My Handwoven Thoughts

I’m going to be able to sneak a warp of baby blankets in between weaving for my Certificate of Excellence in Handweaving. I’m excited! It is not often I can do custom work. But in July I can weave baby blankets to order. Well, they will have to fit into the patterns I can do on this warp, but customers can pick the pattern and color combination they want.

These baby blankets will be handwoven from 100% cotton. They are soft, comfortable and safe for the baby, no fringe to get in the way. The size will be about 36″ x 45″ and that makes them useful wherever they go. Plenty of room to lay the baby on the floor with a few toys and large enough to wrap him up in for months. They are big enough to cover a toddler for a nap. (more…)

Thanksgiving is over and I’m swamped with things I want to be doing. What is actually being worked on is a wide variety of projects. On the lace pillow there is an ornament for a gift exchange at the December Guild Meeting. (Don’t tell anyone it’s a secret.) The baby wolf is getting dressed in tencel with a warp for new batch of leno scarves. This group is a beautiful green instead of the white ones I have done in the past. The ‘little’ AVL is waiting for a new warp to be put on this weekend. I just finished 50 yards of cotton huck lace towels and I’ll wind on another 50 yards for more. If I had more cotton I would do a longer warp this time around. I also have to hem a few towels that just came off the loom. They are pinned and just need to be stitched up on the sewing machine. The ‘Big’ AVL is sitting idle, waiting for me to make up my mind what I want to do next. There are several things I need to weave to supply the website with more variety, but I’m not feeling particulary inspired to start any of them. And as if that is not enough, I have been spinning some beautifuly dyed wool on the Ashford Traditional wheel. I bet if I look around I would find three of four more things to list. I love to have projects to work on and at the moment I have my hands full.

I always seem to be trying to finish several projects at once. Or should I say, ignoring several projects while I am working on one that has caught my attention at the moment. I need to be doing several things and right now the one that is keeping my attention most of the time is weaving off the workshop warp from the baby wolf.

A few months ago, we had Bonnie Inouye come to town for the Guilds annual weaving workshop. The topic was “Advance” and what a wonderful time we had. I still had warp on the loom when I came home and decided to weave a couple of simple cotton scarves. This is the second one I am working on and if I would just get motivated, it could be taken off the loom today.

I think I will add some beads to the fringe to dress these up a bit.

Today I finished warping my 24 harness AVL loom. It seemed to take me forever to get this warp on the loom. I kept putting off working on it since I was a bit nervous about what I was doing. The draft came from a weaving book published in 1740 in Germany. The book is “Nutzliches Weber-Bild-Buch (Weaver’s Tie-up Book)” and was written by Johann Michael Frickinger. I have a translation of the book and have found some very nice weaving drafts in it and other old resources.

The fabric is a plain weave background with a supplemental weft pattern. Not too fancy or complicated, just different than what I have done before. (more…)