STRUCTURE Monk’s belt, plain weave, and honeycomb. EQUIPMENT 4-shaft loom, 21" weaving width; 9- or 12-dent reed; 2–3 shuttles; 3 bobbins. YARNS Warp: 8/2 cotton (3,360 yd/lb; Georgia Yarn Company), Natural, 2,024 yd. Weft: 8/2 cotton, Natural, 594 yd. 8/2 cotton (3,360 yd/lb; Valley Yarns), #6394 Royal Lilac, 625 yd; #2574 Heather, 510 yd. 8/2 cotton (3,360 yd/lb; Yarn Barn of Kansas), #04 Plum Green, 292 yd. 6/2 cotton (2,520 yd/lb; Yarn Barn of Kansas), Sage, 298 yd; Royal, 110 yd. 6/2 cotton (2,520 yd/lb; Georgia Yarn Company), Natural, 91 yd. 10/2 cotton (4,200 yd/lb; Georgia Yarn Company), Carolina Blue, 48 yd. WARP LENGTH 368 ends 5½ yd long (includes floating selvedges; allows 16" for take-up, 27" for loom waste). SETTS Warp: 18 epi (2/dent in a 9-dent reed or…
For many families, summer is a time for family reunions—and my family is no exception. At our reunions, you’ll find fried chicken, cold watermelon, warm conversations, and pie, pie, pie. We look forward to meeting the newest members of the family, and we make sure to spend extra time with the oldest. These events also provide an opportunity to appreciate the similarities that come from our shared DNA. I’m amazed at how much we look alike and even how similar our laughs all sound. THE DNA OF WEAVING As a weaver, I also can’t help comparing the similarities and differences in families of fabrics. For example, I like to think about the patterns and structures that use color-and-weave effects, in which light and dark threads alternate in both warp and…
Summer & Winter Kitchen Towels These towels were inspired by a project I designed for Handwoven in 2013. For that project, a set of kitchen towels in polychrome summer and winter, my design process centered on exploring the possibilities of color interaction with multiple colors in both the warp and weft . For this set of towels, however, I focused on the combination of structure and fiber, using only two colors, to create the desired cloth. Summer and winter is a traditional weave known for its use in Early American two-color coverlets, predominantly dark on one side and light on the other with the plain-weave ground cloth woven in a finer thread than the pattern thread. For a more balanced effect between the light and dark colors, I used the…
STRUCTURE Krokbragd. EQUIPMENT 3-shaft loom, 12" weaving width; 12-dent or 6-dent reed; 2 or more shuttles; 3 or more bobbins. YARNS Warp: 8/4 cotton carpet warp (1,600 yd/lb; Maysville), #2 Black, 252 yd (see “Tips for Weaving Better Krokbragd” for other suitable warp yarns). Weft: 8/4 cotton carpet warp, #2 Black, 2 yd. For weft, Annette also used wool stash yarns in the following colors: charcoal, 110 yd; deep blue, 270 yd; light blue, 50 yd; cream, 77 yd; gold, 55 yd; maroon, 23 yd; dark burgundy, 24 yd; rose, 34 yd. A worsted-weight wool or wool/nylon blend at 800–1,000 yd/lb, such as Valley Yarns Collingwood Rug Wool (80% wool/20% nylon; 989 yd/17.6 oz; WEBS), would make a good substitution. OTHER SUPPLIES Plywood disk, 10" diameter; wire ring, 10" diameter;…
STRUCTURE Overshot and plain weave. EQUIPMENT 4-shaft loom, 20" weaving width; 10-dent reed; 2–5 shuttles; 5–7 bobbins; doublebobbin shuttle (optional but recommended). YARNS Warp: 10/2 Ring Spun, Combed Georgia cotton (unmercerized cotton; 4,200 yd/lb; Georgia Yarn Company), Warm Navy, 90 yd; Lt. Cornflower, 1,030 yd; Carolina Blue, 875 yd. Weft: 10/2 Ring Spun, Combed Georgia cotton, Warm Navy, 74 yd; Lt. Cornflower, 749 yd; Carolina Blue, 576 yd; Persimmon, 288 yd; Old Brick, 423 yd. WARP LENGTH 399 ends 5 yd long (allows 13" for take-up and 41" for loom waste). SETTS Warp: 20 epi (2/dent in a 10-dent reed). Weft: 20 ppi (plain weave); 29 ppi (overshot, combined tabby and pattern). DIMENSIONS Width in the reed: 20". Woven length: (measured under tension on the loom) about 126". Finished size:…
The clasped-warp technique allows you to change colors midway in a warp in either a random or purposeful design. This unique method is most often used along with direct warping on a rigid-heddle loom. In fact, I first saw the idea in an advertisement for a rigid-heddle loom. I wove several pieces using the technique, experimenting with color and design ideas, and then wrote an article about clasped warp for Easy Weaving with Little Looms (Summer 2020). I experimented with clasped warps on a multi-shaft loom, and I enjoy the way pattern appears and disappears when you use a weft yarn that matches one of the warp yarns. I have now used the direct-warping technique for four-shaft shawls and scarves using a variety of yarns. Clasped-warp weaving gives me the…
STRUCTURE Doubleweave. EQUIPMENT 8-shaft loom, 16" weaving width; 10-dent reed; 2 shuttles; 5 bobbins. YARNS Warp: 17/2 Lambswool (100% wool; 4,200 yd/lb [8,500 m/kg]; Uppingham Yarns or colourmart.com), #343 Feather, 717 yd; #425 Coral, 714 yd. Weft: 17/2 Lambswool, #343 Feather, 508 yd; #425 Coral, #423 Bubblegum, #424 Pink Haze, and #308 Turmeric, 106 yd each. Note: The yarn used for warp and weft is spun by Z. Hinchliffe & Sons in the United Kingdom (see Resources). OTHER SUPPLIES Eucalan or similar no-rinse wool wash; two 12" × 20" cushion inserts; two 9"–10" zippers; cushion back fabric, ⅔ yd. WARP LENGTH 477 ends 3 yd long (allows 5" for take-up, 20" for loom waste, 35" for sampling or yardage for a third cushion). SETTS Warp: 30 epi (3/dent in a…
STRUCTURE Twill. EQUIPMENT 4-shaft loom, 21" weaving width; 12-dent reed; 1 shuttle; 2 bobbins. YARNS Warp: 18/3 linen (2,961 yd/lb; Gist Yarn), Ice, 1,580 yd; Mint, 860 yd. Weft: 18/3 linen, Ice and Mint, 906 yd each. WARP LENGTH 488 ends 5 yd long (includes 2 floating selvedges; allows 12" for take-up and 36" for loom waste). SETTS Warp: 24 epi (2/dent in a 12-dent reed). Weft: 21–22 ppi. DIMENSIONS Width in the reed: 205/12" Woven length: (measured under tension on the loom) 132", about 33" per towel. Finished size: (after wet-finishing and hemming) four towels 18½" × 28½". When my children were young, our family took a long road trip through southern Utah. My husband, who was driving, needed a nap, and the kids needed a break from the…
STRUCTURE Turned taqueté with color-and-weave. EQUIPMENT 8-shaft loom, 23" weaving width; 10-dent reed; 1 or more shuttles; 6 bobbins; temple (optional). YARNS Warp: 10/2 unmercerized cotton (100% cotton; 4,200 yd/lb; Georgia Yarn Company), Warm Navy, 1,830 yd; Orange, 430 yd; Rose and Hyacinth Violet, 420 yd each; Turquoise, 210 yd. Weft: 10/2 unmercerized cotton, Warm Navy, 833 yd; Hyacinth Violet, 725 yd; Rose, 337 yd; Turquoise, 147 yd; Orange, 139 yd; Dahlonega Gold, 122 yd. WARP LENGTH 662 ends 5 yd long (includes floating selvedges; allows 13" for take-up, 37" for loom waste; add 1 yd of warp length for each additional towel). SETTS Warp: 30 epi (3/dent in a 10-dent reed). Weft: 26 ppi. DIMENSIONS Width in the reed: 22 2/10". Woven length: (measured under tension on the loom)…
STRUCTURE Turned Atwater-Bronson. EQUIPMENT 8-shaft loom, 22" weaving width; 12-dent reed; 1 shuttle; 7 bobbins. YARNS Warp: 10/2 pearl cotton (4,200 yd/lb; UKI), #142 Purple Passion, 132 yd; #27 Purple, 126 yd; #5 Loden, 222 yd; #26 Dark Green, 216 yd; #116 Black, 213 yd; #17 Wine, #24 Garnet, #99 Dark Sierra, #52 Chestnut, #15 Navy, and #120 Deep Purple, 108 yd each. Note: #24 Garnet and #52 Chestnut are discontinued. Try #32 Lipstick and #25 Medium Brown as substitutes. Weft: 10/2 pearl cotton, #132 Red Hot, #114 Indies Orange, #67 Light Orange, #63 Yale Blue, #109 Bermuda, and #1 Light Blue, 96 yd each; #12 Red, #11 Tangerine, #111 Dark Gold, #125 Pacific Blue, #18 Copen, and #101 Baby Blue, 49 yd each; #10 Gold and #117 Stone, 48…
STRUCTURE Overshot. EQUIPMENT 4-shaft loom, 60" weaving width; 8-dent reed; 2–3 shuttles; 5 bobbins. YARNS Warp: 8/2 cotton (3,360 yd/lb; Georgia Yarn Company), Natural, 3,330 yd. 8/2 cotton (3,360 yd/lb; Valley Yarns; WEBS), #2574 Heather, 878 yd. 8/2 cotton A (3,360 yd/lb; UKI; Yarn Barn of Kansas), #04 Plum Green, 81 yd. Weft: 10/2 cotton (4,200 yd/lb; Georgia Yarn Company), Natural, 1,925 yd; Carolina Blue, 610 yd; Olive, 26 yd. 3/2 cotton (1,260 yd/lb; Valley Yarns; WEBS), #2314 Royal, 2,315 yd; #5934 Elm Green, 8 yd; #3800 Currant, 114 yd. WARP LENGTH 953 ends 4. yd long (includes floating selvedges; allows 14" for take-up, 32" for loom waste). SETTS Warp: 16 epi (2/dent in an 8-dent reed). Weft: 17 ppi in hems; 22 ppi in pattern (11 ppi tabby and…
Many weavers were deeply sorry to hear about the closing of Jaggerspun—the source of wonderful yarns including their Superfine Merino, Maine Line worsted wool, and, perhaps saddest of all, their Zephyr wool/silk blend. Well, I’m here to bring you good tidings! I believe that we now have a replacement for Zephyr: It’s a brand new yarn called Zephira, from Revolution Fibers. For this Yarn Lab, I put the two yarns to the test, weaving up nine samples in deflected doubleweave. One set of three uses Zephyr, and two additional sets of three use Zephira in the same patterns—but in different colors, to better show how it weaves up. I designed the samples using a name draft to honor my grandfather, George Relyea. (I outline how I did that on my…
