The rest of the babys blankets

Just to give you an idea of how much six metres of fabric adds up to....





Thank goodness I have the lovely new clothesline!

This is now sitting in a folded lump on my work table, because we had visitors last week. I need to cut them up and hem at least one of them this coming weekend, because next week is the deadline for handing the first of them out.



Hmm....need to figure out what to do about gift boxes.

Dyeing

This past weekend's fun, and the next project. I've been dyeing 5 km of 8/2 cotton for some teatowels for the great tea-towel exchange. I decided to dye these green and sand as a kind of sample for a scarf I'm making for a friend, and I was so happy with the way the colours worked that I decided to dye the silk for her on the spot as well.



So then I dyed a cone of 30/2 silk in three varying shades of avocado green and four silk caps as well: two in the greens, and two in two varying shades of sandy yellow/brown to spin up as a weft. I seem to only have photos of the greens, but here they are as a taster: cotton on the left, silk on the right:



Interestingly, the cotton didn't take up the dye anywhere near as much as I thought it would. I was, however, happy with the way the silk played.

My partner asked me the other day to make him a single blanket to take to Antarctica with him. He wants to put it on his bunk as they tend to overheat the base and the duvets they supply are too hot. I want to make it in a Swedish krokbragd, in varying shades of blue and cream, with flashes of red. I'm going to have to do that in double-weave to make the blanket the width it needs to be (66 inches, and I have a 40" loom). This means I'm changing my mind on the fly about the draft I use for the tea-towels, as they cleary need to become a sample for both the blanket and the scarf!

Krokbragd, here I come...

Cotton babys blankets

There's been a baby explosion at work. No, really. I'm afraid to drink the water. That's meant that I wanted to make an industrial quantity of baby's blankets, so I raided my stash and pulled out some 2/0 Conshohocken cotton and Foxfibre cotton. What I had was sage green, beige and natural - not the most babyish of colours, but I wanted the blankets to be quiet and gender-neutral, so they suited me. Warping up 9 metres of the cotton, I set the blankets to 1 metre wide in the loom and warped it up in 1" stripes of sage green, beige and natural.

I threaded these as a block-draft 3/1 twill, set at 16epi. Unfortunately I used all of the sage green cotton up on the warp, so I made the first one in a block twill with a weft of alternating 1" stripes of the beige and natural.







Cut off the loom, this measured 1m x 1.2 m. Washed, with shrinkage, it came to 90cm x 1.1m, which is a decent size for a baby. I'd planned to sew ribbon around the edges, but the ribbon I bought simply wasn't going to look any good as it was too narrow to fold and sew reliably, so I settled for folding and hemming the edges, and leaving the blanket quite plain. Then I tied up and retensioned the rest of the warp.



The first blanket I wove, I wove with just a plain white weft in a constant 3/1 twill. As I was still using the block twill draft, this gave a broken twill. I'd planned to weave the second blanket and cut it off, but then I had a brain wave: I had put enough warp on there for 3 and a bit blankets, but I really needed four because there was yet another baby on the way (I told you, I'm afraid to drink the water!). But if I wove a solid ream of fabric, and cut it up....could I squeeze four out of it?

To measure how far down the warp I've woven, I'm tying a yellow scrap of yarn each metre.
I'm almost done weaving it, and I'm up to the 5m mark. I may manage to have 6m of fabric by the time I'm done, which will mean I've managed to squeeze 5 baby blankets out of a warp I'd designed to make three blankets, with a bit of wastage and playing space. Not bad really!

One problem I did encounter around the 3.5 metre mark was a frayed thread in the warp. Conshohocken cotton is a very soft single cotton, which is held by a binder thread. In this case the cotton had frayed, leaving only the binder thread hanging on:



It would have to happen in the sage green, of course - I have only 1 metre spare of that after making the warp. Thank goodness the binder is strong! It held on long enough for me to weave past it and then it held securely. It looks like I'm not even going to have to supplement sew taht portion, as I was able to adjust the cotton so it sits properly in the warp, and the weave structure is enough for the weft to hold it in place, even with washing and wear.


I'll finish this this week or next, and then post pictures.

The blue-green rayon and silk scarves

It's been a while since I had the chance to post. First I was away working for two months, and when I got back it was so sunny and spring-like, all I wanted to do with my spare time was to work in the garden.



Despite having the rayon warp sitting invitingly on the loom waiting for me and all of the silk caps spun and ready, all I managed to weave in my first month home was one scarf.



I'd thought that the scarves would be in a twill. But although the white scrap cotton I used to space the warp looked great, I'd put the warp on the loom without thought for what draft I was going to use - so threads were regularly skipped on the selvedges with the twill. In addition to this, I found that a twill made the weft colour too dominant - and that wasn't what I wanted. This series of scarves was going to be more about the interplay of variegated colours and stripes rather than one single colour. So I completely undid the couple of inches of twill and started again.


Instead, I decided to use plain weave for a more balanced colour spread and a technique called clasped weft, which an Australian weaver had posted a fabulous tutorial on. As I had the stripes of blues, greens and yellow in the warp anyway, I decided to use a weft of variegated blues and yellows on the blue side, and an almost solid-colour cornflower blue on the green/yellow side. Would this be too busy in terms of colour? I was about to find out.



