Magnifiers for all occasions!

I now own a magnifier that you wear on your head rather like a miner's lamp - a birthday present to help increase the space between the holes in the linen.  My dermatologist uses  similar eyewear to remove extraneous bits from my legs so the idea is good.

This is the latest addition to my collection - there is a lens with a lamp downstairs as well as a separate lens that I use with a daylight lamp upstairs.  This new device will be perfect to carry  for meetings as it is fairly light and portable.

So a case is wanted and the right piece of weaving is maturing in the cupboard - some Turned Taquete that I had produced in 2005 (was it really that long ago?). Also some pale green lawn that I had made in a marbling class way back in the 90's - almost vintage! - good lining.  Well this quick job took me quite a few hours but I am really happy with the result

Nearly done! And a touch of embroidery!

The warp is almost finished! I am very pleased with the cloth and the process. The packing paper in the warp is all gone and just half a round of the warp beam is left - about a metre of weaving. Already there is enough for 6+ chairs. So maybe I haven't quite forgotten how.

I did manage to pick up a needle. My first issue of RAKAM arrived. This is an Italian embroidery magazine with some absolutely exquisite blackwork and pulled thread work in this February issue. The only drawback is that I now need to study the Italian language to get full value from the magazine. However I have had incredible assistance from some very talented Italian embroiderers on stitchin fingers Pulled Threads group. So with their help and the great diagrams I find I am not totally working in the dark.

I was very taken with piece of white work that is unlike any pulled thread I had done previously. It requires every fifth thread in both directions to be removed after an outline of the area is done in overcast stitch - a very scary operation and I was only working on a small sample. However once the threads are all successfully cut counting is much, much easier.

The satin stitch section which I think would have been sufficient on its own

Plus my not very expert dove's eyes - unfortunately I changed tack midway and thought I could substitute Greek cross. The original used dove's eyes but the difference is minimal and if I had done a better job I don't think the change would have been particularly discernible.

I like the effect but will try another sample before deciding whether or not to attempt a larger complete piece similar to that in RAKAM.

Thankyou Susan and Megan for telling me about Live Writer - I have not used it yet but downloaded the program .

A new (old) direction!

There are times when blogger drives me insane!!!!!! I can't add photos where I want them so this entry may require patience to follow. I do apologise. However having waited some time for the images to load I don't want to repeat the exercise - so this is like one of those old books where the plates are in one section and the description elsewhere!.

The first photos are some samples made in 2005 of echo weave in cotton and wool - I had always intended to return and produce longer lengths of fabric. My next warp will definitely be an echo weave using 3 echoes and probably this draft.

However for the moment I want to weave the wool chair fabric for our dining chairs which we inherited from my parents. The last photo is of that warp now ready to go.

Now the entry as I intended to write it ....

Very little embroidery has been accomplished in the last couple of weeks. I do have 3 more biscornu to photograph and add to the blog - I have stuck to my resolution for this first four months - hopefully I will manage to keep up .

The last couple of weeks I have been tidying and making a decision or two in relation to weaving. Do I sell my loom and my stash? Or would I give it one more try? I pulled out all the cones of 2/20 cotton that I foolishly acquired a few weeks before I got sick. It was extremely scary to see it all in one place but the colour selection was absolutely gorgeous perfect for the 4 coloured double, shadow and echo weaves that I wanted to weave! For almost 4 years I have spent very little time at the loom which sported a 2/20 cotton warp of pale aqua. Originally I loved it but after it had given me "the guilts" every time I went into the room for years- that love turned to hate. If I wanted to weave something elseit needed to be woven off. The very simple bronson lace was originally intended for a blouse for me. Now I still don't like the fabric - however my daughter, Suzy, (who designs and sews lovely gear for little girls) thinks she can make herself something from it - otherwise it was to be serviettes. That warp liked me as much as I loved it - the most devilish selvedge threads just kept getting looser and looser ... to say nothing about the ones that snapped regularly! I don't have a decent photo of the yardage - it wasn't very photogenic and I gave up trying.

Now it is on to the chair fabric. Tomorrow I can't wait to check the threading and weave off the 5+metres. Then echo weave - here I come!!!

A new perspective

They say a change is as good as a holiday but, while I can't exactly agree with that statement, I do think a change can give you a new perspective. Recently we rearranged our living area and a woven hanging that was originally over the sideboard near the dining table is now overlooking the lounge chairs. This morning as I drank my coffee I realised just how wonderful the hanging looked from that position. Here it is - the lighting is fairly minimal but the effect is very obvious.

A full sized hanging and the lit section. Quite difficult to believe that this is actually a flat two dimensional piece of fabric mounted on a stretched canvas!

