Handwovens for decorating

I have been weaving for years and have made oodles of household textiles such as towels, placemats, and coasters.  They have always added little pops of handwoven texture and color to my home, but I have not concidered them to be a way to decorated my home.  They are all useful items that I have enjoyed making and using.

I ventured into a bit more of the decorating aspect when I wove the curtains for my 2 bedrooms.  It was fun to be able to get just the colors and effect that I was looking for.  Both sets of curtains are woven in a lace weave, so they are able to let light in but still provide privacy.

In 2018 I made a shaft-switching device for one of my looms.  I based on the information from Peter Collingwood's book Beyond the Basics.  The device gave me the ability to place pattern where ever I wanted it in the piece.  It is basicly a way to do loom-controlled pick-up patterns.  The device I made worked and I wove a couple of rugs using and then took it off the loom and went on to other things.  The rugs have been just been rolled up in a corner.

I took a piece of 1x1 board, some velcro, and some broadcloth and hung the rugs.  I made a sleeve from the broadcloth the width of the rug and an inch wider than the velcro.  I hand stitched the sleeve to the rug, and the soft side of the velcro to the sleeve.  I then stapled the hook side of the velcro to the boards, found the studs in the walls, and hung the rugs.

My home has wood laminate floors and cathedral ceilings going up to the loft, so it can echo in here.  Having textiles on the walls will dampen that effect and plus  I think it looks good.  Both of these rugs are wool, and my design.

I hung one over the fireplace.   This spot has needed something there since I moved in.  I had been looking for a print but never found what I wanted.

The second rug, which is really the first shaft-switching rug that I wove, is now hanging in the loft behind the countermarche looms.

I have a chair with a back from an old Singer sewing machine.  I like the chair for sitting at the Lendrum spinning wheel but the original fabric was this hideous, scratchy,  never to disintegrate brown fabric.  I wove upholstery fabric for it.

I based the design of the fabric from Kelly Marshall's book, Custom Woven Interiors.  I used 5/2 perle cotton for the warp, and 16/2 linen for the thin pick, and a plied linen that I made on one of my spinning wheels for the thick.  I had enough fabric to recover the chair and to make a lumbar pillow.  The seat is just a tad deep when spinning, so the pillow is just enough to make it just right.  I ended up cutting some of the colors off to fit the chair, so when I made the pillow, I turned the fabric so that all of the color changes can be seen.  The pillow is reversible, each side is a bit different.  I am pleased with the outcome of this project.  It actually came out as I saw it in my mind's eye.

I also finished crocheting and lining another cross-body bag for myself.  This one is in dark cinnamon,  a pretty color to get me through autumn.  I had a horrible time with the lining.  I put the zipper in wrong, it was inside out and backwards and all kinds of wrong.  I just set it aside for a coup,e of weeks to think about.  When I sat down finally to deal with it, it all went pretty well.

I am still working of some bands and the circle fabric and have a number of knitting projects going.  Everything in its own time:-)

Fun times at WI Sheep & Wool

Yesterday I went to the WI Sheep and Wool festival.  It is held the weekend after Labor Day at Jefferson County Fairgrounds.  I met up with a friend and her husband, also a couple of girls from our monthly weaving group, and this year we managed a Ravelry meet-up.  It was a very good time.

I enjoy the selection of vendors, there are enough weaving vendors to keep it interesting.  Now that I am a little more serious about spinning, knitting, and crocheting there are a lot more vendor stalls that I have to wander through.

I went this year with the intent purpose of getting some cotton sliver.  I had contacted Mielke's Fiber Arts last week to make sure they would have cotton with them.  It felt a little silly to be inquiring about cotton at a wool festival, but that is how it goes.  They had a bag with an assortment of cotton top.  It has natural colored green, cinnamon, and brown top along with white Pima easy to spin cotton.  I am planning to spin this on the Lendrum once I am done with the Haunui NZ Halfbred wool that I am currently spinning.  I could just take the wool off the wheel as I have enough bobbins, but I do not want to start accumulating a bunch of half done spinning projects along with all of the half done weaving projects that I have.

I had also contacted Barb at Weavers Loft and asked her to bring me a roll of texsolv cord.  When I went to dress the 120cm Glimakra Standard I realized I never put all of the treadles on the loom.  I did not have enough texsolv cord on hand, so I had to swipe a bunch of treadle cords from the 110cm Glimakra Standard in order to dress it.  Now I will be able to replace all of those cords and have plenty left for using the various dräll pulleys that I have and want to try.