Once upon a time (in the early 1990s) I researched weaving with linen. After reading several articles with instructions to keep the warp wet throughout the weaving process and soaking (!) bobbins of weft, I decided it was too messy and too hard to weave with linen. No linen for me! Then in 2002, I was working my way through the Handweavers Guild of America Certificate of Excellence program and it required that the lace samples be woven with linen yarn. I fretted, procrastinated, and yes, whined, until I bought some wet-spun line linen and went for it. Imagine my delight in discovering the ease of weaving with linen yarn! Yes, there are some considerations to be made, but it isn’t hard. Through experimentation and practice, I’ve learned many things…
STRUCTURE Twill and basketweave. EQUIPMENT 4-shaft loom, 13" weaving width; 8-dent reed; 1–3 shuttles; 3 bobbins. YARNS Warp: 2-ply hemp yarn (2,450 yd/lb; Bluegrass Mills; The Woolery), Queen Anne Lace, 114 yd; Tulip, 213 yd; Onyx, 294 yd; Grey, 186 yd. Weft: 2-ply hemp yarn, Queen Anne Lace, 560 yd; Tulip, 38 yd; Onyx, 21 yd. OTHER SUPPLIES Color-catching laundry sheet; Synthrapol (optional). WARP LENGTH 269 ends 3 yd long (includes floating selvedges; allows 4" for take-up, 28½" for loom waste; loom waste includes fringe). SETTS Warp: 21⅓ epi (2-3-3 per dent in an 8-dent reed). Weft: 21 ppi. DIMENSIONS Width in the reed: 12⅞". Woven length: (measured under tension on the loom) 75½". Finished size: (after wet-finishing) 11" × 71" with 1¾" fringe at each end. Hemp yarn is…
WEAVERS ARE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR WAYS to weave more than one pattern on the same warp. Different treadling orders can produce some pattern variation—in twills, overshot, and block weaves, for example. A technique called “blended drafting,” however, can produce different weave structures as well as very different patterns—in the same cloth. In a blended draft, two different threading drafts are integrated so that the blended draft can produce either of the two original interlacements: huck lace and overshot in Diane Pigg’s towels, for example (see pages 34–36). To blend two drafts, adjust them as necessary so that they each have the same total number of ends. To be woven on the same warp, they need to have the same general sett requirements (two different twills, two different overshots, an overshot…
My wife and I love to travel to new and exciting places. She reminds me that it’s good to go everywhere once but to go to great places twice. I enjoy listening to people tell stories of where they have been and, in my mind, join them vicariously through their tales. For many years, the responsibilities of work and family only allowed me to travel within a few hours’ drive from where I lived. Even so, I always kept my eyes and ears sharp, looking for inspiring things close to home to spark an idea for a new spinning or weaving project. As a lover of history and historical places, I am fortunate to live close to some large cities and small towns that give ample opportunities for inspiration—cities such…
STRUCTURE Rep weave. EQUIPMENT 2-shaft sturdy loom, 30" weaving width (see “Tips to Ease Rep Weaving”); 6-dent reed; 1 rag shuttle; 1 boat shuttle. YARNS Warp: 8/4 carpet warp (100% cotton; 1,600 yd/lb; Maysville), #10 Gold, 176 yd; #33 Olive, 234 yd; #54 Loden Green, 351 yd; #59 Army Green, 293 yd; #60 Dark Gray, 819 yd; #62B Coffee, 585 yd; #84 Velvet, 702 yd; #3 Colonial Blue, #8 Dark Brown, and #40 Bronze Gold, 117 yd each. Weft: Thick: 8/16 Heavy Cotton (400 yd/lb; Yarn Barn of Kansas), #83 Black, 324 yd (used tripled on shuttle). Thin: 10/2 pearl cotton (4,200 yd/lb; UKI), #116 Black, 160 yd. OTHER SUPPLIES Fray Check. WARP LENGTH 1,080 ends 3¼ yd long (allows 27" for take-up, 39" for loom waste). SETTS Warp: 36…
STRUCTURE 3-tie weave (Bergmanesque). EQUIPMENT 8-shaft loom, 37" weaving width; 12-dent reed; 2 shuttles. YARNS Warp: Linen 14 (100% linen; 7,000 yd/lb; Silk City Yarns), #14 Teal, 5,190 yd. Weft: Linen 14, #14 Teal, 4,224 yd. Shetland 2-ply (100% wool; 1,800 yd/lb; Harrisville), Goldenrod, 4,224 yd. OTHER SUPPLIES Wool wash; sewing pattern AW006, Cardigan Coat from All Well; notions and sewing supplies as required by pattern; 45"-wide lining fabric, 2½ yd. WARP LENGTH 865 ends 6 yd long (includes floating selvedges; allows 16" for take-up, 17" for sampling, and 23" for loom waste). SETTS Warp: 24 epi (2/dent in a 12-dent reed). Weft: 48 ppi (24 ppi tabby; 24 ppi pattern). DIMENSIONS Width in the reed: 36 2/12". Woven length: (measured under tension on the loom) 160". Finished size: (after…
RECENTLY, I READ ABOUT THE TRENDING influence of international textiles on fashion. In both clothing and home textiles, you can find a lot of folk art inspiration from textile traditions including Indian saris, Fair Isle knitting, and Romanian embroidery. Naturally, I started to think about how these sorts of influences might translate to handweaving. The vision in my head was of small, allover prints and textures combined with bold, graphic borders. At first, I couldn’t think of how to achieve my dream design without weaving a small pattern and sewing on a border—not my first choice at all. Blended drafts to the rescue! Two Handwoven articles came to mind: one by Carol Strickler from March/April 1985, and a more recent project by Krista Richey from November/December 2017 about blending two…
“I dream of the endless possibilities for the good and close friendship that this fraternity makes possible through the years . . . It may someday bring together into sisterly relationship women from all parts of the country who have never seen each other before, who are all friends, because of Theta.” —Bettie Locke Hamilton, DePauw University, 1870 As a student at the University of Kansas, I had the privilege of belonging to Kappa Alpha Theta, a women’s fraternity that has been on the campus since 1881. Theta for a Lifetime, the name of the new member orientation program, exemplifies not only the lifetime commitment to Theta and the lifelong privileges of membership, but the promise of lasting friendships. Little did I know, when I joined as an eighteen-yearold freshman,…
THESE TOWELS ARE THE RESULT of playing around with a portion of a twill pattern from A Weaver’s Book of 8-Shaft Patterns edited by Carol Strickler. I slightly altered the threading of draft #328 and put the tie-up and treadling into my weaving software. On a whim, I changed warp and weft colors to alternate light/dark for a shadow weave. I was so tickled with the result that I quickly wound a sample warp and played around with treadling sequences. My favorite made squares with Xs inside. Usually with shadow weave, the back mirrors the front, but when I turned over the sample—surprise!—the pattern on the back had rectangles within rectangles, no X to be found. My second-favorite treadling sequence made little boxes within a bigger box on the front,…
For some reason, I find cloth with contrasting areas of warp-dominant and weft-dominant patterning particularly satisfying. I classify this type of pattern under the general “damask” heading. True damask uses alternating areas of warp-and weft-dominant satin and thus requires at least five shafts per block, which means using a dobby loom—or better yet, a drawloom—to go beyond checkerboard or rectangle designs. Because twill requires only three shafts, various combinations of rectangles in turned twill satisfy my damask envy—and can be woven using as few as six shafts. When woven with similar colors in both warp and weft, turned-twill patterning is subtle, playing on how light reflects differently across the cloth. But that’s not my personal color style—I use many different colors in the warp and weft, and in doing so…
STRUCTURE Swedish lace. EQUIPMENT 4-shaft loom, 32" weaving width; 10-dent reed; 2 or more boat shuttles; 9 bobbins. Note: Stick shuttles would be a good alternative for many of the weft colors instead of boat shuttles and bobbins. YARNS Warp: Shetland (100% wool; 1,800 yd/lb; Harrisville Designs), Silver Mist, 501 yd; Chicory, 137 yd; White, 91 yd; Delphinium, 78 yd; Periwinkle and Iris, 59 yd each; Aubergine, 39 yd; Hyacinth, 33 yd; Lilac, 26 yd. Weft: Shetland, White, 517 yd; Silver Mist, 88 yd; Chicory, 42 yd; Delphinium, 23 yd; Periwinkle and Iris, 18 yd each; Aubergine, 12 yd; Hyacinth, 10 yd; Lilac, 8 yd. WARP LENGTH 313 ends 3. yd long (allows 11" for take-up, 30" for loom waste; loom waste includes fringe). SETTS Warp: 10 epi. Weft: 10…
STRUCTURE Twill. EQUIPMENT 4-shaft loom, 38" weaving width; 12-dent or 8-dent reed; 2 shuttles; 5 bobbins. YARNS Warp: 8/4 cotton (1,680 yd/lb; Maurice Brassard), #5132 Denim, 1,600 yd; #8267 Limette, 128 yd; #5115 Rouge vin, 320 yd; #1451 Ivoire, 128 yd; #1418 Vieil or, 256 yd. Weft: 8/4 cotton, #5132 Denim, 708 yd; #8267 Limette, 56 yd; #5115 Rouge vin, 140 yd; #1451 Ivoire, 56 yd; #1418 Vieil or, 112 yd. WARP LENGTH 608 ends 4 yd long (allows 18" for take-up, 56" for sampling and loom waste; loom waste includes fringe). SETTS Warp: 16 epi (1-1-2/dent in a 12-dent reed, or 2/dent in an 8-dent reed). Weft: 14 ppi before finishing; 16 ppi after finishing. DIMENSIONS Width in the reed: 38". Woven length: (measured under tension on the loom)…
YEARS AGO, WHEN ANITA OSTERHAUG was still editor of Handwoven, she casually mentioned to me one day that she had never woven towels. I was surprised—I assumed all weavers regularly put on extra-long warps for kitchen towels every few months or so. When it was decided to dedicate this anniversary issue to not just the projects of Handwoven’s past but also the people, I knew I had to weave a set of Norwegian towels in honor of Anita. These towels are inspired by a towel in the collections of the Vesterheim Museum donated by a family from Minnesota (pictured on page 59). I loved the simple design of the towel: mostly white with a bit of simple striping as a frame, a damask strip along each end, and a lattice…
