My Wedge weave.

April 5, 2012

This is an old Navajo weave done at an angle.  It usually creates a scalloped edge, but for some reason mine stayed pretty consistently straight.  I think it has to do with the fact that for so many years I worked so hard at NOT having scalloping on my edge/selvedge. I think I, simply out of habit worked too hard in this case, to keep my tension consistent.  LOL

I absolutely love the colors, they are very Spring like.  Unfortunately, until I was already well into the weaving I had thought this was cotton yarn.  My mistake, the white is cotton, but the green and pink are 100% acrylic.  Way tooooooo spongey for my liking.  Makes great throw blankets, not such great tapestry weaving.

It was a learning process and while I found the tapestry weaving on a frame loom much easier on my body than the backstrap has been since the car accident, I bored with it quickly.  I just can't seem to get inspired to weave.  But I do like it for a little table topper!

Labor day weekend...so I labored!

September 4, 2011

I seem to have thrown my back out, so backstrap weaving is out for the moment.  I did, however, warp up a backstrap loom and mount it onto my tapestry loom.

It is 48" long, 320 thread count, 7 " wide.  Now all I have to do is remember how to weave on an upright loom!  I gave myself 2 sections for warp floats, each has 20 threads...however I haven't come up with a design plan as of yet.  My back was killing me so I was pleased to get this far. 

My little portable warp board has turned out to work like a charm, even for this wide warp.  This was all wound on in one session, as I am not sure I want to try to do several small warps and mount them all on the same loom bars yet.  It must be terribly difficult to get the tension even that way...at least that's what I think.  I have a tough enough time just getting the tension correct with one warp session.  LOL

I love the colors though, I am thinking this one might be a wall piece!  I have a beautiful piece of twisted wood that Ms. Carol gave me while I was in Georgia, and as fate would have it my daughter had asked for a wall piece.  So maybe if she is a good girl, Santa will step in and make sure she gets one.

I really need to invest in a new camera.  The threads are doubled with two different shades of purple and it is really a nice effect! 

What's on the Loom????

Last night, Thursday the 27th, was Tapestry weave workshop.  Dana has decided that before we do our cartoon together that she wants to work through a sampler that we found from a 1988 Handwoven Magazine.  

Since I am self taught, this is definitely to my advantage also.  I did use Navajo techniques and followed a graph once a very long time ago.  Got half way though it and found that it bored me to tears to follow someone else's patter.  Half hitched the end, took it off the loom, and a very dear friend of mine in FL, who is a plant freak, uses it (among others I have given her) to sit plants on.  After that I never even tried to follow a grid, pattern or cartoon.  

I have discovered though that I would like to use some of my own artwork in my weaving's.  Yes, some of the designs in my warpface endeavors are my own, but I want scrolls and flowers and such of my own drawings.  

I have used quite a number (most even) of the techniques show in the sampler, but not all.  So we will learn them together.  I see some tapestries coming after that.  

Another thing about tapestry weaving that I didn't realize I was spoiled to, is that mine are always reversible.  Not so with warpface so much, unless you do double weave.  For my purposes, double weave is not so practical.  It takes twice as much yarn, for half as much width and twice as much time.  Since most of what I do are purses/totes/pouches, I don't need the inside, which is hardly seen, to be "  Pretty".   I can, and always have, still use predominantly cotton.  Not so much wool here in southern USA to be found or even used/needed.  I have also discovered over the years that I really don't care as much for hairy yarns.  

I have 2 little dogs, as most of you know, and deal with quite enough hair.  I don't like finding it on my eyelashes, or stuck to my lipstick.  LOL  Plus, alot of the agriculture here in southern GA, is indeed cotton.  Very accessible and inexpensive.  

When I decided to really venture into cotton, I took a day trip.  I lived in FL, and drove to GA, looking for a cotton field.  I had never seen one.  When I found one I spotted a gentleman on a tractor close to the edge of the road.  I got out and shouted "  HEY MISTER",  and he politely shut off his machine and got down to visit.  I asked him if he knew where I could find a cotton gin and he answered "  Just so happens I own one".   KEWL!  He called ahead and I got a tour.  

I actually thought a gin might be about the size of a tractor trailer...NOT.  They are huge barns and they waste more cotton than I could ever spin and use.  I was given 3 huge garbage bags of ginned cotton for free!  This is why I offer instruction for cotton spindle spinning at the art center.  All I need now are students.  LOL  I do indeed want to learn to spin cotton that is usable for warpface weave.  I have often used my own hand spun cotton for tapestry.