As we walk out of Barb's booth, she had a yarn tree full of cones of yarn and there were cones of Lunatic Fringe's  new Tints and Tones yarns.  The Burnt Umbar and the Copper are just gorgeous!  All that was on the yarn tree were cones of 5/2, but I wanted the 10/2.  So back into the booth I went and found a kit that had the colors I wanted plus some of the greys as well in the size and quantity that I wanted.  I had not planned on buying yarn, but those colors just grabbed me and would not let go!

Here is this year's haul, not extensive but very satisfying.

The meet-up was great as well.  There were 9 of us and it is always fun to meet people you chat with on-line face to face.  I met a couple of new people, so that was fun.  We were all sitting around a picnic table talking fiber while the husbands that were there chatted under a tree.

I had sleyed the 1,632 ends on the upholstery warp and ended up finding 2 big sleying errors, one on each end.  Last weekend I was so disgusted with myself over it, I just walked way from the loom before I did something stupid.  I had  yarn left from the cross-body bag that I had crocheted, so I made a sling for my Contigo water bottle.   I liked how it came out, so when I went grocery shopping last Sunday, I stopped at Joann Fabrics and bought a skein of Lion Brand 24/7 cotton and made another sling.  The purple goes better with my handwoven backpack.

I have the upholstery fabric weaving but I was getting some very bad sheds on a few of the treadles and there were a lot of skipped threads.  There was much to much unweaving going on so I bit the bullet and climbed back into the loom and redid all of the tie ups.  Yep, all 100 cords were taken off.  I leveled the lamms, and just carefully tied everything back up.  All of that work was so worth it.  I have beautiful, clear sheds with a flat floor to them.  Weaving is a dream now, it is going so much smoother.

I tried a number of different yarns for the weft and I settled on using a couple of cones of linen that I bought way back when I went to Midwest Weaver's in 2005.  I should get the yarn balance out and check the weight of the yarn because the cones are not marked.  I plied them on the Ashford E3 and am using the plied yarn as the thick pick and a natural 16/2 linen as the thin pick.  I really like how this is weaving.  When I am sitting at the loom it is hard to see the block changes, but when I step away, the changes can be seen.  I believe that it will be a pretty slick looking fabric when it is finished.

So far I have been able to stick with trying to get some projects done.  The upholstery fabric is weaving, the first half of the Haunui braid is almost spun, and the multi-directional scarf is close to being finished.  It feels good seeing progress on these projects.

...and on to September

I am amazed that the end of August is here already.  This summer just flew by for me.  Looking back on this month, I really did not finish too many projects.  It seems I did more sewing than anything.  Those sewing projects were not even things that I had intended to do or had previously started and did not finish.

I am hoping that September will be more productive.  I would like to finish up a lot of projects that have been lingering around for too long and to learn some new spinning techniques.

I am going to be participating in the Fall Weave-along on Ravelry's Warped Weaver's.   I have 4 projects that have been started but not finished for too long.

Clockwise starting in the top left is a pick-up band on the mini Wave,  a warp-faced band on the GBL, a leash on the core-braiding stand,  and an oblique braid on the takadai.  It is time to give them all some attention.

I am also participating in a month-long spin-along on Allons-Y-Fiber Art also on Ravelry.  Its a spin-along for New Zealand half-bred Haunui fiber.  This is an absolute gorgeous fiber to spin.  I am spinning it on the Lendrum and am planning to do a 4-ply cable.  This is not something that I have done before - new stuff, should be fun:-)

It is a beautiful, autumn colored braid.  Bethanne's colors are always so gorgeous.

Still on spinning, I am going to pick up some cotton sliver at WI Sheep and Wool festival next weekend.  I am enjoying spinning a lot, but I just do not care to weave with wool,  so I am going to give cotton a try.  I received Joan Ruane's Beginning Cotton Spinning on a Wheel and it looks doable.  I am also receiving a quill head for the Lendrum.  I am thinking that will work well with cotton.  The shorter fiber length needs the fast, high twist that I should get from the quill head.  More fun times:-)

I also want to weave off the pieces that are on the Glimåkra Standards.

