Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2019 i Handwoven

DEFLECTED DOUBLEWEAVE and its many variations have risen in popularity in recent years. It can be successfully woven in heavy fibers such as wool for the northern winter months as well as woven in very fine fibers such as silk, Tencel, or bamboo for warmer times. Deflected doubleweave is a weave for all seasons in my book, but the appeal is so much more than that. It’s been around for a long time, and there are many publications on the subject. In my own weaving, I’ve found that the unique properties of deflected doubleweave, once understood, can be used to create some truly wonderful complex cloth. THE BASICS While you can weave simple deflected doubleweave on four shafts, it has the most design potential on eight or more shafts. When…

A COLLEAGUE AND HIS WIFE RECENTLY had their third child. Just before finding out that a new baby was on the way, he had painted the study dark olive green. This was the room needed for the nursery, and he made it very clear that he was not going to paint the room again. Instead, they combined the dark green with aqua and pink to create a rather unusual palette for a baby girl’s nursery. I decided to make them a baby blanket using Egyptian cotton for its lovely softness as well as its durability. I also wanted a strong surface texture and picked a draft in modified four-block huck to create raised circles that little fingers could play with. I chose pale gray-green and light and dark olive green…

DESIGNING TWILL CIRCLES should be easy—right? Not so much, as I found while working on drafts for this project. Beginning with some eight-shaft options, I put on a 3-yard sample warp and tried four different threadings and many treadlings, all to no avail. I guess if you squint and hold your head to the side, they look like circles, but the floats are far too long to be practical for towels. After several weeks of tweaking the draft with weaving software that didn’t result in anything worthwhile, I started over with a new four-shaft draft that I came upon during a guild workshop, “The Thrill of a Twill,” with Robyn Spady. Initially, the floats were too long for towels, but by making some adjustments in both the threading and treadling,…

MY FASCINATION WITH STRUCTURE AND COLOR guides my design process. I begin with one of these elements and it often helps me to determine the other. Lately, I find myself fascinated with weaving curves, so I’ve experimented with deflected doubleweave, lace weaves, and advancing twills. However, there is nothing quite like the flowing curves that can be woven with networked twills. Since beginning to explore eight-shaft networked drafts, I have had fun creating designs that are almost floral, or that produce small ovals and waves. When I experiment with color, I am often rewarded with unexpected and delightful effects, and this is especially true with networked drafts. I frequently use two closely related colors in my warps to add depth and richness to the color, but inspired by the work…

PROJECT DIRECTORY Levels indicate weaving skills, not sewing skills. AB = Advanced Beginner, I = Intermediate, A = Advanced, “All levels” includes very new weavers. RH = Rigid-heddle loom. SUPPLIERS Brassard, Maurice, et Fils, 1573 Savoie, C. P. 4, Plessisville, QC, Canada G6L 2Y6, (819) 362-2408, www.mbrassard.com (Lange-McKibben 30–32). Eugene Textile Center, 1510 Jacobs Dr., Eugene, OR 97402, (541) 688-1565, www.eugenetextilecenter.com (Fox 22–24). Halcyon Yarn, 12 School St., Bath, ME 04530, (800) 341-0282, www.halcyonyarn.com (Porter 46–49). Jagger Spun, 5 Water St., Springvale, ME 04083, (207) 324-4455, (800) 225-8023, www.jaggeryarn.com (Taylor 42–45). JoAnn Fabric and Craft Stores, (888) 739-4120, www.joann.com (Buchanan 60–62). Michaels, (800) 642-4235, www.michaels.com (Earthly 38–40). Premier Yarns, www.premieryarns.com (Buchanan 60–62). Silk City Fibers, 155 Oxford St., Patterson, NJ 07522, www.silkcityfibers.com (Buchanan 60–62). Treenway Silks, 2060 Miller Ct., Lakewood,…

WHEN I WAS SIX, I WANTED TO KNIT like my mother, sew like my grandmother, read constantly like my father, write stories, play piano, and bake. I still do. I suspect the same is true of you. Your passions may not be the piano or baking, but you likely have deep-seated attachment to the things that make you who you are. The roots of these desires are anyone’s guess. My family didn’t even own a piano. When I started learning to play—a grade two extracurricular activity—I got a foldout cardboard keyboard. There were no writers in the family either, but at six, I demanded a printing set with wooden letters so I could write a book. The textile connection began with embroidery: a book from the library, 10-cent white cotton…

ITALY HAS A LONG HISTORY of exquisite textiles, so when my husband, Marty, suggested Italy as a vacation destination in 2018, I immediately started researching weaving-related excursions. A Facebook post by Venetian atelier Tessitura Luigi Bevilacqua, which specializes in handwoven velvet, caught my eye. Destiny! I contacted the studio, arranged a tour, and recruited Marty as my photographer. Tessitura Luigi Bevilacqua’s main entrance is on the Grand Canal in Venice and accessible only by water taxi. Per their directions, we took the vaporetto (water bus) to the Riva de Biasio stop and wound our way on foot to the back entrance into the weaving studio. “Streets” in Venice are narrow walkways winding between the closely packed buildings. After missing our last turn and backtracking, we found the unassuming entrance tucked…

MY FATHER ALWAYS TOLD ME that there were two things guaranteed in life: death and taxes. Nobody likes paying taxes, and making decisions regarding end-of-life issues is uncomfortable for many people. Young people do not seem to think about their own mortality, while older people, such as myself, start to think about it frequently. You ask yourself what kind of end-of-life service you would prefer: a traditional funeral with a viewing and burial, or maybe cremation and a lovely celebration-of-life ceremony? Until recently, these were the only options that I knew to exist. However, while vending at a Mother Earth News conference, I was introduced to a rather new alternative to burial or cremation: the green burial. I find it amusing that there is nothing new about this sort of…