WHEN I FIRST LEARNED TO WEAVE, warping my loom made me tense—really tense. But you have to warp to be able to weave, so I put on long warps to avoid warping as often, and then got bored weaving off those long warps. When I decided to complete the Handweavers Guild of America’s Certificate of Excellence and faced weaving 40 different samples, I resolved to confront my warping aversion. I began by establishing a routine to make warping easy and fast. I practiced, improved, tweaked, and learned. Now I love to warp my loom! I’ve discovered that little changes can have a big impact on my enjoyment of each aspect of weaving. Here are some tips I’ve found that will make your warping faster, easier, and more enjoyable. 1 Secure…
Art school destroyed my brain. Long after graduation, I find it hard to think in a linear way. We were trained to strive for something new and different, turn things upside down, pull random things together, and never do the same thing twice. Think the unexpected. Think laterally. Think creatively. While this seemingly random way of thinking is not compatible with the requirements of everyday life, I cannot get what I learned in art school out of my head. I am always looking for new combinations and perspectives. One of the ways I do this is by merging my interests in traveling, drawing, writing, handcrafts, and a fondness for the decorative—wherever I find it—with my hobby of making travel journals by hand. It is the perfect combination. Drawing and writing…
I try to make handwoven items for wedding gift s, which meant I was busy in 2016 with four weddings in one year. The last wedding was my nephew’s on New Year’s Eve. I didn’t know the bride well, so I asked about her favorite home décor colors and her decorating style. The answer was pastels and mid-century modern. I don’t work with pastels oft en, which presented a challenge, but I do love mid-century modern design. By Googling “mid-century modern color palette,” I found a pastel palette to work with and chose a geometric design to give the towels a mid-century modern feel. I named them David’s Towels aft er the loom I wove them on, Louet’s David. Th ink David and Goliath: a little loom with a big…
Bead leno is a loom-controlled weave that produces lacy fabric by using beads to twist warp ends around each other, rather than requiring doups or a pick-up stick. After you read about how it works, you can apply what you’ve learned by weaving the Spring Breeze Jacket, pages 66–71. While bead leno requires only four shafts and is quick and easy to set up, it does have its limitations. It can only produce double leno (also known as 2/2 leno), in which 2 ends twist around 2 ends. And a 1/1 tabby can’t be woven on a bead leno warp, although a 2/1 half basketweave is possible and a good stand-in. EQUIPMENT AND MATERIALS You can weave bead leno on any four-shaft loom (either jack or counter-march), as long as…
STRUCTURE Twill. EQUIPMENT 6-shaft loom, 16" weaving width; 15-dent reed; 1 shuttle. YARNS Warp: 8/2 Tencel (100% lyocell; 3,360 yd/lb; Valley Yarns; WEBS), Black, 276 yd; Burnt Orange, 207 yd; Gold, 423 yd; Lemon Drop and Spice, 201 yd each; Natural 132 yd. Weft: Silk with Stellina (75% superwash wool/25% tussah silk; 2,940 yd/lb; Green Grass Handwoven), Black, 606 yd. Note: This yarn is no longer available. A good substitute is Treenway Silks’ Zola, 12/2 laceweight (100% bombyx silk; 2,950 yd/lb), Raven Black. OTHER SUPPLIES Cardboard strip 1" × 17" to use as a separator between rows of hemstitching. WARP LENGTH 480 ends, 3 yd long (allows 7" for take-up, 24" for loom waste; loom waste includes fringe). SETTS Warp: 30 epi (2/dent in a 15-dent reed or 3/dent in…
When thinking of summer celebration symbols, pinwheels and stars immediately come to mind, and four-shaft pinwheel and star color-and-weave designs can be considered part of the check family. A straight-draw four-shaft twill can be woven with two rigid heddles by placing every other warp end in a hole, either on the front or the back heddle, and then assigning the remaining warp ends either to a pick-up stick or string heddles. With this set-up, four-shaft twills are more practical and easier to weave on a rigid-heddle loom. For these scarves, warping is direct—four dark ends and then four light ends. When warping, you can cut and retie after four ends, which keeps the warp tidy but is a bit tedious. You can also just carry the ends continually, which is…
STRUCTURE Twill. EQUPMENT 4-shaft loom, 20" weaving width; 12-dent reed; 2–4 shuttles; 5 bobbins. YARNS Warp: 10/2 cotton (4,200 yd/lb; Georgia Yarn Company), Natural, 315 yd; Warm Navy, 675 yd; Hyacinth Violet, 1,076 yd. Weft: 10/2 cotton, Cherry Red, 906 yd; Warm Navy, 479 yd; Olive Green, 450 yd; Natural, 94 yd. OTHER SUPPLIES Coordinating sewing thread. WARP LENGTH 459 ends 4½ yd long (includes floating selvedges; allows 12" for take-up, 32" for loom waste). Note: Allow 33" for each additional towel. SETTS Warp: 24 epi (2/dent in a 12-dent reed). Weft: 27 ppi. DIMENSIONS Width in the reed: 193/12". Woven length: (measured under tension on the loom) 118", or four towels about 29½" each. Finished size: (after wet-finishing and hemming) four towels, 16½" × 24½" each. I love symmetry,…
WHEN IT COMES TO AMERICAN WEAVING HISTORY, I can’t think of a better example of American ingenuity and inventiveness than the Weavers Delight floor loom made by the Newcomb Loom Company in Davenport, Iowa. First, let me recount my own experience with the Weavers Delight loom. At the time, I was living in Colorado and was highly active in the local weaving community. The town of Burlington, Colorado, located on the eastern border of the state, requested my help to identify and rehabilitate an old loom housed in their farm equipment museum, the Old Town Museum. It just so happened that this was a holiday weekend, and Burlington was celebrating a Heritage Festival. I am always game for an adventure, so my answer was “Yes!” In the museum, I found…
STRUCTURE Waffle weave. EQUIPMENT 7-shaft loom, 22" weaving width; 12-dent reed; 1 shuttle; 4 bobbins. YARNS Warp: Plaid towel: 8/2 cotton (3,360 yd/lb; Maurice Brassard; Yarn Barn of Kansas), #4271 Jeans, 336 yd; #112 Slate, 168 yd; #101 White, 382 yd. Striped/variegated towels: 8/2 cotton, #101 White, 1,392 yd. Weft: Plaid towel: 8/2 cotton, #4271 Jeans, 187 yd; #112 Slate, 94 yd; #101 White, 202 yd. Striped/variegated towels: 8/2 cotton, #4271 Jeans, #112 Slate, and #101 White, 118 yd each. 8/2 space-dyed cotton (3,360 yd/lb; Maurice Brassard; Lunatic Fringe Yarns), #9836 Blue Jay, 570 yd. All towels: Cotton sewing thread for hems, white, 100 yd. WARP LENGTH Plaid towel: 506 ends 1¾ yd long (includes floating selvedges; allows 4" for take-up, 25" for loom waste). Striped/variegated towels: 506 ends 2¾…
HANDWOVEN DISH TOWELS are a weaver’s staple and a perfect long-warp project. They are welcome gifts, sturdy and thirsty, and they last forever. For some time now, turned taqueté has been my structure of choice for dish towels. Conventional taqueté is threaded exactly like summer and winter, but turning the draft 90 degrees so the threading and treadling orders switch places creates turned taqueté. It becomes a one-shuttle weave, with tie-down picks that alternate with pattern picks. Using highly contrasting colors in the warp makes shapes appear as if by magic as you treadle. The circle is one of my favorite design elements, and I have found that turned taqueté is a great structure for weaving the circle shape with the fewest number of harnesses and treadles. I am always…
STRUCTURE Doubleweave with pebble weave or plain weave. EQUIPMENT 8-shaft or 4-shaft loom, 7" weaving width; 10-dent reed; 2 shuttles; 2 bobbins. YARNS Warp: 8/2 Tencel (100% lyocell; 3,360 yd/lb; Maurice Brassard), #T5070 Royal, 330 yd; #T5977 Bleu moyen and #T5214 Magenta, 198 yd each; #T5182 Marigold, 44 yd. Weft: 8/2 Tencel, #T8019 Navy, 475 yd. WARP LENGTH 280 ends 2¾ yd long (allows 6" for take-up, 33" for loom waste). SETTS Warp: 40 epi; 20 epi per layer (4/dent in a 10-dent reed). Weft: 37 ppi. DIMENSIONS Width in the reed: 7". Woven length: (measured under tension on the loom) 60". Finished size: (after wetfinishing and hemming) 6" × 55". Over a decade ago—before I was a weaver—I picked up a cute, inexpensive scarf at a local shop. The…
THREADING A draft may look abstract, but if you lay it flat on the top of the loom’s castle, the draft is a direct map of what is happening in the heddles below. The horizontal rows that make up the threading portion of the draft represent the shafts. The bottom row is the shaft closest to you when you are sitting at the loom, and the top row is the farthest shaft. A mark in the threading draft represents a warp end that goes through a heddle on that shaft at that location. The mark may be a square, a dot, a hatch mark, or a number representing the shaft you’ll thread it on. Different thicknesses of yarn, textures, or yarn colors may be indicated by various symbols in the…
