Weaverly
Alice Schlein
Category: Stash Weaving
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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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Here are the latest samples, cut off the loom and wet finished. They’ve tightened up, and the ground cloth which looked somewhat sleazy on the loom is now closer to what I was looking for. From right to left in the above picture, I tried plain weave grounds in fine silk, then several in cotton,…
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I’ve never seen this particular arrangement for brocading, so I think it’s original, but in weaving you never know… Straight threading on 8 shafts. In the weft, the brocade picks are shown in yellow and the plain weave ground picks in black. One complete weft repeat is 16 picks. Above: Screenshot of draft in TempoWeave…
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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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Once upon a time I wove this black & white shawl in cotton and rayon, blocks of alternated basket weave and plain weave. Although the basic plan requires only 8 shafts, I wove it on a 16 shaft loom, so that I had the luxury of extra shafts for plain weave bands at the selvedges.…
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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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The blanket is finally, finally finished and wants to take one more bow. Six strips total, of different widths, and (mostly) all the same length. About 95% handspun wool and other fibers. 8 epi on rigid heddle looms. This project was such a joy to work on. I loved the process of sosrting all 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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The blanket you saw here is being added to, gradually. It needed to be wider, so I’m adding two more strips, one on each side. Although the first four strips were all handspun warp and weft, for these additional strips I’m using Harrisville Shetland wool from my stash as warp, and handspun wool as weft.…
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The first thing I did this morning, after thanking the weather spirits for preserving our electric power, was to take a few ice pictures. Full disclosure: I Photoshopped this first image severely. Couldn’t resist. Back indoors I went to work on the two small warps I wound yesterday for the rigid heddle loom. These will…
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The last few days have been devoted to sewing the final section of blanket to its companion strips. The blanket looks pretty good on the bed, but it’s not quite wide enough yet. I think two more strips, one along each side, will be just about right. The pillow on the right is doublewoven jacquard…
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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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What do you do when your hands aren’t working the way they used to, and you have to give them a rest from throwing shuttles? Hereabouts the solution is to make a deep dive into the stash of handspun wool and warp up a rigid heddle loom. The longish skeins of habdspun are used for…
Weaverly 