Innholdsfortegnelse for November - December 2017 i Handwoven

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, put forth the theory that it takes ten thousand hours of deliberate practice to become an expert in a field. His theory has since been challenged, and he himself has clarified it to underscore that his main point was that a huge amount of practicing is necessary for natural ability to show itself. That certainly seems true when it comes to weaving. You may start with some strong abilities in fiber arts and design, but there are many hours to be spent before you will feel confident as a weaver. Weaving theory and practice seems to be an ever-fluid body of knowledge that draws from history even as changes in technology pull it forward and in different directions. We know of the weaving giants…

Barberini Tapestries Head West Designed by the famous Baroque painter Giovanni Francesco Romanelli and woven in the mid-seventeenth century for Cardinal Francesco Barberini, the famed Barberini tapestries are now on display at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum at the University of Oregon as part of the exhibit titled The Barberini Tapestries: Woven Monuments of Baroque Rome. The exhibit will run until January 21 and features the Life of Christ series as well as rare books and other objects from the seventeenth century. From the very beginning, the tapestries were designed to be impressive works of art. Rather than sending the designs to one of the many tapestry houses of the era, Cardinal Barberini had them woven by specially selected weavers in his personal tapestry workshop. For the next two hundred years…

Overshot is a miracle of design potential on only four shafts. Somewhere, sometime long ago, a weaver looked at 2/2 twill and said: What if I add a tabby weft and repeat each two-thread pair for longer floats? Incredible patterns evolved, shared by colonial weavers with each other on small pieces of precious paper. Luckily, many of these drafts were saved and have become part of our weaving literature. In some of the older sources, the drafting format looks very confusing. Here is a guide to using them. In the days when paper was hard to come by and writing was done by dipping a quill in ink, draft ing formats for weaving were as abbreviated as possible. Overshot patterns are so elaborate that they can’t be communicated by words…

Of those included in a hypothetical listing of “Who’s Who: Great Weavers of the Twentieth Century,” three stand out for their exemplary technical skills and their innovative ideas: Stanislaw Zielinski (1909–1974), Peter Collingwood (1922–2008), and David Xenakis (born 1944). Although separated by decades and distance, each of these weaving heroes share an interesting number of life experiences and characteristics, such as a keen interest in math and science. Xenakis trained as a classical pianist, while Collingwood typically traveled with his wooden flute. Zielinski and Xenakis both published long-lived weaving magazines (Zielinski published Master Weaver, and Xenakis created both The Prairie Wool Companion and Weaver’s) that continue to be important resources and repositories of innovative ideas and projects. Zielinski wrote the Encyclopaedia of Hand-Weaving, and Collingwood, The Techniques of Rug Weaving,…

In the late 1970s, I was taking my first steps in weaving on a small rigid-heddle loom. There wasn’t much information available for rigid-heddle weaving, and, of course, no Internet, YouTube, or chat groups. When Betty Davenport published Textures and Patterns for the Rigid Heddle Loom in 1980, I felt that she had opened a golden door for exploring the potential of my loom. Today, rigid-heddle weavers have many useful books, magazines, and digital materials, but as valuable as all these resources are, we still owe a debt of gratitude to Davenport for her pioneering, inspiring work. I now have a shelf of rigid-heddle literature, but I still enjoy paging through my well-worn copy of Textures and Patterns. I designed these towels remembering the fun I had discovering the pattern…

W hen I was learning to weave, I knew that one day I would try my hand at overshot. I also knew I needed to learn to walk before I could run, so I wove a lot of plain weave and twills before taking the plunge. To buy yarn for my first overshot pattern, I went to The Mannings Handweaving School and Supply Center. Knowing that I was new to the structure, Tom Knisley helped me select a Shetland wool rather than the expensive merino I was contemplating. Th at yarn started my adventure in overshot, which continues to this day. In 2011, I came across Weaving Designs by Bertha Gray Hayes: Miniature Overshot Patterns, a beautiful book based primarily on ninety-two draft s developed by Bertha Gray Hayes. Weaving…