STRUCTURE Twill. EQUIPMENT 8-shaft loom, 10" weaving width; 12-dent reed; 1 shuttle. YARNS Warp: 8/2 Tencel (100% lyocell; 3,360 yd/lb; Syd’s Threads), Chestnut-Backed Tanager handpainted 6 yd warp of 220 ends, 1,320 yd total. Weft: Scarf A: 8/2 Tencel (100% lyocell; 3,360 yd/lb; Syd’s Threads), Eastern Bluebird, 550 yd, or 8/2 Tencel (100% lyocell; 3,360 yd/lb; Maurice Brassard), T963 Royal Fonce, 550 yd. Scarf B: 8/2 Tencel (Syd’s Threads), Pheasant Grey, 550 yd, or 8/2 Tencel (Maurice Brassard), T4275 Charcoal, 550 yd. OTHER SUPPLIES Mesh bag for wet-finishing; laundry dye color-catcher sheet. WARP LENGTH 220 ends 6 yd long (allows 12" for take-up, 22" for loom waste; loom waste includes fringe). SETTS Warp: 24 epi (2/dent in a 12-dent reed). Weft: 22–24 ppi. DIMENSIONS Width in the reed: 92⁄12". Woven…
Last spring, I needed special gift s for two weddings. Both couples will be living where the winters get cold, so I chose the warmth, softness, and lovely natural colors of alpaca to create two blankets on one warp. I used two color-and-weave patterns from A Weaver’s Book of 8-Shaft Patterns that have the same straight-twill threading, though different tie-ups. I made a warp long enough for two blankets. The use of three grays plus black and white creates a soft color blend while providing enough contrast for the color-and-weave structure to be clear. Alpaca is a treat to work with. It feels wonderful, from the warping stage to curling up under the finished blanket. But on a project this big, alpaca’s slickness and tendency to stretch can also be…
One of my favorite pastimes is thumbing through Swedish weaving books. As I look at the beautiful textiles in the pictures, I dream about what to weave next. It’s an effective way to spark design ideas, such as the one that led to this Swedish rosepath rag rug. Rosepath threading opens an array of pattern possibilities that can turn an ordinary rag rug into something extraordinary. The rosepath pattern stands out most when there is high contrast in color value (light/dark) between the background and the pattern. Playing with rosepath is the best way to learn what it has to offer. I like to allow extra warp length so I can sample weft fabric choices and different treadling options before I start the project. When I plan a rosepath rag…
STRUCTURE Overshot. EQUIPMENT 4-shaft loom, 19" weaving width; 15-or 10-dent reed; 4 shuttles. YARNS Warp: 20/2 cotton (8,453 yd/lb; Bockens), Unbleached, 1,915 yd. Weft: 20/2 cotton, Unbleached, 1,150 yd. 40/2 linen (7,000 yd/lb; Jane Stafford Textiles), #059 Olive, 340 yd; #802 Denim, 270 yd; #401 English Rose, #320 Lavender, #801 Wine, and #803 Ginger, 77 yd each. WARP LENGTH 547 ends 3½ yd long (includes floating selvedges; allows 12" for take-up, 26" for loom waste; allow 24" for each additional napkin). SETTS Warp: 30 epi (2/dent in a 15-dent reed or 3/dent in a 10-dent reed). Weft: 44 ppi (tabby, 22 ppi; pattern, 22 ppi); plain-weave hems, 27–28 ppi. DIMENSIONS Width in the reed: 18 5/15" or 184/10". Woven length: (measured under tension on the loom) 88". Finished size: (after…
IF YOU HAD ASKED THE 20-YEAR-OLD version of myself where I thought I’d end up settling down, I never in a million years would have said Alabama. I grew up overseas, a military dependent, and always struggled with feeling a sense of a place being mine. I am not a native Southerner, yet somehow here I am, in the Deep South, making a home for my family. Growing up moving around a lot did teach me to embrace the idea that home is where your heart is. So even though I didn’t expect to live in Alabama, it is now my home and, at 33, I am starting to learn what it feels like to have a true sense of place. Nothing makes a place feel like a home more…
This blanket has a rugged feel like the Taos Mountains from which it comes. It celebrates the weaving heritage of northern New Mexico and is a tribute to my weaving teacher and mentor, Rachel Brown. Indeed, she made many prize-winning weavings in her lifetime with these same yarns. The warp is Rachel’s classic tapestry yarn, which is still hand-dyed in Taos by her granddaughter, Teresa Loveless. The yarn comes in five shades of every color. Painted effects are easy to achieve and fun to play with. The weft is a singles yarn, spun from New Mexico’s heritage breed, the Navajo Churro sheep. This hearty ovine has been raised in New Mexico for centuries. Prized for its long staple, Churro wool makes a very strong, nonpilling weaving yarn. (My instructions include…
MY OBSESSION WITH WEFT-FACED wool rugs didn’t end when my “Diamond and Bars Twill Rug” was in the March/April 2019 issue of Handwoven. After weaving several versions of that rug, I began looking for new inspiration. A “farmhouse” rug on the Vävstuga Weaving School website caught my eye. The rug was weft-faced with three vertical panels, and the colors were reversed on opposite sides. Two rugs for the price of one! The only information on the weaving technique was “dubbelbindning.” This left me with more questions, specifically: What is dubbelbindning and how does one weave it? I was off on an exploratory adventure. I found references to double binding, weft-faced summer and winter, and double-faced block weave. The book Weft-Faced Pattern Weaves: Tabby to Taqueté by Nancy Arthur Hoskins led…
I am a very lucky man. In my many years of teaching weaving, I have met some incredible and interesting people with amazing stories to share. Such is the case of Laura Logston. One day, while Laura was weaving a baby blanket for her soon-to-arrive granddaughter, we started talking about weaving rag rugs. Weaving rag rugs is a subject that’s near and dear to both our hearts. Laura has been a rug weaver for many years. She loves turning waste material into beautiful rugs, and she sells them at a market not far from her home. Laura gathers and collects unwanted fabrics and cuts them into strips that she then artfully arranges into lovely, patterned rugs. Besides weaving rag rugs, Laura also loves weaving overshot and other structures that are…
STRUCTURE Summer and winter. EQUIPMENT 8-shaft loom, 20" weaving width; 10-dent reed; 2 shuttles; 5 bobbins. YARNS – BLUE TOWELS Warp: 8/2 cotton (3,360 yd/lb; Valley Yarns; WEBS), #2636 Navy, 542 yd; #2550 Nautical, 539 yd. Weft: 8/2 cotton, #2636 Navy, 600 yd; #6122 Very Berry, 68 yd; #5792 Lime, #1205 Banana, and #6974 Grayed Lavender, 51 yd each. YARNS – WHITE TOWELS Warp: 8/2 cotton, #8001 White and #8418 Silver Birch, about 541 yd each. Weft: 8/2 cotton, #8001 White, 600 yd; #6256 Eggplant, 68 yd; #5792 Lime, #6122 Very Berry, and #6974 Grayed Lavender, 51 yd each. WARP LENGTH 393 ends 2¾ yd long (allows 6" for take-up, 27" for loom waste, 9" for sampling). SETTS Warp: 20 epi (2/dent in a 10-dent reed). Weft: 20 ppi in…
In 2015, the Northwest Arkansas Handweavers Guild spent several months studying the handwoven fabrics used to piece five quilts in the collection of the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History. Two of the museum’s quilts, all from the 1800s, are attributed to Emma Johnson Bolinger (1879–1856), whose husband's family settled in the Arkansas Ozarks in the 1830s and may have included the weavers who wove the fabric scraps Emma used in her quilts. Many of the handwoven scraps evidently were used for clothing in their previous lives. Like fiber time capsules, the quilts preserve the design sense, color choices, weave structures, and fibers used by those almost forgotten weavers. At the end of our study, we designed fabrics based on our favorite scraps in the quilts and wove towels to exchange.…
Huang Daopo (1245–1330), known as the founder of China’s textile industry, ran away from an abusive marriage and ended up on Hainan Island. There, the Li people taught her the weaving and spinning skills they’d been practicing for centuries. Eventually, Huang moved back to the mainland, bringing her new cloth-making abilities with her. She, in turn, taught other women, and in time, the craft disseminated throughout China. What makes these factoids of interest to weavers are the exquisite textile techniques Li women perfected millennia ago on what are very simple tools. The Li people have no written language, so for the past 30 centuries, the craft passed by word of mouth and demonstration from mother to daughter. That the five Li enclaves on Hainan spoke mutually unintelligible dialects further complicated…
STRUCTURE Twill. EQUIPMENT Beach towel: 4-shaft loom, 41" weaving width; 12-dent reed; 1 shuttle. Tote bag and accessory pouch: 4-shaft loom, 36" weaving width; 12-dent reed; 1 shuttle. YARNS Beach towel: Warp: 8/4 cotton (1,680 yd/lb; Maurice Brassard), #101 Blanchi, 882 yd; #4269 Limette pâle, 378 yd; #5981 Navy, 459 yd. Weft: 8/4 cotton, #101 Blanchi, 1,410 yd. Tote bag and accessory pouch: Warp: 8/2 cotton (3,360 yd/lb; Maurice Brassard), #101 Blanchi, 1,808 yd; #4269 Limette pâle, 736 yd; #5981 Navy, 828 yd. Weft: 8/2 cotton, #101 Blanchi, 2,843 yd. OTHER SUPPLIES Tote bag: McCall’s M7611 pattern, View A; medium-weight sew-in woven interfacing, 2⅞ yd; cardboard or plastic canvas, 15" × 18" for strengthening bag bottom; 7" zipper; 45" wide lining fabric, 1½ yd; 45" wide sturdy contrast fabric, 1…
FOR THESE SCARVES, I decided to look at overshot from a different angle and explore how it would look and feel using the wonderful materials handweavers have available today. Overshot was introduced to me, and thousands of other weavers, through the beautiful and functional traditional coverlets woven by our collective grandmothers and grandfathers. Many of these amazing patterns were gathered and preserved for us by the likes of Mary Meigs Atwater, Marguerite Porter Davison, and Weaver Rose. That is what I believed overshot to be throughout the early years of my handweaving life, but for this project, I wanted a more modern vibe. I wove two scarves on the same warp of 8/2 cotton using 20/2 silk as my pattern weft and Bambu 12 as tabby. For my draft, I…