The top piece will be upholstery fabric to recover my spinning chair and the bottom piece is just really fun polka-dots.   I have not quite decided what I am going to do with that fabric.  It makes me smile everytime I see it, so I would like to do something cool with it.

There are also what seems like a zillion crochet and knitting pieces started.  The nice thing about those is they are portable,  so they come to work with me and I work on them over my lunch period.

So, it should be interesting to see what actually gets done in September.

The strange appeal of sewing

As a young girl and a younger woman, I never enjoyed sewing.  I did not even like sewing a button back on.  My mom sewed my entire life, she took tailoring classes and was a marvel on her Singer 15-91 that she purchased brand new.  She sewed most of hers and my clothes as I was growing up.  She tried with an amazing amount of patience to teach me good sewing skills, but it just never took.

She learned to sew on my grandma's treadle Singer machine.  I remember that machine in grandma's dining room covered with growing plants.  My mom just rolled her eyes in disbelief when I dragged a Singer 15-88 treadle home.  She told me that the minute she had enough money to buy an electric machine, she bought her Singer.  She cannot believe that I actually bought a treadle machine and actually use it.  Actually she is quite shocked that I ended up collecting quite a few vintage Singers and that I use them.

I have been giving some thought to thinning the herd of machines.  I am amazed at how hard it is to pick one or two or three to sell.  They all have something that interests me and I have been lucky enough to find all of them in really nice condition.  But really, do I need 6 straight stitch Singers?

This past week I cleaned and oiled the 401a.  This is my original sewing machine.  Years ago when I first started to weave, I had bought a new, plastic machine with built in zz but it was a noisy, wimpy machine that did not like handwoven fabrics.  I sold it and found the Singer 401a as a Craigslist find.

It is in a blonde Copenhagen cabinet with the bench and all of the attachments.  I have picked up a couple of top hat cams, a walking foot, and a 1/4" seam foot for it.  Other than new oil and lube, that is about all it has cost me and it always sews like a dream.  It should be and it was plenty of machine for me, doing everything that I asked it to.  I hadn't sewed on it in ages, and after a little oil it was just humming along.  It should be enough, but today when I decided I needed another fabric box I promptly put the 401a away and used the treadle.  I quite like the cabinet that the 401a is in for my steam press, it fits nice on it and it keeps it in the sewing (was a dining room) room and handy to the cutting table.

The 15-88 is pretty much always out and ready to go so for months now, if I need or want to sew something, there it is just ready to treadle that pretty straight stitch.

Now that leads to a strange phenomenon for me - I want to sew!  How the heck has that happened?  I have found it to be so satisfying to have a need for a pouch or a box or whatever, and I just sit down and sew it.

In the last month alone, I have made a few new coasters for my house, a set of orange coasters for a friend, and a set of blue ones for my mom.  Those silly little coasters are so much fun to make, amazing - fun with a sewing machine.  It is such a shocking concept for me.

I have been spending time on my front porch knitting and crocheting this summer.  My porch is up on the 2nd floor and I have on occasion gave a pull to the skein of yarn and the blasted thing would end up rolling under the railing and falling downstairs.  Then I have to go down, go outside, throw the yarn back up to the porch, and untangle it from the railing.  So last weekend, I made a yarn box to stop that nonsense ....and what did I do, I sewed it!

I had the fabric and interfacing in my stash, so some time at the treadle sewing machine and tada, a yarn box.  Last night I started spinning a new braid of fiber.  I have been keeping the fiber on the floor next to me in a plastic shoe box and today, I decided that just will not do.  Again, the magic of sewing strikes again:-)

Here is my custom made fiber box, perfect for holding the nests of fiber next to the wheel.  It is so darn cool to be able to decide to make something like this and to do it and enjoy doing it.  Here is a nicer shot of both fabric boxes:

Fun, easy, useful, and good looking.  What more can one want?

I am still no closer to deciding which machines should go.  I do want to keep either the 221 or the 301 for sure.  I plan to join a quilting guild when I retire next year and either of those machines will be sweet travel machines.  The 401a will stay too.  I was thinking of letting the treadle go, but that would be just silly concidering everytime I go to sew something lately, that is the machine that I use.  Oh well, I don't have to decide now so I will just enjoy my bounty:-)

Time for a little catch up...