Back to tapestry weaving.  Dana's significant other made me some new boards for my loom.  Now, instead of a very large loom and a very small loom, I will have a medium size one that is just right for my space.  I just have to free up a table to clamp it to, since I am Gilmore Wave loom crazed...

Anyway, I have the small tapestry and a large piece on the Large wave that I need to complete and then I will be doing a custom bag for one of my dearest friends, KraftyMax.  Max is actually the culprit to this entire weaving saga of about 15 or so years.  She got me started.  As a result she has my weaving's all over her home, along with my drawings, knitted socks and even some of my very few cross stitch pieces.  

A little side humor...I was in Max's wedding and decided to do her a Wedding sampler.   It is the first thing you see when you open the door to her home, framed and hung with obvious pride.  I even designed it and wrote the poetry on it myself.  I was in the house by myself one day and stood looking at this piece that had been hanging in her home for 11 yrs. and had a terrible revelation.  I mispelled her husband's name......I thought I would crawl under the carpet.  Very upsetting, and she never said a word.  This is a true friend who loves me, faults and all.  Back at ya Max.

Here is a picture of Dana's Sampler!  It is letter perfect!  Now the student becomes the teacher.

What's on the Loom????

I don't recall if I mentioned it, but recently I warped up my little tapestry loom when I got frustrated with the warpface weaving.  It was a bust though, as all I could do was sit and look at it.  No inspiration for design at all.  Remember I don't usually have a pre-determined idea of what I want to weave.  I just let the loom talk to me.

Of all things I had chosen brown tones for the piece, much like the colors in the teeny weeny pain in the arse double weave piece that I ended up cutting off and throwing away.  I guess those colors were really talking to me.  Unfortunately I didn't like what they were saying to me.  So I took the tapestry loom and all of its equipment right back upstiars and put it in its place in the attic.

Then I warped up with the yellow/pomegranate and watermelon warp on the Large Wave loom that you have seen in the last two posts.  Welllllllll...I kind of got stumped with that one after the diamonds started and put it aside and went back to the tapestry loom'.  It still has the brown warp on it.

I have discovered that as easy as it is for me to make beautiful pieces in tapestry, it does require alot more trips to the attic where the yarns are.  grrrrr  More gear and yarns in my very small room.  Remember I no longer have a designated space for my art forms.  This means if I change my mind about colors and such I have to make a trip into the attic.  That is indeed one of the advantages of the warpface weave.  Once warped, there is only one weft yarn, unless you are doing supplementary weft, and even then it can all e one color.  Not alot of different colors as in most tapestry weaving.

I did get some of it done though and I am reasonably happy with it to this point.  

Another thing I discovered is that although I always preferred upright looms before the Wave came along, I now prefer the horizontal.  My tools don't fall out of the weave as often when the loom is horizontal, thus less annoying.  I also discovered that I have something of a style with my tapestry weavings.  The pattern I am doing is not real pattern at all.  It is just happening as I pick up a color I think will look good next.  It has alot of flowing lines, very tranquil, and it requires no real thinking on my part.  It just happens, and I most always love the result.  But it shows itself in alot of my pieces.  When you see the pictures you may even recognize it.  No charting, no following patterns, no warp board, no sore hands from beating the weft (as in warpface weave).  

So why is it that at this point neither one of these forms of weaving is giving me the satisfaction that it did before Christmas?  I think I am a little burnt out.  I was weaving for hours and hours a day before the holidays.  Especially the warpface weaving, as I was learning it as I went.  I had no one here to discuss things with, only my Cyber friends and instructors, so it definitely required concentration.  Now I am left feeling a little flat about the entire thing.  I actually hear my pencils call me quite often also.  Maybe that is the real problem.  I am being pulled by another art form.  We'll see.

Anyway here are some pictures of what is happening on the small tapestry loom.  The large one has been warped for a couple of months and just sitting here looking at me.  It hasn't spoken to me yet though...

So far this is all that I have done, and already the loom is back upstairs and I am back to my warpface weaving.

What's on the Loom????

I am so proud of my friend/student's accomplishments with her weaving.  Last week she completed the never ending tapestry.  She is still deciding what she wants to make it into.  She also warped up again for a sampler that we found in an old Handwoven magazine, AND she warped up her rigid heddle, she is still thinking on that one also.  

She has been a busy beaver!

Funny how opposite we are, and yet we are both still managing to learn from one another.  She needs a game plan, although she is always open to adjusting that plan.  Me?  I pretty much always wing it.  I like to just see what the loom has to say to me.  

Having her for a student has me rethinking some of that though.  I have recently even predetermined a project or 2.  Like her bag that we did together with the bands I wove, and she assembled!  It turned out lovely, and although we didn't write the plan down in blood, we did indeed discuss it and come up with something of a plan.  