A shadow weave with two shadows using single colour gold weft but three colours,red, white and blue, in its warp. It is also not quite conventional shadow weave in that the spacing between the shadows is not exactly even - a real 'what if' experiment.

Undulations - real and perceived.

Side 1 4CDW Reverse 4CDW

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Ripple Scarf

(Sometimes Blogger drives me crazy - I cannot put these photos in the order I would prefer so I will leave them thus and give up!) Please view the photos in reverse order to make sense of the text.

Neki and I have been talking about texture in weaving. This helped me remember a scarf I wove a few years ago - the aim of the exercise simply was to produce a cloth with texture. Many weavers have done this much better than I have ever managed but I was quite proud of this result. I am not quite sure at this distance in time exactly where I got the idea. I think the original fabric inspiration was a 3/1 , 1/3 striped fabric of Bonnie Inouye’s. Since I used 3/1, 1/3 twills often in my weaving it was an easy design to play with, and even easier to weave. The warp was a fairly loosely spun cream wool, 2/18 or thereabouts, (as you can see this was well documented!) and the weft was a more evenly spun 2/24 wool. The secret to the ripples is in the afterwash treatment. After milling, I hung it from the clothes line (quite wet) and tied a half full milk container of water from the other end and pulled the scarf into shape as it dried. Then of course, no pressing! This scarf is so soft and warm - it is one of the few I still own but I am pleased that I managed to hang onto this one.

My next piece is, in some ways, much more interesting – it has marvellous ups and downs but is a smooth piece of fabric. I do hope you can see these undulations in the photos. The structure is one of my favourites – four coloured double weave. The yarn is 2/20 cotton – the musk pink thread in the warp is unmercerised but the other three yarns are mercerised. I am not sure why or how I managed to acquire that musk pink (and I had a kg) but was over the moon to discover I could mess around with its ugliness as well as I did in this piece. Colour is so intriguing!

From the time this fabric started to appear and I realised what was happening I was smitten . From then I felt that I only wanted to weave cloth with hills and valleys. I have not always been as successful as I would like. Whereas sometimes it occurs without even trying - on other occasions it can take a great deal of effort. It all seems to depend on a mysterious interaction between colours (both hues and values) and structure. I have also achieved the effect using a shadow weave structure and 6 colours. It is just magic that sometimes you can make all these elements sing in tune.

From this one warp and a variety of weft colours I made a series of table runners with coordinating plain weave serviettes . Some of the colours had deeper furrows than others. Not sure I have any photographs of them, unfortunately, as I have given away all those runners and this is the only scrap left.

November TIF

November ends today. Now can anyone tell me where the year has gone? The television weather reader tells me that today is the last day of spring. What kind of airconditioning has she been languishing in for the last month or so? We have had temperatures well above the mid20's most days and even some as high as 34!

My planned TIF embroidery based on jacaranda colours is still mainly a plan - definitely an idea I want to take further but not this year. Nonetheless I refuse to let the month go without something to show for the challenge. Does it matter that I wove this in 2006? I think not.

I wove some coffeecosies and decided that they mustbe lined with handwoven fabric.This particular draft was the result of many hours of sweat and tears. I had decided that the structure would be summer and winter - so easy to make images in that structure! Ha, ha! Yes the letter shapes were easy to put in the tieup but it took me forever to work out exactly which way to get them to sit so that the white lettering read on the green background (I used 2/20 mercerised cotton for warp and both wefts). It would look correct on PCW but then appear in a completely different orientation on the cloth as it came over the front beam.

Then I had to complicate the process further by deciding that I wanted them to read the other way up on the other side of the lining - more tears!

This was definitely an exercise in letter shapes rather than actual words - the words were easy, getting the shapes right was not so easy for the 'bear of little brain'! However I did get there and as well as a series of linings I made a mat with the leftover fabric - just in case noone recognised the puzzle on the cosy!

Network drafting and how it started for me

Sometimes I wonder why I am not weaving more!

Yesterday I photographed a jacket I had woven some time ago. This weave was my very first network drafted twill. Alice Schlein had written a book about Network Drafting and I spent hours reading it and playing with curves on graph paper. (Alice's blog is worth a visit especially if you are interested in weaving but she often has wonderful photos without any connection to weaving). The book changed my weaving life and most of the weaving I have done for the last few years has been based on a variation of a network draft. No need to use anyone else's design now!

The jacket is woven in Australian woollen yarn - white warp with a black weft. The pattern, a Marcy Tilton design, was from vogue patterns. I lined and trimmed it with commercial fabric. It is a much travelled garment, having gone to and from Vancouver for the HGA Convergence fashion parade in 2002.

On the Loom once more!

The loom is singing along again this week. Although I had not done any weaving I was thoroughly sick of looking at the black and white warp . It has been on the loom for almost two years.

