I did mention dye colors in the previous post. ;-)]

woven-shibori-2-03-copy

This one is blue, overdyed with indigo. I do remember the indigo dyepot. Vividly.

woven-shibori-indigo-1-04-copy

The next two are indigo on white.

woven-shibori-indigo-3-02-copy woven-shibori-indigo-2-05-copy

And this one is burgundy, overdyed with black.

woven-shibori-1-02-copy

That’s it. That’s all I can remember. Eight months is way too long between weaving projects. I need to get busy, and I do plan for some dishtowels very soon. And there will be notes.

I have the yarn in a bin somewhere or other…