Weaverly
Alice Schlein
Category: Books
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In my experiments with drafts for brocading, I wanted to explore new possibilities for combinations of ground and brocade. In the following picture, I have tried to force the twill lines to run in opposition to each other. In the lower blue lozenge, I used a single end of blue 8/2 cotton as the brocading…
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Anyone who loves cloth will be stirred by the following: She is Dar Młodzieży, the first Polish-built, ocean-going sailing vessel to circumnavigate the globe (1987–88). All those billowing yards of cloth in various pale neutrals. Yes, that’s how I spent most of my Fourth, in front of the TV, watching the Tall Ships in NY…
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It’s not my usual way of working. I’m accustomed to days of planning before starting a project, sometimes too much planning. This time I’m just diving in, letting the warp tell me where to go as it unwinds. After a section is woven and wrapped on the cloth beam, it’s out of my line of…
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On the new red warp, a continued exploration of diagonal brocading. But boredom set in and I needed to do rectangles for a change. I worked out a draft with a plain weave ground and ties that will allow rectangular brocading shapes. Here are the first samples. As usual, I’m expecting everything to tighten up…
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On my interim warp I’ve taken some time to give my head a rest and weave samples of inlay. This patterning technique is hand-manipulated and slow. Inlay is sometimes referred to as brocading. I use the terms interchangeably here. Small areas of supplementary weft that do not extend to the selvedges are woven on a…
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There’s some studio reorganization going on around here, and I had to pause the basket/plainweave experiments. In the interim, I made three small “garbage warps” of mixed odds and ends, as a sort of palette cleanser. This was a good opportunity to polish up my warping skills, which have gotten a bit sloppy lately. First…
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First of all, don’t let the different pinks confuse you. The problem is that all the snapshots were taken under different lighting conditions. For the record, the warp yarn is Lofty Fiber’s 8/2 cotton, Desert Sand, and the weft 8/2 cotton, Soft Pink. The most accurate color is probably the second photo. Here’s the final…
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Recently I had the good fortune to attend a gathering of fiber enthusiasts to test various carding machines. We had great fun blending wool, silk and other animal fibers, cellulosic fibers such as linen, tencel and bamboo, and also some sparkly synthetic glitz. After I brought home my booty, I sorted the various batts into…
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The current warp: a two-block pattern in jin weave (aka turned taqueté, aka warp-faced compound tabby). I always enjoy weaving this structure, for many reasons. Warping is quick and easy. Two contrasting yarns are alternated in the warp (contrasting colors, or matte vs. shiny, or smooth vs. textured, or thick/vs. thin, or?? And perhaps the…
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Sometimes it’s the small things that get us through some tough spots. A sudden change in the weather, an unexpected sunbreak, a drive through the neighborhood, and a burst of luscious bright green moss in the otherwise brown woods. This one was a stunner. If I had seen it at another time of day, another…
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Everything looks like rectangles today. The screen of my TempoTreadle, the the number stickers on my Louet Jane, the windows with their weather drama. The little fluffy ends of the heddles add a contrasting illusion of grass on the bottom of the picture, as if this were a prairie scene. The sleet is blowing horizontally…
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It’s not as cold as in other parts of the country, just enough to get my attention. I’m in between warps, but to keep my circulation going, I played around with some 8-shaft drafts on the computer this morning. This one I entitled freezing.wif. It actually looks like icicles to me. There are a lot…
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I’ve been accumulating a collection of 3-yard strips woven on a rigid heddle loom. The yarns are all handspun wool and wool blends, plied, from a stash that goes back over 50 years. Spinners will recognize that wool yarns have widely differing takeup and shrinkage properties depending on breed of the sheep, amount of twist,…
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There are many versions of the children’s folk song “Here we go loopty loop”–you may have learned “looby loo” or other variations — but I especially like the last line of the refrain, which goes “all on a Saturday night.” On a recent Saturday Night I loopty looped this 8″ wide warp as a stashbusting…
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It’s been 20 years since the publication of The Woven Pixel: Designing for Jacquard And Dobby Looms Using Photoshop® (see sidebar). Bhakti Ziek and I, at opposite sides of the country, thought it was important to document our individual explorations in digital weaving and make our joint efforts available to the weaving community. We worked…
Weaverly 