MONK’S BELT IS A SEEMINGLY SIMPLE STRUCTURE: a block weave, woven with a supplementary weft on a plain-weave background on four shafts. Although monk’s belt is known for its simplicity, more complex structures can be created with it as the base. One way to add complexity is with inlay, which I chose to do on this table runner. To signify power, wealth, and knowledge, I used gold and red as my accent colors for both the traditional monk’s belt borders and the inlay motifs. 1 Wind 362 warp threads, 3½ yd long, following the warp color order, Figure 1. Measure 2 additional ends of Desert Sand for floating selvedges and set them aside. Use your preferred method to warp the loom following the warp color order in Figure 1 and…

I WAS AN AVID CROCHETER AND KNITTER for many years until tendinosis made crocheting and knitting too painful for me to continue. Then I bought a rigid-heddle loom. To my delight, I found that weaving is relaxing, it doesn’t aggravate my tendinosis, and it allows me to indulge my fiber obsession. At the Southern California Handweavers’ Guild annual Weaving and Fiber Festival, aka WEFF, I saw a woman wearing a poncho… or was it a shawl? And was that a twist? I stalked her through the hall trying to figure it out; then I gave up and just asked her about it. I tracked down the pattern in Handwoven’s Design Collection #19. And to be honest, it was quite daunting: 522 ends! 6 shafts! 10 yarn colors! I work full-time…

A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, after decades of weaving, I realized that I had never tried M’s and O’s. I had always thought of it as an all-white fabric and, at my house, anything all white has a negligible life expectancy. But I’m also a naturalist and tend to leave no stone unturned when looking for something I haven’t yet seen. I decided that I should make a few (non-white) items and discover what can be done with this classic weave structure. The draft for this scarf is from Marguerite Porter Davison’s A Handweaver’s Pattern Book: “M’s and O’s Three by Three Plaid,” page 64. Davison seems unimpressed by the design, saying the “threading shows the difficulty in making designs on this threading.…” Fortunately, I played with the draft before…

ONE OF THE BENEFITS OF GUILD MEMBERSHIP is the opportunity to help other guild members with fun projects. Joan and Barry Cotter along with Phyllis Murray of the Dallas Handweavers and Spinners Guild asked me to help them by weaving for a research project about the work of Marli Ehrman. Joan and Barry had found an industry-woven placemat designed by Ehrman and owned by a friend of Ehrman, who generously shared the piece for analysis. Phyllis analyzed the weave structure, and with just a few minor tweaks, we were able to closely re-create the placemat’s structure. I used cotton, linen, rayon, and metallic silver yarns in similar sizes to the original yarns in the mat to weave an updated, fresher and brighter version. The combination of thick and thin, shiny…

A SALUTE TO WEAVING TEACHERS Members of the Contemporary Handweavers of Houston (CHH) celebrating their 70th anniversary in 2019 salute the teachers of CHH for their exemplary and inspiring teaching of fiber-related artwork. The teachers are the “warp, weft, and selvedge” of the guild, which makes CHH a great “temple” for learning fiber art. We give them our sincere thanks. More information about the guild can be found at www.weavehouston.org. HANDWOVEN ON VACATION A while ago, we asked readers to send us photos of themselves on vacation with Handwoven. Here is just one of our favorites! Not only do I take Handwoven on most vacations, I usually take a loom as well. My 27-inch Louet Jane loom and my inkle loom are both well traveled. This year in June, the…

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…

WEAVING GUILDS AND THEIR STUDY GROUPS are great resources for expanding your weaving knowledge and pushing your boundaries. I belong to a weaving study group that chooses a book to study for a year, or as much time as needed for that particular weave structure. We meet every other month, which gives us time to study and weave between meetings. This year’s choice, Honeycomb Hybrids by Stacey Harvey-Brown, especially inspired me. I wove a sample for each chapter and found the last chapter on turned honeycomb held my interest enough to want to pursue it further. Winding the warp is a bit time-consuming because of the many color changes, but weaving with just one shuttle is the frosting on the cake. Repeating the warp colors in the weft is an…

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…

THE INSPIRATION FOR THIS SCARF comes from the big, fluffy snowflakes that we get at this time of year in Colorado. A draft in a Robin and Russ book (See Resources) from the 1970s by Russell E. Groff looked like snowflakes to me and became the basis for the design. For the warp, I combined two matte yarn blends in their natural colors: gray (silk/yak) and tan (silk/camel), with shiny white silk yarn to create subtle stripes. Warp floats of silk create the snowflake motifs on the front, while on the reverse, the snowflakes look more like ovals of tan and gray weft floats. On the loom, the snowflakes didn’t show very much on the surface, especially in the lighter stripes, but after wet-finishing, they became more visible and almost…

The qualities of silk have long been cherished. Long, lustrous fibers define the usual description of silk. Defying tradition, GIST Yarn & Fiber’s Italian Silk Noil, drawn from the broken lengths of reeled silk, is a three-ply, loosely spun yarn that travels a different road to warm, soft, textured fabrics. THE YARN: GIST Italian Silk Noil 1,450 yd/lb; about 575 yd/6 oz skein (skeins vary in weight); 100% silk noil. GIST Italian Silk Noil is a thick three-ply yarn with a gentle twist that invites the use of color and texture in weaving. The yarn is relatively soft—it can be pulled apart by hand—and comes in 11 different colors. When weaving with Texsolv heddles, there was no breakage or abrasion. When weaving with metal heddles, one end did abrade; however,…