Handwoven May/June 2023

Recently, I was reminded of the importance of repetition and hard work. For my granddaughter’s first birthday party, her mother wanted to make macarons, those colorful sandwich cookies. I suggested buying them and even offered to pay, but Malinda stood firm; she wanted to learn to do this. She baked four batches before deciding their oven wasn’t reliable and asking to use our kitchen. One afternoon, I watched as she studied the instructions again, whipped the room-temperature eggs to just the right stiffness, and folded in other ingredients. With each pan, she adjusted the oven’s temperature and the baking time and reviewed her results when the shells came out of the oven. To my unpracticed eye, they looked fine. Malinda, however, saw characteristics that weren’t up to her standards, and…

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2023 The “Escences” of Weaving Opalescence, iridescence, and luminescence can make a fabric sing with color and light. We will focus on techniques for creating one or more of these effects, whether with structure, color placement, yarn choice, or a combination of all three. NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2023 Venn Diagrams Based on anecdotal evidence, we believe many weavers are also bird-watchers, gardeners, and great cooks. This issue will be filled with projects and articles that show how our designers and authors express, or perhaps accessorize, their other passions, occupations, and hobbies with weaving. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 Bast and Friends For our first issue in 2024, we will look at bast and other plant-based fibers—alone, in yarn blends, or combined with other types of yarns. The issue will include articles about plant-based fibers,…

Heirloom Refresh In late 2019, I inherited my mother-in-law’s loom. Soon after, I was taking lessons at the Rochester Weaving and Fiber Arts Center. Then, in 2022, a donated 600-thread, 5-yard warp got me thinking of another heirloom from the same lady: an extra-wide dining room table. On it was a mismatched 80-year-old tablecloth that was plenty long but not nearly wide enough. A modified Handwoven pattern from November/December 2010 resulted in this lovely extra-wide, 120-inch tablecloth with sewn-in woven runner. Just in time for Christmas! —Jane Andrews Color Coding Heddles I just read Tom Knisely’s great article about heddle management (Handwoven November/December 2022). A tip about Texsolv heddles: If you color code these heddles (by dipping them into very diluted acrylic paint), it makes it even easier to see…

Color Cards Find a rainbow of possibilities in the Playing with Color Cards from Lunatic Fringe Yarns. The pack includes 44 color cards, one for each color in the Tubular Spectrum collection plus 6 value-viewing cards. One side of each color card shows the color in its full glory, and the other side features a color wheel, Pantone number, the color’s value, and coordinating colors in Tubular Spectrum and in the company’s other cotton color lines. lunaticfringeyarns.com Open-Top Reed Level up your creativity with The Open Reed, made and trademarked by RealFibers. Constructed from industrial stainless steel with a removable top edge, this reed allows you to move your ends as you weave to create various spacing effects in your warp. The reeds measure 4. inches in height and can…

Many of us turn to books and workshops on color, not only for inspiration but also to learn how to improve our use of color in our weaving projects. Recker’s latest book, Deep Color: The Shades That Shape Our Souls, takes us to a far deeper exploration of the meaning and messages embedded in color and how these influence our personal preferences and our reactions to art, culture, politics, history, and marketing. After reading Recker’s introduction and the first chapter, “Black,” curiosity made me jump to the eighth chapter in the book, “Blue,” simply because it is my favorite color. Blue invokes a strong emotional reaction in me, whether it be to the perfect blue of a hydrangea flower, a deep indigo-dyed fabric, or a cone of cornflower-blue yarn. Recker…

In The Enigma of Shadow Weave Illuminated, Rebecca Winter guides us through the ins and outs of this mysterious weave. The book starts with a thorough overview of the history of shadow weave as developed by Mary Meigs Atwater and built upon by Marian Powell. As someone whose historical knowledge of shadow weave was limited to the Atwater and Powell drafting methods, I appreciated this historical context. Winter continues with a detailed description of shadow weave’s characteristics, most importantly the combination of pinstripe-patterned plain-weave areas with feather-stitched areas of two-thread floats. These characteristics naturally lead to several design considerations presented in the next chapter. These first chapters are a joy to read, especially when you can link the information to any existing knowledge of shadow weave. If you’re unfamiliar with…