One aspect of a handweaver’s life is the accumulation of weaving “problems” that need solutions and the satisfying discovery over time, from books, magazines, guild mates, classes, online chat, and even one’s own brain, of the solutions to those problems. For me, one such problem was the terrible “tutu.” As a newish weaver, enamored of the magic of waffle weave, I was stumped and irritated by how waffle-weave fabric would draw in and how much my plain-weave hems would splay out (see Photo 1 above). LOOKING FOR TUTU SOLUTIONS Hems were a hot topic among my weaving buddies at Hill Institute in Florence, Massachusetts (shall I say an “edgy” topic?), and we batted around hem lore when we got together. Civilians often remain mystified by such raucous discussions among handweavers.…
I LIVE IN AN ACTIVE ADULT COMMUNITY with a large fabric and fiber facility where I am a member of a small spinning and weaving special interest group that meets weekly to weave. The group is a sharing one, with a wide variety of weaving experience. Most of our floor looms are four-shaft. Often we warp new projects with extra length so that another—perhaps newer—weaver can tie onto the remaining ends without fear of a threading error. My goals with this piece were to weave a scarf similar to Anuradha Bhatia’s Salt-n-Pepper Scarf, using four shafts instead of eight, and to share the draft with the group. I found a four-shaft draft by Bonnie Inouye in Twill Thrills that combined two blocks of twill, 2/1 versus 1/2, that I adjusted…
This draft came about as I was teaching a deflected doubleweave class at New England Weavers Seminar a few years ago. I was talking about the possibilities of using 4-shaft twill draft s as profile draft s for 8-shaft deflected doubleweave. As I was saying the words “but you shouldn't use broken twill as a profile for this,” I had an “Aha!” moment and realized . . . Yes, you should!” I quickly draft ed it out on my computer and came up with a very pretty motif that I have been using and tweaking ever since. Once you get started weaving deflected doubleweave, you will see that it is easy to warp and weave because the alternating color blocks keep you on track when threading and treadling. You may…
Tracking down Purnima Gurung’s weaving workshop in the Nepalese village of Ghandruk is not an easy task. You’ll eventually find her by climbing a meandering stone pathway that leads behind the Blue Poppy Hotel to where she works in a small shed next to her 200-year-old home. Ghandruk is a gorgeous, sprawling old village in north-central Nepal laid out on a steep mountainside in the foothills of the Himalayas. Traditional stone homes with slate roofs intermingled with kitchen gardens and steep paths give way to terraced rice and millet paddies and views of the Annapurna mountain range—a panorama of snow-covered peaks over 20,000 feet high. The people who live here are mostly Gurungs, whose oral history traces their origins to western Mongolia. Historians and anthropologists believe that their ancestors migrated…
My all-time favorite weave structure is turned twill, even though it is very shaft-greedy, with each block requiring four shafts. I wove this four-block project first in turned twill using a jewel-tone palette and 16 shafts. I loved the finished towels so much that I tied on a second warp in a neutral palette. When the theme for this issue was announced, I decided this would be the perfect time to get out of my turned-twill rut and weave this profile draft in another structure. My other structure rut is summer and winter. I tried substituting many different structures with my weaving software, and darned if I didn’t dislike the look of all of them—except for summer and winter! I am not a huge fan of traditional summer and winter…
In the mid-1970s, the back-to-the-land movement was in full swing, and many of those interested in self-sufficiency and lives of personal meaning took up fiber crafts. Linda Ligon found weaving an “absorbing sideline” to her full-time job as a high school teacher and her commitments as a wife and mother. When a third baby joined the family, she quit her teaching job and began thinking about a new venture. Looking back at that moment, Linda said, “A publication about my favorite subject seemed a good way to combine all the things that I liked to do when I found myself at home full-time.” At her dining room table in Loveland, Colorado, she turned this idea into a magazine about fiber arts in the mountain/plains region, titling it interweave. The first issue…
In the past thirty years or so, drafting formats have become fairly standardized—in weaving books, magazine articles, and computer weaving programs. Many beautiful and intricate overshot patterns appear in much older texts, however, in unfamiliar formats. Some of these drafts were written using shorthand methods, developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to save precious paper and ink. Here are steps for converting the drafts from five major collections of early overshot patterns into our current drafting format. FIRST, EXAMINE the contemporary overshot draft in Figure 1. The threading shows four blocks, A, B, C, and D. Each block is threaded twice (Block A = 1-2-1-2, B = 2-3-2-3, C = 3-4-3-4, and D = 4-1-4-1). However, because shaft 2 is in both Block A and Block B, the last…
IF YOU’RE A FIBER PERSON, you’ve likely heard of hemp, and if you’ve heard of hemp, you’re most certainly aware of cannabidiol (CBD) and the recent explosion of CBD products proclaiming innumerable health benefits. While we wait for researchers to sort out the many claims of CBD manufacturers, “fiberists” can reap the positive impacts hemp fiber offers right now. Weaving and constructing this hemp project will offer benefits to your brain, your heart, your soul, and your planet. As fiber enthusiasts, we are already attuned to the positive effects of endorphin release on our brains when we see, touch, and smell fiber. We also know that weaving is good for our hearts in multiple ways, but finishing hemp cloth is a great cardiovascular workout. Woven hemp comes off the loom…
DESCRIBING A WEAVE STRUCTURE can be a bit tricky, and not always completely obvious. When playing around at the loom, you can sometimes come up with things that could be described by several different technical terms at once, as in the case of this “spider weave.” How you describe a certain type of weave structure can depend on your weaving cultural background. In the case of the technique presented in this article, most of my American colleagues from whom I sought advice described it as a variety of deflected doubleweave, which it is, whilst my Swedish colleagues described it as a huckaback type of weave, which it also is. Weave structure definitions can be simultaneously far-reaching and bewildering. However, instead of going into a lengthy discussion about weaving terminology and…
STRUCTURE Plain weave with warp and weft floats. EQUIPMENT 6-shaft loom, 38" weaving width; 15-dent reed; 1–3 shuttles; 3 bobbins. YARNS Warp: 20/2 line linen (3,000 yd/lb; Bockens), #0002 Half Bleached, 1,456 yd. 16/2 line linen (2,400 yd/lb; Bockens), #0000 Unbleached, 154 yd; #603 Navy Blue, 462 yd. Weft: 20/2 line linen, #0002 Half Bleached, 1,152 yd. 16/2 line linen, #0000 Unbleached, 65 yd; #132 Dusty Blue Gray, 195 yd. OTHER SUPPLIES Synthrapol. WARP LENGTH 570 ends (592 total threads) 3½ yd long (allows 8" for take-up and 42" for loom waste). SETTS Warp: 15 epi (1/dent in a 15-dent reed. Note: Unbleached ends are used doubled in reed and heddles. Weft: 16 ppi. DIMENSIONS Width in the reed: 38". Woven length: (measured under tension on the loom) 76". Finished…
STRUCTURE Bronson lace. EQUIPMENT 4-shaft loom, 20" weaving width; 15-dent reed; two 20" stick shuttles. YARNS Warp: 3/2 pearl cotton (1,260 yd/lb; UKI), #95 Mineral, 363 yd; #103 Peacock, 360 yd. Weft: 3/2 pearl cotton #95 Mineral, 273 yd; #103 Peacock, 170 yd. WARP LENGTH 289 ends 2½ yd long (allows 6" for take-up, 30" for loom waste; loom waste includes fringe). SETTS Warp: 15 epi (1/dent in a 15-dent reed). Weft: 13½ ppi. DIMENSIONS Width in the reed: 194⁄15". Woven length: (measured under tension on the loom) 54". Finished size: (after wet-finishing) 16¾" × 49" with 2½" fringe. Last year, Linda Ligon made me aware of a method for coaxing five shafts from a four-shaft loom using unheddled ends, described originally in the Summer 1979 issue of Interweave. Like…
I’ve often heard that weaving is a solitary activity, especially if you work on a heavy countermarch loom. You’re not likely to move a loom like that around much and even less likely to take it out of the house. However, my wife, Cindy, and I have acquired some travel-friendly looms that fit nicely in our car. In fact, buying a new car is always an adventure, because our traveling loom and all its accoutrements must fit into the vehicle easily, while leaving plenty of room for us, too. With a tape measure—and sometimes the actual loom—in hand, we head off to dealers in search of just the right model. Our motto is “If the loom doesn’t fit, we can’t commit.” WHY WE DO IT The two of us find…