To finish quickly (and start a new warp sooner) I decided to use one colour only in the weft - three coloured double weave instead of four - and produce a series of samples. After two inches with an Iris weft it was Marine's turn. What a shock! After weaving to free up the loom I was suddenly interested in what was coming off it! There should be just enough warp for fabric for a vest. It is interesting and is a lovely indigo colour.

Embroidery is not at a complete standstill - I am slowly stitching a second version of the May TIF and enjoying the process no end. However the June TIF is still only an idea.

TIF Challenge for May

What do I call myself and why? While I have been stitching the parterre I have been considering this question and have to admit that I feel a little like Paula from The Beauty of Life and wonder why I have to call myself anything.

However until quite recently I was quite happy to call myself a weaver as that was how I spent all my spare time. While I still think of myself as a weaver I have not done any weaving for 18 months. Hopefully this situation will change in the near future.

My challenge piece for the theme for May is the photograph above. This is a jacket I made from my handwoven twill fabric . (Is that cheating? Never mind!)

I am very fond of this jacket. I find it very versatile and can wear it with a black dress (handwoven cotton huck lace) or with trousers. The dress is fully lined but the jacket has only lined sleeves. Since I am a slow sewer and since weaving is not a particularly fast exercise anything I weave and sew for myself has to have longevity. Who mentioned 'slow cloth'?

This twill draft was derived using a random number table from the internet. There are some lovely 'snowflake' twills available but I wanted something that was uniquely mine. I am always looking for different ways to use my weaving software. The inspiration to use a random number table was borrowed from an article I had read in a scientific journal in 1986. The 'organic' jumper had been knitted with cables that changed direction and size according to the numbers on such a table. I did try this as knitting exercise and produced the front of a jumper . However the cables, which were quite exciting, made the jumper front much too tight so it was necessary to unpick the whole front and start again - this time I settled for stocking stitch- not nearly as interesting but much more predictable.

For the cables I found the random number table in a textbook but now there are some amazing sites on the internet that will generate random numbers any way you like. This draft was a much simpler exercise than knitting cables - to derive the it I used ascending twills for half the numbers and descending for the others. Having got a reasonable section of draft it was then reversed for symettry and woven as drawn in. I wrote an article on this for the Complex Weavers CAD study group and can dig it out if anyone is interested.

Offhand I can't remember exactly what the sett was but I did set the 2/20 cotton closer than I would normally for twills as I wanted a fairly firm fabric. The black dress underneath is also of 2/20 cotton and that would have been set at 30epi.

So I think I still call myself a weaver but I am happy to try anything that interests me in textiles - at the moment that is embroidery.

Time for some weaving

I am slowly stitching French knots with not much to show for my effort. However it has been a lovely time for thinking. These days I keep finding things to do that let my mind wander where it will - just one reason why I don't mind ironing. I definitely have no desire to take in ironing but the amount I have to do for two people who are retired is not enormous - despite the fact I am a fibre snob and won't wear anything that is not 100% natural fibre content and that usually means cotton for our climate. When I had 4 children at home, and before I decided they were old enough to do their own, I always seemed to have a basket full that needed ironing.

Yesterday I thought about weaving and how most things that I have produced have been "slow cloth" - not quite as slow as covering four square inches in knots - but nonetheless quite slow. I found a photograph of some coffee cosies that I wove in 2006.

As well as day dreaming I seem to spend hours playing Sudoku (isn't everyone addicted?)- then when I got totally hooked, can you believe they came up with Killer Sudoku and Kakuro? My excuse is that it is keeping my brain sharp (well, that is the story - sometimes I am not so sure that it happens as it should!) . However I do enjoy the exercise very much.

Returning to the coffee cosies - they are in double weave with cross stitch numbers different on both sides of the cosy (yes, the sudoku is solvable) . I embroidered the numbers before stuffing the small squares on the loom. Although the yarn was 10/2 cotton and twice as thick as I usually use it took quite some time to make these. I enjoyed the process. To cover the seams and hem I needed a lining and I didn't want a commercial fabric. The tray mat in this photo is the fabric I used - a summer and winter weave in 2/20 cotton that wove up fairly quickly once I had designed the draft. If you enlarge the photo the lettering is quite visible. It is all fairly simple weaving actually but lots of fun. Cosies made like this are extremely good insulators and will keep a pot warm for up to an hour or more.

TIF Colours for March

Wow! I am so excited -I love the colour palette that Sharon has chosen for March TIF - it is a favourite of mine.