I have not been keeping up with writing here, so I am going to try to rectify that.  I am still actively playing with thread and yarns.  I will have to admit that when it comes to projects, sometimes I have the attention span of a gnat.

I have not touched my big looms in weeks.  I go up to the loft for something and I give them a caress as I walk by but I have not been throwing shuttles.  Actually the 120cm Glimakra Standard has been nekked since I cut the first drawloom warp off of it, but I will come back to that.

I have been working on small looms, I have a lovely band on the Gilmore mini wave on complementary warp pickup that has been a joy to weave.  The grand plan is for that band to be straps on a bag made with drawloom fabric.

I also participated in Tour de Fleece 2019.  I finished spinning up a braid of Haunui NZ Halfbred/silk, plied it and started another braid of Cheviot.   I primarily buy my fiber from an indy dyer that I found on Ravelry.   Allons-y-fiber arts has such spectacular colored braids and the fiber prep is just top-notch.  It just flows out of my fingers as I spin, there are not mats or neps, just beautifully prepared and dyed fiber.  Here is what is on the Lendrum right now:  the color called Autumn on Cheviot

I am spinning it as a 3-ply and hoping that it doesn't get all muddy because of my inexperience in spinning.  I am hoping to get a pair of shorty socks and a pair of fingerless gloves from it.

A few weeks ago I had gone antiquing with a friend and we came across a bucket full of Paternayan tapestry yarn,  so I grabbed quite a few skeins and pulled out the Hokett tapestry loom.   I am experimenting with Wedge-weave which really caught my eye when I went to Convergence a number of years ago.  The plans are for a series of small tapestries to hang on the wall outside of the staircase going up to the loft.  It is a large, plain looking space and the tapestries would give it some interest.  These are the yarns that are being used:

There is a good selection to play with and it weaves fairly quickly being that it is on the little Hokett loom.

I have taken up hand knitting and crocheting as well.  I have done some knitting with my handspun yarns and it is a kick using them.  I do not care all that much to weave with wool, so knitting it is.  I am still working out what type of needles I am most comfortable using.  There is a sweater on circlular needles, a pair of socks on 6" dpn's, a vest on 9.75" dpn's using a knitting belt, and a pair of mittens on dpn's as well.  All of the needles are wood or bamboo, I know I prefer that over aluminum or any metals.

I am also crocheting a cross-body bag.  I was looking at a website that sells Omega Sinfonia cotton yarns and a couple of bag patterns caught my eye.  It is been years since I crocheted, so long I had to Google a couple of stitches😃

The sewing machines have not been being neglected either.  I found a fast & fun mug rug pattern that comes out great.  I made my mom a new set the other day:

All from fabrics in the stash which is always satisfying to do.

I know I will get back to the big looms on of these days, but I am having so much fun with all of the little projects in the living room:-)

Still spinning like crazy😁

I joined a Tour de Fleece team that runs in conjunction with the Tour de France in July and spun everyday of it.  I am amazed at how enjoyable it was.  My plan was always to start spinning once I retire.  I bought my Lendrum Original DT way back in 2005 and just goofed around on it, folded it up and tucked it in its bag and there it as sat.  Over the years I have given thought to selling it but I never did.  Now I am glad I didn't.   Now the plans are to learn to spin decent sock yarn to use on the Canadian Auto Knitter csm.

I looked through my plastic tote of fiber and found more than I thought I had - no surprise there!  LOL  I had a number of balls of unmeasured blends of wool, alpaca, angora, and llama that I had bought years ago, probably 2005 as well, to locker hook some rugs which I never did.  I pulled it all out for the Tour de Fleece and spun it up.

The plan is to use the yarn I spun to weave a throw.  I will probably have to use something along with it, either for warp or weft.  Since both of the floor looms are occupied I don't have to worry about it for now.  

As in the picture, I also got the spindles out as well.  I always like messing around with spindles so I am spinning up some silk hankies that I had gotten to knit some scarves.  I did try knitting one but it was not fun where the spindles are, so that will be the way those go.  I also won a really pretty black walnut spindle from the Tour team, so it is dressed in silk too:-)

Last night I pulled out a big bag out white fiber that I think is corriedale and a bag of pine green nylon.  I am using 100 grams of the corriedale and blend it with the nylon and learn how to spin a cabled3-ply sock yarn.  I split the corriedale into 3 balls and started blending each with the nylon and made rolags.  That process improved as I went, I do not think that the first bobbin is spun as fine as I would have liked so plying those 2 bobbins will be interesting.