January/February 2018 Eco Yarns From hemp and organic cotton to locally produced wool and recycled fibers, today’s weavers have a vast array of eco?friendly materials available. We celebrate eco?friendly producers and the weavers who choose them. March/April 2018 Cultural Traditions Cloth has long been used to proclaim our family and community origins. What group do you belong to, and how does your cloth tell its story? This issue will feature projects inspired by community traditions and by our groups of choice. May/June 2018 Weaving Inspiration Where do you go for design ideas? Do you weave from nature? Are you inspired by music or art? Does color get your creative juices flowing? In this issue, designing weavers will show us their inspirations.…

For seventy years, the Fort Wayne Weavers’ Guild has traveled the road of weaving and fiber arts. To commemorate this anniversary, there will be a special exhibit at the Midwest Weavers Conference and at the Fort Wayne History Center. The exhibit, 70 Years on the Road “Weave” Traveled, features handwovens organized by decade and focused on re-creating highlighted programs of the Fort Wayne Shuttlecraft Guild during its meeting history. Each era of the exhibit is analogous to having a handwoven time capsule. Works in the exhibit feature crackle, swivel, Atwater designs, Collingwood corduroy, kuvakas, lace, overshot, transparencies, kasuri, collapse, and echo and iris weaves. Three-dimensional works include bags, a friendship pillow, temari balls, and animals. In 1947, the Fort Wayne Shuttlecraft Guild, a group of about thirty people from several…

W hen I received a gift of several cones of vintage Lily 4/4 cotton, my first thought was “baby blanket.” Not plain weave, though; I wanted some pattern. I considered bird’s-eye but then remembered goose-eye, which I hadn’t thought of in years. I looked for it in some standard modern references such as Anne Dixon’s The Handweaver’s Pattern Directory, and even went back to the 1969 edition of Heather Thorpe’s A Handweaver’s Workbook, but couldn’t find it. In the end, I found the draft I was looking for in the first edition of Key to Weaving by Mary E. Black. Th at book was my grandmother’s textbook in 1945 when she bought a brand-new Union 36 loom and joined a weaving guild in Washington, D.C. According to a statement at…

Harriet Tidball was one of the publishers of the Shuttle-Craft Guild Bulletin from 1946 until 1957, when Mary Black and Joyce Chown took it over. She also authored many books with topics from weaving fundamentals through doubleweave and much more. She is truly an icon of weaving and someone whose work I’ve long admired. In looking through a 1951 issue of the Shuttle-Craft Guild Bulletin, I was impressed with an article on openwork weaves that she describes as weaves in which the weaver “distorts the position of warp or weft threads so that small holes or eyelets are formed in the fabric.” These include eyelet, bouquet, and leno weaves, which are perfect for the rigid-heddle loom. For this project, I chose a variation of an eyelet weave that Tidball called…

When designing this project, I happily stood on the shoulders of Bertha Gray Hayes. Her inspiring life story and legacy of delicate and varied miniature overshot draft s make her one of my favorite “giants.” Albert Einstein coined the term “combinatory play” to describe creatively connecting and combining thoughts and ideas, and Bertha Gray Hayes, an Einstein contemporary, was a master at combinatory play. She created scores of inspiring patterns with beautiful motifs using four-shaft combinations. Rather than choosing only one of her beautiful draft s, I decided to use a technique I found in a book by Doramay Keasbey for combining two overshot draft s, using shaft s 1 to 4 for one draft and shaft s 5 to 8 for the second. (See Resources.) Each pick creates pattern…

It took two steps to convert the Prim Rose draft to our modern standard usage. The first was to change it from Weaver Rose’s numbering system to ours. He numbered the warp threads in order in short blocks, beginning at the left . We write the warp number on the draft on the line that corresponds to the shaft number and usually start at the right. Compare his overshot draft on page 58 to the converted version, Figure 1. The second step was to change his asymmetrical overshot pattern to a symmetrical one. Asymmetry was common in the 1800s, but contemporary weavers prefer symmetry. Th is involves understanding the pattern blocks of overshot and recognizing how many ends in each block will make it symmetrical around a center block. I…