I went to my fabric stash - this is a stash of my own handwoven fabric, not very large but all off my loom! - and found this double weave fabric that is a wonderful match. The fabric is woven in 2/20 mercerised cotton I have shown the threads used. The warps were Cherry and Grass and the wefts, Marine and Cream, according to the yarn chart. Once again I marvel at how wonderfully colour mixes in woven textiles. When I am designing I get a fair idea of the final colours using the software; however they are rarely the same as in the actual woven fabric. This is, in part, due to discrepancies with colours as they appear on the computer screen and colours in real life and, in part, due to my inability to reproduce the colours in exact RBG numbers. More often than not I am agreeably surprised with how the first few inches turn up.

Now a decision needs to be made - embellish some of this fabric using the theme "concentrating on the fine detail" or make another embroidery in those wonderful grape and green colours.

I have finished my biscornu from last month's challenge and will publish a photo in the next day or so.

Ikat Weaving

This is a piece of handwoven silk fabric that is almost vintage! I was reminded of its existence in a discussion on faux ikat I had recently with Romilly of http://stitchingwithashimmy.com/ Romilly has some interesting observations on using multicoloured thread. Handweavers use spacedyed yarn to produce 'faux ikat' by adjusting the colours in the yarn to fall where required.

However the silk fabric, woven over 23 years ago, is a piece of double ikat that has been stored until I was ready to make a bag.... not sure if I am ready yet, but maybe I should be! I think I was so pleased with the result and realised I would probably never make another - so I certainly didn't want to spoil it. Over the years my attitude to my handwoven fabric has definitely changed. Now I can cut into it with total abandon - there will always be the opportunity to weave more (hopefully) or at least something that will coordinate well with the original.

Ikat can be warp, weft or double. The principle is based on resist dyeing and tieing to produce a design. For warp ikat - sections of the warp alone are wrapped securely before immersing in a dye bath - after drying this is undone and beamed. During the beaming process sections of the warp can be adjusted to 'move' the pattern in one direction or another. Similarly for weft ikat the weft alone is dyed after being carefully skeined for sections to be resisted. Double ikat moves on one step further as it uses resists in both directions. It is easy to see why design can be quite difficult. My woven piece is an extremely simple version of double ikat. Ikat is a craft that has been practised in many cultures - Indonesia, in particular. A good article can be found in Wikipedia .

Further thoughts on colour or why did I freeze?

Thankyou for the encouraging comments on the colour piece.

Jacqui, I am not sure what, if anything I will do with my year's worth of challenges (at this stage I am very keen to keep up and produce 24 - time will tell!). At the moment they are just hanging around my loom room - currently my stitching room - being decorative! As I roam around all the exciting textile blogs I look at journal books and folios that have been made from samplers and think maybe? Yesterday I considered the possibility of a 2009 calendar - maybe just using photos or scans of the embroideries would be more practical. I wonder how many other people not producing quilt blocks have made a decision on how to handle these pieces already.

Now my colour question! As a weaver I have been weaving long enough to very well know that using two or more different values of a particular colour can give a fabric ever so much life. In the last three years I also have become fascinated by the almost unexpected colour interactions that can occur when one uses fine enough threads and different colour combinations with a single draft. So I am surprised that it took me so long to realise that I could combine the threads in equal or unequal proportions to give an effect I might find acceptable. Having said that, I have spent quite some time trying to work out why the palette of DMC skeins on the table did not appeal to me. Is it I just need more practice? Was my right brain completely turned off? Is it because I am so new to design for embroidery? I just don't know! Since my wardrobe is full of shirts and jackets mainly in colours that range from red-violet to blue-green I am totally puzzled by my inability in deciding how I might use that particular combination. It makes me wonder if I was alone in suffering from this dilemma.

When I first began to weave I was not comfortable with colour and would have happily spent my life using only white and cream threads. I worked hard to overcome this attitude - especially after someone made the comment "You need to be born with a colour skill - it is something that is impossible to learn!" Well, that was a real challenge and from that day on I was determined to do what was necessary to disprove that theory. After a three day workshop on colour with Sharon Alderman I read everything I could find on colour theory and spent hours just playing with coloured threads of different shades and size. So by now I am quite comfortable, indeed, very happy, to use colour when I weave. In the next post I will try to load some 4 colour double weave photos.

Four coloured double weave

The first image is of the vest fabric where I used 2 grey wefts - the second uses a pink and blue for the wefts and a different treadling sequence. With the enormous hiatus between weaving the two sections I am not sure how much warp is left . There may be sufficient to try another combination of colour and treadling - I hope so. I guess one could call these "full sized samples" - the only size I seem to produce these days for my weaving. Since I use 2/20 mercerised cotton for most of my weaving I am comfortable with how the yarn will weave up and the only surprise is how the pattern turns out on the loom as opposed to the computer view. My designing is done on PCW and/or Weaveit Pro.

Meanwhile I keep practising my embroidery stitches!