We are both proud of the outcome.  I posted the pic once before, but I will give you another glance here.

Now for the tapestry!

The multi color (think verigated) is a very fine chenille and really shimmers.  When she stared this she had in mind a 'but pillow'...you know to sit your but on when you weave.  Since then I think she had decided she might like to sit her loom up on a table.  I can't wait to see what she comes up with for a set up.

I love the weaving itself.  I think it would be beautiful as a table topper.  We were working on hatching and she find it tedious...so we adjusted the plan accordingly.   

As for my weaving...I am thirsting for something with a little more freedom than the warpface weaving.  I want flowing lines and maybe something that comes a little easier for me.  

I feel a tapestry weave coming on.  Maybe...I do love the warpface though and you just never know which mood will strike me.

New project!

I have been kind of out of touch lately...mostly because I have been very busy.

I have been trying to develop a new project as well as deal with my new responsibilities at the Art Center.  You see, I saw these bracelets made out of handwoven fabric.  Mostly they are done like wide cuffs in even weave fabric.  (Where you see both warp and weft.)  Well this is easy to do on the correct kind of loom.  But a tapestry loom does not lend itself to this type of project.  Nor for that matter, does it lend itself to warpface fabric as we have discussed in recent postings.

I have indeed done a few bracelets to this point.  

One was warpface, done during the backstrap learning learning curve, though I did do it on my tapestry frame loom.  Then I did one that had some warpface, and some even weave, both out of hemp on my tapestry loom.  These were not satisfactory because of certain structural features.  I had to get the length right and then off course develop a closure.  I really wanted this to be as near complete as possible when it came off of the loom .  In other words, I wanted to use its excess warp for closure or something easy along those lines.  

The first one was a complete wash, the second one is around my little dog Wiggles throat simply tied with a knot as a collar.  This last one actually fits and uses buttons and button wholes for a closure.  It is 2 1/2 in wide....too wide for my liking, I will stick closer to 2 in or less from now on.  It also fits a little snugger to my wrist than I like.  I wanted it a little bit looser.  Because it was too wide I had to use 2 button wholes (very difficult on a small piece such as this) because I didn't want it to curl around the button.  Tapestry weave is stiffer and I believe I will not have this problem on the next ones.

Following are pictures of the latest completed one.  But the one on the loom looks as though it is going to be the greatest success yet.  It is indeed tapestry weave (weftface) and already I am finding it beautiful, even though it is only 1 in wide ( a little more narrow than I want). 

Here are the pictures of the best one so far.

The Rag rug is coming along!

I got my pictures for the flyers.  Remember?  The ones with the spindles and weavings together. I also warped up another backstrap loom.  I think I am just going to stick to my frame loom weaving.  I can do warp face weaving on it also.  I just have to nail down how to do it.

I promised to post a picture so here it is.  The rug is turning out very cushy and colorful.  The spindles are on the left.  They are stuck standing up on the loom along with some raw cotton!  Kind of a before and after. 

New small tapestry loom all warped up

I had a particularly messed up day yesterday and didn't do a single artistic thing...not one.  

However, I did start a new weaving a few days ago on my new, home-made tapestry loom.  

This is a tapestry weave, also know as an even weave, which means over one under one for one row and then reverse on the next row and repeat.  Because of the wide spacing of the warp threads ( the vertical threads), it creates what is known as a weft (horizontal threads) faced fabric.  

Weft faced fabric can range from very boardy and stiff to very soft and slinky.  These things are controlled by spacing, fiber content and how tough you pack down the weft (horizontal) thread.  It can be very creative since only the horizontal thread shows you have complet design control, anything from pictorials to simple stripes.

This one is white on white and I am using multiple's of Soumak.  Soumak is a kind of wrapping technique that creates little raised designs that look like an embroidery stitch and sometimes a crochet chain stitch.  Depending on which side you start and/or how many warp threads you cross over.  

This piece is 100% cotton, peaches and cream cotton actually, the color is called natural.  It could actually be used for just about anything from a wash cloth to a doily or even a handbag which is what I will probably use it for.

Pictures to follow.   There are close ups of the Loom as well as the weaving, in case anyone else wanted to build one.

New small tapestry loom all warped up

Well girls and boys I am indeed back to my roots.  Definitely back in my comfort zone.  Anyway who says you can't use weft face fabric as a face cloth!  I'll start a new trend!

I was kind of thinking though...I have really been pressuring myself to do something that will sell, maybe that is why it really isn't working.  So for now I will weave for the pleasure of it.  

I really wish this selling your art thing didn't take quite to so long.