The answer was no. I was quite pleased with the result. And yet, despite this, I found myself unable to return to the loom much for weeks and weeks. I was just lacking insipration, and the garden was calling. I don't know whether it was the weaving in plain weave (after weaving all those metres of plain weave linen) or just the call of the weather and the garden, but little weaving was occurring! Then, one day a couple of weeks ago, I suddenly got the weaving bug. And in a single weekend wove two more scarves. The second was in varigated soft greens, and the third clasped weft again, in emerald green with blues and yellows, and the other side the same cornflower blue as the first scarf.



For the fourth scarf, I used the left-over spools of silk and made one-inch horizontal stripes to give a kind of pseudo-check effect.



Here are the four scarves, folded together. Because they were a simple weave, they were very fast to weave. I really enjoyed playing with such bold colours, and am quite pleased with the way they interact. The stripes in the warp aren't as bold as I'd imagined they would be - sometimes they stand out, sometimes the blend into the weft - even the gold thread!




A friend told me that these reminded him of the weaving he saw as a child in his native India. I'd been aiming for a summery, casual, tropical/nautical feel, so I think I'd call that a result.

The stripey rayon and silk scarf series

Colour. I wanted colour. I wanted something I could weave hand-dyed and hand-spun silk caps into. And even if I'm not going to get to weave it before going South, I wanted to have a fun project waiting for me when I got home, something I could stick my teeth into without too much fussing. And I wanted to use the new warping mill which I bought back in December.

So I came up with stripes of blue, green and yellow rayon in varying widths, with a touch of gold for an accent:




I warped this up in less than an hour on Saturday night. It's amazing how much time the warping mill can save, over using a warping board. I've made a 9m warp, which ought to be enough for four scarves. The warp is rayon flake, and sett at 16 epi should give me scarves that are just over 9 inches wide.



To make things even faster, I tied the warp on to the old one and had it all beamed in an hour or two...straight from the warping mill. I'm sure you're not supposed to do it that way, but it seems to me that if you don't have to pull the warp off and chain it, why risk the tangles?



I plan to weave into this with mottles blues and greens, and experiment and play with a few things, like clasped weave. To that end, I've spun up a few of the silk caps I dyed, and a couple of them are already on bobbins, ready to go:



...even if it will have to wait until I get back in April, I'll have the happy knowledge that there's a fun project awaiting my return!

Fluff, part 2

I finished the linen cloth on the weekend. I've wet-finished it but not pressed it yet, so I'm not sure how long it turned out in the end. I finished the entire tin of ironing spray with still a foot or so of warp to go, so I decided to continue until I had a fatal warp breakage. It didn't happen!




The sheer amount of fluff in, under and around the loom dictated a full scrub-down of the torture room. The fluff I collected more than filled the dustpan! I really am amazed that it didn't rise up and turn itself into a pet! Once the fabric was off the loom though, all the care and cleanup was worth it.



This is the yardage, folded in half and draped over a rocking chair. As always, the weave itself (prior to wet finishing) was nothing special:



but wet finshing made the difference. As always, it took it from interleaved threads to a piece of cloth. It's not unlike the cheesecloth shirts I used to wear for their coolness in the 80s. It's probably not surprising that a piece of woven yardage should look like fabric, but it's pleasing me.

It needs to be pressed now, and it's ready for cross-stitching on...even if that will have to wait until I get back from my field work. And the next project (beamed on the loom already) will be considerably more colourful.

Dyeing

The whole "having a career and being at work all day" thing means I'm very slow in turning projects over (especially as I'm at work during my most productive time of the day), but it does mean that I have time to muse about what the next project will be as I work on the current one. Typically that means that I always have dozens of projects in mind, some of which will eventually come to fruition.

With the linen cloth almost done, my mind is turning to my next project. This will be a series of four or so scarves in rayon and silk, because I want to play with multiple colours in both warp and weft. The warp will have stripes of varying width of blues and greens, with a touch of yellow and gold, and the weft will be hand-dyed and handspun silk cap, in a variety of shades. I've chosen and laid out the blue and green rayons for the warp (seven shades in all, if I recall correctly) and last weekend, in a fit of inspiration, I pulled out a pile of silk caps and the dye pots and set to.



The near colours are for other projects (or eventual sale for others to spin), but the blues and greens on the far end are destined for this project. Some of the scarves will be quite busy, strident and in-your-face with their colouring, others will be much more subtle - I'm planning to play. One of them is suggesting to me that it wants to play with clasped weft, with multicoloured blue-green-yellow silk on the blue side of the warp and just cornflower blue on the green side of the warp. It ought to be fun.

I'll vary the tie-up for each of the scarves, but they'll all be straight threaded on eight shafts, as that's how the linen is set and I want to just tie-on the warp. It's going to be a while before I have the chance to play with this. I have two months of field work coming up, and I'm leaving in just over a week. That ought to be enough time to finish the linen and warp on the new project. Which means it'll be waiting for me when I get back home.