...I was right, those 2 bobbins did not ply the same.  Fortunately I wound the nicer spun singles into a center-pull ball and then plied both together.  I ended up plying alot of the second bobbin to it's self but it worked fine.  Just one more bobbin of singles to spin and I will ply it all together and see what I end up with.

My brother gifted me with a pretty little saxony spinning wheel.  The best we know is that it came out of a 3-story Victorian house that was moved from West Allis to Milwaukee  by horses in the 1920's.   I have no idea when the wheel was made and it is not signed but it is a pretty little thing.

It cleaned up well but it is missing the flyer and bobbin.  I ordered a flyer off of EBay and it sort of fits.  It is not quite right.  I can get everything to spin, but I cannot get the bobbin to take up the yarn.  It is a double drive wheel and I am not sure if the whorl is not the right size to get everything to work together.  I have set it aside for now, eventually I will play some more and see if I can get it to spin.

The Ups and Down of Playing with Fiber

The last 10 days or so have been just a rollercoaster of success and fails while playing with yarn and fiber.

First of all, I decided to try pickup on the mini Wave.  I took a pattern from Around the Baltic Sea, Notebook #4, Lithuania 2 by Hilegund Hergenhan.  I have a number of her bandweaving pattern books and they are a delight.  I can so appreciated all of the time and effort she put into these publications and find them to be a real treasure trove of Baltic band designs.

So I broke out my graph paper and colored pencils and modified one of the designs.  I found the Singer 301 cardtable a great place to sit and design:-)

I wound the warp and dressed the loom and tried to weave.  There were little warning bells🔔 going off in the back of my mind as I threaded, but I ignored it.  I start to weave and realize that I did not wind enough background threads - grrrrr!  Another warp trashed.  I recalculated how many ends were needed, wound, dressed, and started weaving.  Great, the pattern threads are not showing up as I would like.  In disgust, I have set the loom aside.  I need to decide to continue weaving as pickup, or just weave it off as plain weave.

Next problem, I pulled some 2/9 wools in blues that I have had for years to weave a wool pad for my ironing board.  I have read in various places how a wool pad really helps when steam pressing and people buy wool blankets at thrift stores and cut to fit.  I figured I have wool, so weave one.

This was an opportunity to use the triangle pulleys on the 110cm Glimakra.   I have been wanting to play with them and I have been so enamored with twills lately that it was a perfect time to weave a 3-shaft twill.  It went really well, weaving with the loom set up as counterbalance was great!  Good sheds and easy treadling. The shaft bars looked cattywampus, but everything went well.

 Well it went well until I cut the fabric from the loom and laid it out on my ironing board.  Duh!  I forgot to include loom waste when I wound the warp.  What is that all about?  I have been weaving over 15 years and I forget loom waste!?!  Now I will have to piece it after full it -geez!

Yep, that fabric is too short.

Now for the straw that almost broke my back.  I am participating in Tour de Fleece with team Warped Weaver's and years ago I wove spinning lap towel.  I decided to

weave one as a prize for our team.  Again, wound the warp, wove the towel, sewed it all up and it is some of the worst weaving I have done in years. I cannot believe how bad it looks.  Terrible selvages, obvious tension issues, it looks like a 3 year old wove it. So, back to winding, dressing, and weaving - again!  When I put myself on a yarn moratorium it was not my plan to trash so many warps as a way of reducing my stash.

Now, the actual spinning is going great!  I am spinning a number of bumps of mixed fibers.  All of the balls are a mix of wool, angora, alpaca,  and llama in natural colors that I had bought years ago to try lockerhooking but never did that.  I have been using the bumps to teach myself to spin.

I spun up 2 bumps that were a combo of greys and browns and finished plying them this morning.  I have a full jumbo bobbin of 2-ply that I have to skein.

Up to this point, I had only plied handspun a couple of times before.  Last night when I started to ply, I was just using the Lendrum lazy kate and did not care for how it was going just having one yarn guide.  I left the bobbins on the kate and threaded each single through a yarn guide on my winding stand and it really worked well for me.

It looks like I am doing better making yarn than using yarn😃