In Spring 2022, my friend of 40 years and I met for tea. Though decades had passed, our families had grown, and we had retired from our professional lives, we felt our friendship take flight once again. As we talked, the idea of me weaving a wrap for her came up. Together, she, an artist, and I, a weaver, discussed the color, fabric hand, and imagery that would convey our friendship. I had the good fortune of traveling a lot as a child and was educated in Okinawa, France, and Italy. My parents made every effort to understand the cultures in which we lived, and so I was given cultural experiences I may not have otherwise had. When we lived in Okinawa, my mother was profoundly influenced by the local…
STRUCTURE Plain weave with floats. EQUIPMENT 4-shaft loom, 12" weaving width; 10-dent reed; 2 shuttles. YARNS Warp: 5/2 Tencel (100% lyocell; 2,100 yd/lb; Shiny Dime Fibers), Undyed, 903 yd. Weft: 60/2 silk (14,800 yd/lb; Valley Yarns), #655 Sepia and #644 Aqua, 420 yd each. Pattern weft: 5/2 cotton (2,100 yd/lb; Valley Yarns), #1089 Alabaster, 90 yd. Note: Any light color may be used for the pattern weft. OTHER SUPPLIES Ikat tape (Maiwa); dyeing supplies including tubs/bins, closet rack, window screen, clothespins or clips, rubber baseboard, measuring tools, soda ash; Synthrapol: Fiber Reactive Procion Dyes (Dharma Trading Company), #26 Sky Blue, #27 Midnight Blue, #37 Bronze, #77 Alpine Blue, and #168 Indigo Blue; Fiber Reactive Dyes (Happy Cat Tie Dye), Wand Wood, Mystic Blue, and Strawberry Skies. See “Fun with Ikat…
STRUCTURE Doublewidth. EQUIPMENT 4-shaft loom, 26" weaving width; 8-dent reed; 1 shuttle; 4 bobbins. YARNS Warp: 2-ply sportweight wool (1,515 yd/lb; Meridian Jacobs), Natural and Coreopsis (rust), 352 yd each; Hollyhock (green), 176 yd; Black Walnut (brown), 264 yd. Weft: 2-ply sportweight wool, Natural, 232 yd; Coreopsis (rust), 255 yd; Hollyhock (green), 153 yd; Black Walnut (brown), 204 yd. OTHER SUPPLIES Wool wash; sewing thread in a contrasting color. WARP LENGTH 416 ends 2¾ yd long (allows 7" for take-up and 24" for loom waste; loom waste includes fringe). SETTS Warp: 16 epi (2/dent in an 8-dent reed). Weft: 8 ppi in each layer. DIMENSIONS Width in the reed: 26". Woven length: (measured under tension on the loom) 68". Finished size: (after wet-finishing) 45½" × 54" with 4" twisted fringe.…
From the eighth grade until she graduated from high school, my sister Susan corresponded with a pen pal from India. Over those years, she wrote many letters and sent things that Amit asked for. He wanted “American” chewing gum and candy so she sent boxes of Chiclets, Juicy Fruit and Doublemint, and Hershey bars. An Elvis Presley record also made the nearly 9,000 mile journey from our small town in western Kansas to Bombay (now Mumbai), India. One year, Amit asked for several yards of all-cotton gingham fabric for his mother. In return, she sent my mother a silk sari. My family was stunned. It seemed a vastly unbalanced trade—elegant, finely woven silk for humble, inexpensive cotton—but Amit’s mother was very happy with the gingham, which was unavailable in India.…
THE FIRST THING THAT CAME TO MIND when I saw the description for this issue about yarns that make a difference was the hand-dyed Tintes Naturales yarns produced by the women in San Rafael, Guatemala. The Natural Dye Project is a way for these women to increase their income through their native skill set and gain access to the world market through Mayan Hands, a fair-trade organization. When I weave with this cotton yarn, I know that I am giving the women of San Rafael a chance at a better life, the opportunity to climb out of poverty and keep their children in school. As a participant in Jane Stafford’s Online Guild for the past couple of years, I’ve spent quite a bit of time exploring weaving and design ideas.…
As a formerly serious knitter, I accumulated a sizable stash of knitting yarns, including a whole box of Noro Kureyon balls patiently waiting for their place in the sun. Looking for a structure that would use Kureyon to its best advantage, I perused The Best of Weaver’s: Thick ’n Thin. In diversified plain weave, a thin yarn is used to hold together a much thicker yarn in both warp and weft. Plump Kureyon works perfectly as the thick yarn, especially when combined with 16/2 cottolin or cotton as the thin yarn. To avoid the notoriously sturdy hand of diversified plain weave, I loosened the sett from the expected 8 ends per inch (epi) for Kureyon in plain weave to 5⅓ epi, and I added stripes of plain weave in the…
STRUCTURE Shadow weave. EQUIPMENT 4-shaft loom, 23" weaving width; 10-dent reed; 2 shuttles; 7 bobbins. YARNS Warp: 8/2 cotton (3,360 yd/lb; UKI Supreme), Natural, 1,050 yd; #12 Dark Green, 210 yd; #49 China Blue, 320 yd; #57 Turk, 160 yd. 8/2 cotton (3,360 yd/lb; Maysville), #70 Dubonnet and #35 Copper, 160 yd each. 8/2 cotton, magenta, 160 yd. Note: The magenta came from the author’s stash. A close substitute is 8/2 cotton (3,360 yd/lb; Maurice Brassard), #5214 Magenta. Weft: 8/2 cotton (UKI Supreme), Natural, 828 yd; #49 China Blue, 435 yd; #12 Dark Green, 90 yd; #57 Turk, 126 yd. 8/2 cotton (Maysville), #70 Dubonnet, 90 yd; #35 Copper, 165 yd. 8/2 cotton, magenta, 90 yd. Note: Weft yardages may differ depending on weft color order choices. WARP LENGTH 444…
STRUCTURE Plain weave and huck lace. EQUIPMENT 4-shaft loom, 18" weaving width; 12-dent reed; 2 shuttles; 2–6 bobbins. YARNS Warp: 40/2 linen (7,000 yd/lb; WEBS), half bleach, 4,028 yd. Weft: 40/2 linen, half bleach, 920 yd; Natural, 400 yd. 40/2 linen (7,000 yd/lb; Jane Stafford Textiles), Lavender and Olive, 430 yd each; English Rose and Ginger, 400 yd each. OTHER SUPPLIES Spray bottle of water for misting the warp and bobbins as needed. WARP LENGTH 537 ends 7½ yd long (allows 22" for take-up, 31" for loom waste and sampling; for four towels, wind 4¾ yd; add 33" warp length for each additional towel). SETTS Warp: 30 epi (2-3 in a 12-dent reed; see Weaving Tips); or 3/dent in a 10-dent reed. Weft: 22–27 ppi (varies by pattern woven). DIMENSIONS…
When I created Handweaving.net in 2004, it held fewer than 200 historical weaving drafts, each one of which I’d typed in laboriously by hand (see Resources to learn more about those early days). Today, the site’s nearly 80,000 weaving drafts are a rich asset for weavers, whether they’re looking for drafts to weave or are in search of inspiration for their own ideas. You can browse those drafts without being a subscriber, but if that’s all you do, you’ll be missing out on an important resource—the site’s software tools for weavers. Over the years, I’ve worked hard to add a set of powerful yet simple online weaving tools. Subscribers can use them to change existing drafts, create new drafts, or edit any draft uploaded in WIF format—all in their web…
STRUCTURE Overshot. EQUIPMENT 8-shaft loom, 16" weaving width; 12-dent reed; 2 shuttles; 7 bobbins. YARNS Warp: 8/4 cotton (1,680 yd/lb; Maurice Brassard), Naturel, 590 yd. Weft: 8/4 cotton, Naturel, 360 yd. Plump (100% American superwash wool; 100 yd/100 g; Spincycle Yarns), Under the Wave, 295 yd. Note: Dana used exactly 3 skeins of Plump for her runner but recommends that weavers have 4 skeins on hand to ensure they do not run out and to provide flexibility in color usage. OTHER SUPPLIES No-rinse wool wash; laundry color-catcher sheet. WARP LENGTH 181 ends, 3¼ yd long (includes floating selvedges; allows 8" for take-up, 34" for loom waste; loom waste includes fringe). SETTS Warp: 12 epi (1/dent in a 12-dent reed). Weft: 19 ppi in pattern (tabby and pattern weft). DIMENSIONS Width…
EARLY IN MY WEAVING LIFE I vowed I would never waste my time weaving a dish towel, so I surprised myself by entering the Convergence 2018 dish towel exchange. By participating, I learned that towels are a wonderful weaving project. They are a chance to experiment and learn about weave structures and color interaction. At the exchange, I was amazed at the many approaches, unique patterns, and colors that the participants used. Both beginning and expert weavers couldn’t wait to take home five beautiful new towels. Last March, I visited elderly aunts in Texas, where I admired the vast fields bursting with bluebonnets. Back at home, I remembered the delicate blossoms waving in the wind and felt inspired to weave a towel with flowers. I liked a friend’s rosepath sample,…
I stand near Luca’s weaving bench, watching over his shoulder as he throws the shuttle, beats, changes treadles. He looks at me and smiles, then turns back to his loom. I hear a low grunting sound, a contented rhythm that accompanies his work. I smile as well, knowing that he’s doing fine without my help. Not that long ago, it was a different story. My first encounters with Luca, who lives at the residential home for adults with developmental disabilities where I work, did not include many friendly nods or smiles. Instead, as I sat next to him on the weaving bench, he might frown or give me a little push. His attention span for weaving was limited; after a short while, he would turn to look out the window…
My husband is from England and I am from Hungary. We have chosen to settle in Canada, with our two grown daughters living 1,000 and 2,500 miles from us. You can imagine how many significant family events and ordinary holidays we are forced to miss! However, the sky is blue everywhere and the same stars shine down on every member of our family, no matter how many miles separate us. I wanted to weave placemats for all of those dear to us so we could feel connected despite the distance. With thoughts of the blue sky and stars we share, I chose a starry pattern from Mary Meigs Atwater's Recipe Book and shades of blue cotton to make these placemats. Now we can enjoy meals "together" despite being thousands of…
