Finally! Weaving!!!!

 February 22, 2012

I finally finished my piece that has been on the loom bars since before the car accident in November.  And I have also warped up a piece for dbl wft dbl wf (embedded double weave).

Here is the simple warp float piece from November.  I just had no inspiration at all and wanted to see if I could manage to weave with the injury to the shoulder.  However, I do love simple warp floats and the colors here just pop against one another.  I did do something new and leave the stripes inside the motif, and warp floats galore on the outside.  Just simple diamond's but good practice.  All in all I am pleased.

 It will be made into an envelope bag.  Here I did a test run of the folding.

The dbl wv is in bright white and charcoal gray...so far I have only done my signature heart as I have two commissions for pine needle baskets I had to get a start on.  No pics of those in the other thread as they will be as close to the first one that the lady saw as possible.  Boring, but money is money, I am glad for the work at all.

As for this weaving, I have 19 pattern threads (after creating border's that hide the weft well) and am trying to decide on whether to do something of my own in motif or maybe some Bedouin motif's from Laverne's charts.

Yesterday I got a wonderful couple of phone calls from Georgia.  I sent my socks that were a little too big for me to my friend Dana, you remember the two tone blue and teal ones done not long ago, and I sent her fella Steve a Pine needle basket.  Both were well appreciated and I feel good to have been able to do something nice for my friend's.

All in all a good day!


 

A strap for Dana!

July 13, 2011

I started this warp with only one thing in mind.  A SUCCESSFUL warp.  I was having a dry spell with my creativity AND my warping.  It was supposed to be plain double weave, but I turned it into another double weft double weave piece.  FIVE feet of it.  I am very tired of blue and brown. LOL

In talking to my friend, Dana, I discovered that she needed a strap so she could tie up to various places to do her backstrap weaving.  Mostly to the door knob of her closet.  So I decided to make her one.    Tying up to a door knob is kind of tricky, you need the piece to tie on where it won't slip off when you pull back on the warp with your body.  You also need a way to tie it up to the loom bars themselves.  For those of you who don't know, you really need to do a wider piece to keep it from flipping and flopping around.  Or if you are doing a narrow piece you can use a shorter loom bar at the far end where you use the strap to tie up to the door knob.  

I have not learned how to weave a piece end to end with no waste and no fringe.  You see it is very tough to do this, you eventually end up needle weaving because your shed space is so small at the end.  This also has to do with the fact that I am no longer scared to death of using my sewing machine to hem them.  Not knowing what I was going to do with the strap I really didn't leave enough fringe at the start to use for ties, like I do with my own strap,  The strap is also shorter than mine, so I had to be innovative to make it work.

Here is what I came up with.  After I tied the knot it was even shorter :-(, bummer.  So I braided a 12 ft. long tie and added length to it that way.  I haven't given it to her yet, but hopefully at class we will try it out.  Modifications may have to be made.  

Myself I use c clamps on my dresser to tie up, so I am not sure how it will work.  There are no doorknobs conducive to backstrap weaving in my room.

Here are a few pictures.  I will let you know how it works when she tries it out.

Success with a Backstrap!

June 12, 2011

So I am finally having success with the backstrap...sort of.  As usual I was just happy to get it warped somewhat successfully.  Reasonable tension and length.  Didn't even count the warp...let alone have a design plan.

So far all I have is my mark...for the second time. 

It is 5 ft. long, 56 warp ends, 1 3/4 in. wide.  Didn't even think to take a photo of the back side.  :-(  Especially after having to unweave the effort down to the first 4 rows. 

You know the OCD is kicking in when you can't sleep ( all night I might add ) because all you can think about is ... now that it is warped what design do I want to do?  LOL

IGNORE THE OLD LADY LEGS!

I am really just playing around with this one.  It is boring me to tears and so I have even started other projects with other backstrap looms.

Stay tuned for 'warp floats galore'.