NEW USE FOR DISH TOWELS Each Christmas, my cousins receive a new dish towel from my loom, but this year, my Oklahoma cousin sent a special request to please send a towel to Emma, her three-year-old granddaughter. It seems Emma sneaks Grandma’s handwoven dish towels out when visiting (they live next door). The towels are just perfect for Emma’s dolls and doll crib. So when the towel drawer is empty, my cousin must reclaim possession of her towels from Emma. Ah! Let the imagination of a three-year-old child play with all those handwoven remnants of your stash that are too precious to discard. Lu Terock, via email SOME WORDS ON ELSE REGENSTEINER I noted with interest that the November/December 2017 Handwoven will feature Else Regensteiner, among other “heroes of weaving.”…

Loveland, Colorado: Thrums. 2017, paperback, 137 pages, $24.95, ISBN 978-0- 9984523-5-7. Secrets of Spinning, Weaving, and Knitting in the Peruvian Highlands Nilda Callañaupa Alvarez and the Weavers of the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco Nilda Callanaupa Alvarez helped found the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco (CTTC) and, as its director, she works to promote Andean textiles and techniques to people throughout the world. She’s helped create a market for these beautiful textiles and has encouraged weavers from around the world to learn from the masters in Peru. In her new book, Alvarez brings the highlands of Peru and the traditional spinners, weavers, and knitters to the reader. More than just eye candy (although there is plenty of that), her book teaches the reader how to spin, weave, knit,…

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A Weaver’s Book of 8-Shaft Patterns, edited by Carol Strickler, explains various weave structures and is considered a contemporary must-have for weavers of all skill levels. I bought this book out of curiosity before I even owned an eight-shaft loom. Twill has always been a favorite structure of mine for its diverse design possibilities, even on four-shaft looms. I was intrigued by this block twill draft in Strickler’s book while preparing a presentation on twill weave variations, and I have wanted to interpret it using yarns of my choice ever since. According to Strickler, to weave a basic block-twill structure, two twill blocks are used on two sets of shaft s (i.e., block A on shaft s 1 to 4 and block B on shaft s 5 to 8). Each…

Ever since Susan Wilson presented a three-day workshop on crackle weave to the Central Oregon Spinners and Weavers Guild last year, I’ve been hooked on crackle. Our guild library has lots of great resources, including Mary Meigs Atwater’s Recipe Book and The Shuttle- Craft Book of American Hand-Weaving. These two publications plus the many Atwater publications I discovered on www.handweaving.net have taken me on a great journey through twentieth-century weaving draft s. The draft called A Modern Arrangement caught my eye with its geometric design that reminded me of row houses or storefronts from mid-twentieth-century small-town America. Th is was a crackle different from any I’d woven before, and I liked the vertical lines created by the 2-3-2 and 3-4-3 repeats in the crackle block threadings. The textures are similar…

Overshot is oft en associated with colonial coverlets, but in the hands of Bertha Gray Hayes, it took on a decidedly fresh, modern, twentieth-century twist. Hayes (1878–1947) lived in Providence, Rhode Island. For her day job, she worked as a clerk, as many women of the time did, and wove on her little Structo loom in the evenings. I imagine her as a humble clerk by day, weaving superhero by night. She created at least seventy-two sample cards with threading draft s and woven samples of her designs in miniature overshot—many of them clearly influenced by life during two world wars and the Depression—with names like Turntable, Bomber Flight, and Stars of Victory. Some were name draft s, including ones that I imagine were distractions when she was hospitalized: Gastric…

Milk or casein fiber shimmers like silk. Also like silk, it takes both acid and fiber-reactive dyes, but the colors don’t fade—even after wear and repeated machine washing. THE YARN: Bellatrista Milk Yarn; 400 m/100 g, 2,960 yd/lb; 100% milk fiber. Invented in Italy in the 1930s, the process for manufacturing milk fiber is similar to the lyocell process for producing viscose rayon from plant pulp. The fiber is made from dairy milk, and it takes about 12 gallons of milk to make a pound of fiber. Because the casein (milk protein) is extracted from dehydrated milk solids, mills can use waste milk that is spoiled or contaminated and not fit for consumption. The milk is first dewatered, and the casein is dissolved in an alkali solution. The solution is…