Long ago, when I was overwhelmed with the breadth and depth of the possibilities in weaving (just look at the tables of contents of the weaving books available to us!), someone said to me, “Everything in weaving is either plain weave, twill, or a block weave.” Even more comforting is that there aren’t that many block weaves. The “breadth and depth” comes from the infinite ways in which twill and block designs, fibers, and colors (even in plain weave) work together. Twills provide infinite potential for pattern, color, and texture, and they are an important part of a weaver’s repertoire. As you fall in love with the other weave structures in this issue, don’t forget about twill! TWILL IS A SIMPLE WEAVE Twill is classified by Irene Emery, in her…
EVEN THOUGH IT WAS YEARS AGO, I remember it like yesterday. Two guild members were discussing the work of another member. “You know,” said one, “she’s been called the Honey Suckler. The only pattern she weaves is honeysuckle twill from Davison.” I was shocked, but I still laughed at these two grown adults as they spoke like middle school mean girls. I thought, So what if she loves honeysuckle twill; then she should weave it. And honeysuckle does offer a lot of treadling possibilities. Look it up. It’s on page 132 of A Handweaver’s Pattern Book by Marguerite Porter Davison, also known as “The Green Book.” I later found out that the Honey Suckler sold her work at a yearly craft fair. Honeysuckle twill had become her trademark and a…
STRUCTURE Honeycomb. EQUIPMENT 4-shaft loom, 14" weaving width; 10-dent reed; 1 shuttle. YARNS Warp: 5/2 pearl cotton (2,100 yd/lb; UKI Supreme; Yarn Barn of Kansas), #79 Natural, 162 yd; #17 Wine, 90 yd; #105 Paradise and #115 Peach, 23 yd each. Weft: 8/4 carpet warp (100% cotton; 1,600 yd/lb; Maysville; Yarn Barn of Kansas), #14 White, 250 yd. OTHER SUPPLIES 44" wide 100% cotton fabric, medium-weight, about 1 yd (Andrea used Free Spirit Fabrics Mon Jardin by Nathalie Lete for Conservatory Craft, PWNL 032 Beautiful Bunch); rotary cutter, straight edge, and selfhealing mat. WARP LENGTH 132 ends, 2¼ yd long (includes floating selvedges; allows 6" for take-up, 28" for loom waste). SETTS Warp: 10 epi (1/dent in a 10-dent reed). Weft: 18 ppi for carpet warp; 4 ppi for fabric…
I spent the last year looking at paint chips and material samples (tiles, countertops, light fixtures, etc.) for the new house we were building. To get to choose everything for the house was a dream come true. During the process, I read an article on www.houzz.com about colors for the bedroom, which said that soft er colors would help you sleep better. Really? Well, that may or may not be true, but it got me thinking that I would like a master bedroom and bathroom with a Zen feel. Aft er choosing my paint colors, I had to laugh—the master bedroom paint is called Meditative and the master bath is Still Water, and yes, they are relaxing. Once we moved in and I viewed the results of my many choices,…
A gamp is a marvelous weaving tool. What is a gamp? It’s like a sampler. Rather than threading one pattern, you plan multiple threadings across the warp. As you weave, often (but not always) using multiple treadlings, you get many different combinations of warp and weft. Weavers use gamps to study twill threadings and treadlings, overshot patterns, and, one of my favorites, color interactions. When you thread a color gamp, you thread several colors in a warp-stripe arrangement. It can be anything you would like to try. It could be a gamp of different neutral colors or one with the primary and secondary colors on a color wheel or a rainbow order of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. You could thread a monochromatic gamp in blues going…
STRUCTURE Twill. EQUIPMENT Rigid-heddle loom, 8" weaving width; two 12.5-dent heddles; 2 pick-up sticks; strong, smooth yarn to be used for making string heddles, 12 yd; painter's tape; heddle rod; 2 shuttles. Note: Don’t have 12.5-dent heddles? This scarf could also be woven using 12-dent heddles with a width in the heddle of 8 4⁄12". YARNS Warp: Perth (80% superwash wool/20% nylon; 437 yd/3.5 oz; Queensland Collection), #107 Tasmanian Bay, 134 yd. Heritage (75% superwash wool/25% nylon; 437 yd/3.5 oz; Cascade Yarns), #5706 Grape Juice, 134 yd. Weft: Perth, #107 Tasmanian Bay, 108 yd. Heritage, #5605 Plum, 108 yd. WARP LENGTH 100 ends 96" long (allows 7" for take-up, 19" for loom waste; loom waste includes fringe). SETTS Warp: 12.5 epi. Weft: 12 ppi. DIMENSIONS Width in the heddle: 8".…
STRUCTURE Summer and winter. EQUIPMENT 4-shaft loom, 16" weaving width; 10-dent reed; 2 shuttles; 4–5 bobbins. YARNS Warp: 8/2 unmercerized cotton (3,360 yd/lb; Maurice Brassard), #100 Naturel, 268 yd; #83 Noir, 88 yd; #415 Light Grey, 272 yd. Weft: Tabby: 8/2 unmercerized cotton, #415 Light Grey, 230 yd (for both towels). Pattern: 8/2 unmercerized cotton, Anni towel: #5212 Honey, 96 yd; #100 Naturel and #83 Noir, 8 yd each. Gunta towel: #4616 Peacock Blue, 88 yd; #1316 Rouille, #100 Naturel, and #83 Noir, 8 yd each. Hems: sewing thread, light gray, 16 yd. OTHER SUPPLIES White glue or Fray Check; twill tape (optional for hanging tabs). WARP LENGTH 314 ends 2 yd long (includes floating selvedges; allows 5" for take-up, 22" for loom waste). SETTS Warp: 20 epi (2/dent…
MANY YEARS AGO I THOUGHT I might try production weaving. I had a loom with a sectional warp beam that could hold yards and yards of warp. “I’ll weave rag rugs with lots of different colored fabrics,” I thought, “and each one will be different from the next even though they share the same warp.” I wound a 50-yard warp of natural-colored carpet warp. Fairly quickly, my brilliant idea became the warp of nightmares. After weaving five rugs, I was bored out of my gourd, with more than 40 yards left to weave. I persevered but promised myself to never make that mistake again. Today, I stick with warps 10 to 12 yards long, and I plan carefully to make sure each piece from a warp is different in some…
I LOVE TURNED TWILL. I have used the weave structure in many ways over the years. Not long ago, I was watching an episode of Jane Stafford Textiles’ Online Guild in which Jane shared a silk scarf that had horizontal stripes on one side but not on the other. It seemed like magic. Although the episode was about using graphic designs, and not turned twill, I decided to figure out how to re-create the effect on my own. The key to the magic was in the tie-up and treadling. In traditional two-block turned twill on an eight-shaft loom, block A is threaded on shafts 1 through 4 and block B is threaded on shafts 5 through 8. Four treadles are used to create ⅓ twill in block A and 3/1…
Every once in a while, I feel it’s good to step away from multiple-shaft weaving and let some complexity come from my own two hands. I enjoy sitting quietly at the loom and letting it act like a big embroidery frame. Th is scarf features Danish medallions worked in multiple rows for a fun and colorful border. The white outline around each cell makes me think of a gumdrop that’s just been bitten into. Usually the Danish medallion technique results in a rounded rectangle outline around the woven cells. Th is scarf is sleyed leaving empty dents in the reed. Th is crammed-and-spaced warp allows me to pull the medallion outline yarn a little tighter than on a regularly spaced warp and causes the medallions to become more rounded. RESOURCES…
STRUCTURE Plain weave. EQUIPMENT 2-shaft loom, 24" weaving width; 12-dent reed; 1 shuttle; 7 or more bobbins. YARNS Warp: 10/2 unmercerized cotton (4,200 yd/lb; Georgia Yarn Company), #32 Cherry Red, 352 yd; #36 Hyacinth Violet, 550 yd; #51 Persimmon, 688 yd; #34 Peach, 275 yd; #58 Daffodil, 138 yd; #64 Hemp, 413 yd. Hems: 10/2 unmercerized cotton, Cherry Red, 294 yd. WARP LENGTH 423 working ends (439 threads total) 5. yd long (allows 15" for take-up, 35" for loom waste). SETTS Warp: 18 epi (2-1/dent in a 12-dent reed, except for narrow Cherry Red stripes that are sleyed 3/dent). Weft: body, 12 ppi; hems, 20 ppi. DIMENSIONS Width in the reed: 238⁄12". Woven length: (measured under tension on the loom) 148". Finished size: (after wet-finishing and hemming) four towels, 21"…
STRUCTURE Twill. EQUIPMENT 4-shaft loom, 35" weaving width; 10-dent reed; 1–3 shuttles; 3 bobbins. YARNS Warp: 16/2 cotton (6,720 yd/lb; Maurice Brassard), #100 Naturel, 2,896 yd; #4272 Bleu, 452 yd; #1317 Saumon, 472 yd; #415 Gris Pâle, 328 yd. Weft: Lyte Hemp Fine (100% hemp, 5,000 yd/lb; Lunatic Fringe Yarns), Bleached or Periwinkle, 1,220 yd; 16/2 bamboo (6,720 yd/lb; Maurice Brassard), #BB8021 Cactus, 1,420 yd; #BB5229 Viel Or, 27 yd; #BB5977 Bleu Moyen, 18 yd. WARP LENGTH 1,037 ends 4 yd long (includes floating selvedges; allows 11" for take-up, 35" for loom waste and sampling). Allow 54" warp length for each additional blanket. SETTS Warp: 30 epi (3/dent in a 10-dent reed). Weft: Hemp, 24 ppi; bamboo, 28 ppi. DIMENSIONS Width in the reed: 347/10". Woven length: (measured under tension…
INSPIRATION IS A FUNNY THING. We’ve all experienced it in one way or another. For me, some moments of inspiration are clear as day in my memory, like the first time I walked into a gallery and stood in front of a Seurat … all those tiny dots! Other sources of inspiration seem to have snuck into my subconscious and created longer-lasting impact, such as growing up in a home where weaving was the central focus for my father, Tom Knisely. Weaving inspiration was not lacking in our house, and of course, some rubbed off on me, but sadly, not his passion for rugs. Don’t get me wrong; I’m a woman who finds the beauty in utilitarian objects, but rugs oft en lack the pizzazz I crave as a maker.…
Many weavers are taught to wind warps one end at a time when they are first learning to weave. It’s an obvious way to create a set of threads that are all the same length. However, winding one end at a time makes for slow warp-winding, especially as you progress to longer and wider warps. Solution? Wind your warps with two (or more) ends at a time! This is not a new idea—very little in weaving is—and many weavers do it. I’ll explore how to do it successfully as well as some of the design possibilities it opens. PRACTICAL ISSUES First, let’s address the question of how to wind a good warp with multiple ends in hand. The threads of a well-wound warp are equal in length, meaning the same…
Rayon is a type of fiber made from cellulosic plant substances (such as wood pulp) that are chemically processed into a filament. Chenille refers to a subset of yarn created with tightly twisted core threads that trap short lengths (pile threads) in the twists. Think of it like a pipe cleaner but with a softer core. Chenille can be made from many types of fibers, but rayon chenille, made from viscose, has the lustrous appearance that I love. CHENILLE’S CONSTRUCTION AND CHARACTERISTICS Understanding the yarn’s construction is critical to successfully weaving rayon chenille fabric. The sett is based on the size of the core thread rather than the width of the pile threads. Why? The pile threads get mashed down and do not contribute to the integrity of the woven…
RECENTLY, A FRIEND GIFTED ME her multicolored stash of rug wool. After weaving three striped rugs in plain weave, I decided it was time to branch out. Looking for inspiration, I came across an article for a saddle blanket by Clotilde Barrett in the July 1976 issue of The Weaver’s Journal. Barrett was born in Belgium in 1932 and moved to the United States in 1955. After coming here, she studied art, maintained a pottery studio, and received an MA degree from Northwestern University in 1967. In 1976, she started a quarterly journal for weavers, The Weaver’s Journal, and published it for eight years. The saddle blanket pattern was published in the first issue of the magazine. While there was enough information in the original article to get started, plus…
STRUCTURE Plain weave and huck with color-and-weave. EQUIPMENT Towels: 4-shaft loom, 21" weaving width; 12-dent reed; 2–4 shuttles; 4 bobbins. Optional hanging tabs: inkle loom; belt shuttle. YARNS Towels: Warp: 8/2 cotton (3,360 yd/lb; Georgia Yarn Company), Natural, 1,490 yd. 8/2 cotton (3,360 yd/lb; Valley Yarns; WEBS), #2574 Heather, 72 yd; #6394 Royal Lilac, 36 yd; #8799 Pearl Grey, 54 yd. 8/2 cotton A (3,360 yd/lb; UKI; Yarn Barn of Kansas), #04 Plum Green, 36 yd. Weft: 8/2 cotton (Georgia Yarn Company), Natural 1,288 yd. 8/2 cotton (Valley Yarns), #2574 Heather, 177 yd; #6394 Royal Lilac, 54 yd; #8799 Pearl Grey, 32 yd. 8/2 cotton A (UKI), #04 Plum Green, 55 yd. Hanging tabs: Warp: 8/2 cotton (Georgia Yarn Company), Natural, 16 yd. 8/2 cotton (Valley Yarns), #2574 Heather, 10…
A FRIEND ASKED ME TO WEAVE A BIRTHDAY GIFT for her mother-in-law, who is a gardener and, as such, loves garden colors. This made me think of greens, yellows, and reds, but just as I was about to start winding a warp, a mutual friend told me that the mother-in-law also loved natural birch bark. That made me wonder if I could create the illusion of birch bark in a woven piece. To get my color palette I studied birch bark images online as well as my own photographs (I also love birch bark). I decided that a mixture of silver gray and natural white 8/2 cotton arranged in random order would best represent the background colors. For the weft I chose a cotton bouclé. I believe the bouclé adds…
2016 Weaving Teachers of The Year The votes have been counted, the nomination essays have been read, and the staff of Handwoven is happy to announce that our 2016 Weaving Teachers of the Year are Joyce Robards and Jochen Ditterich. Both Joyce and Jochen will receive grants generously donated by Halcyon Yarn to help them further their teaching and weaving. After learning about her new title as 2016 Weaving Teacher of the Year, Joyce answered a few questions about her weaving journey and what she loves about teaching. (Stay tuned for the March/April 2016 issue for a feature on Jochen.) Joyce, who teaches primarily at the Weavers’ Guild of Rochester’s Weaving and Fiber Arts Center, began her teaching career as a public school art teacher. A lover of textile work…
STRUCTURE Plain weave with supplemental warp and weft. EQUIPMENT 8-shaft loom, 16" weaving width; 10- or 15-dent reed; 2 shuttles; 4 bobbins. YARN Placemats: Warp: 5/2 pearl cotton (2,100 yd/lb; Valley Yarns; WEBS), #1089 Alabaster, 574 yd. 5/2 pearl cotton (2,100 yd/lb; UKI), #107 Melon, 112 yd. 5/2 pearl cotton hand-dyed (2,100 yd/lb; Tabby Tree Weaver), Peach Harvest, 140 yd. Weft: 5/2 pearl cotton (Valley Yarns), #1089 Alabaster, 519 yd. 5/2 cotton (UKI), #107 Melon, 96 yd. 5/2 pearl cotton hand-dyed (Tabby Tree Weaver), Peach Harvest, 128 yd. 10/2 pearl cotton (4,200 yd/lb; UKI), #107 Melon or sewing thread in a similar color, 78 yd for hems. Runner: Warp: 5/2 cotton (Valley Yarns), #1089 Alabaster, 297 yd. 5/2 pearl cotton (UKI), #107 Melon, 88 yd. 5/2 pearl cotton hand-dyed (Tabby…
STRUCTURE Plain weave with overshot inlay. EQUIPMENT 4-shaft loom, 18" weaving width; 10-dent reed; 2 shuttles; 1 stick shuttle (optional). YARNS Warp: 5/2 pearl cotton (2,100 yd/lb; UKI), #075 Cobalt Blue, 1,017 yd. Weft: Plain weave and tabby: 5/2 pearl cotton, #075 Cobalt Blue, 356 yd. Pattern: 3/2 pearl cotton (1,260 yd/lb, Tubular Spectrum, Lunatic Fringe Yarns), #10 Yellow Red, #10 Yellow, #10 Green, and Violet, 20 yd each. WARP LENGTH 339 ends 3 yd long (includes floating selvedges; allows 20" for sampling, 5" for take-up, 35" for loom waste; loom waste includes fringe). SETTS Warp: 20 epi (2/dent in 10-dent reed). Weft: 14 ppi in plain-weave; 28 ppi in pattern. DIMENSIONS Width in the reed: 171/10". Woven length: (measured under tension on the loom) 48". Finished size: (after wet-finishing)…
CREATING CIRCLES—OR EVEN CURVES—is a wonderful challenge for weavers. Some weave structures, such as deflected doubleweave, free the warp and weft to move after weaving by combining tightly woven areas with long floats. On the other hand, shadow weave is almost completely plain weave, so it is solid and stable. With a light/dark alternation of threads in both the warp and the weft, the pattern emerges when two-thread skips change the lines of contrast from vertical to horizontal and back again. Shadow-weave forms appear to curve but have very short skips and a tight structure. As long as you maintain the light/dark alternation, you can design with any number of colors. In this piece, my dark color was always black, and I used four different light colors. You can use…
To celebrate my son’s achievements as a pilot, I wanted to design and weave a piece that recognized his experiences with sailplanes and motorized aircraft. I developed the woven image from a photograph of the glider on the ground at a gliderport in Elmira, New York. After extracting the plane and reducing the colors, I rotated the figure so that the plane appeared to be flying. The dragonfly represents the logo of the glider model, a vintage German “Libelle” or dragonfly. The number is the tail number specific to that plane. The weaving itself defies easy classification; though it is a woven graphic, it’s not a tapestry. Instead, I wove it on a single-unit drawloom. My first attempt in damask failed to allow for the shading needed to make the…
STRUCTURE Twill. EQUIPMENT 8-shaft loom, 24" weaving width; 12-dent reed; 1 shuttle; 1 bobbin. YARNS Warp: 8/2 cotton (3,360 yd/lb; Valley Yarns; WEBS), #3599 Lollipop, #7198 Burnt Sienna, and #3794 Burgundy, 220 yd each; #4425 Orange, #7327 Tobacco, #1382 Spectra Yellow, #5792 Lime, and #5468 Stone Green, 230 yd each; #5424 Turquoise Green, #2550 Nautical, #2636 Navy, and #6290 Petunia, 240 yd each. Weft: 8/2 cotton, #8001 White, 1,975 yd. WARP LENGTH 554 ends 5 yd long (allows for 14" take up, 26" for loom waste). SETTS Warp: 24 epi (2/dent in a 12-dent reed). Weft: 20 ppi. DIMENSIONS Width in reed: 231/12". Woven length: (measured under tension on the loom) 140". Finished size: (after wet-finishing and hemming) four towels, 18¾" × 24½" each plus 11" sample swatch. For the…
The opportunity to explore some of the delights of the Manos del Uruguay yarn line was a treat, to say the least. The yarns are gorgeous, but the fact that Manos del Uruguay is a fair-trade nonprofit cooperative, founded and run by women, makes using the yarn a special treat indeed. All the yarns at Manos are hand-dyed by artisans in workshops throughout Uruguay’s countryside. Each artisan is a co-owner of the company, and any profits are reinvested in the company and the local community—even better! THE YARNS Maxima (1,000 yd/lb; 100% merino) Manos del Uruguay, distributed by Fairmount Fibers, 79 colorways. Fino (2,225 yd/lb; 70% superfine merino/30% silk), Manos del Uruguay, distributed by Fairmount Fibers, 43 colorways. I love weaving with singles because they often add a little “twist”…
