Category: Twills

Twill Weaving

Summer 2021 Projects Part 2

On August 31, 2021

In 8-shaft Weaving, My take on the daily news, Twills, Weaving

The next set was direct from Jane Stafford’s online guild, season 5 Episode 1, Turned Twills. This was the first thing that I completed using all 8 shafts of the loom and I was so excited to see how using these color blocks could produce so many gorgeous effects. This was also the first time that I maxed out my looms warping capabilities. Maybe someone out there could tell me how to get more on, but 14 yards seems to be the maximum warp amount for the Ashford table loom, at least for 8/2 cotton.

So, 14 yards, 12 towels from the instructions, and then about 1.5 yards to play with. I had so much fun with this one that I warped it again (only 4 yards) in different colors to make towels for my SIL in Kansas.

And then the SIL towels…

Between towel sets, I also dabbled with a few of Jane Stafford’s practice pieces from this year which is the lace year. There is just so much that can be done with lace, and she primarily just shows what can be done with 4 shafts. Add 4 more and the possibilities are insane!

For the history books today, The war in Afghanistan is officially over. I have no idea what that means for the region, this country, or the world but we shall see. A major hurricane hit the Louisiana coast yesterday, exactly 16 years to the day as Katrina. New Orleans is entirely without power and it may be weeks before they get things back on for the majority of people.

And finally, the number of people with Covid continues to grow because of all of the FUCKING ASSHOLES who refuse to get vaccinated and wear masks. At this point, they deserve what they get. Yes, that is harsh but if they are that fucking stupid…

The next post will be looking at my second to last summer project and it was so much fun. It is the Turned Taquete towel weave from the May/June issue of Handwoven Magazine.

Summer 2021 Projects Part 1

By bradjrohr

On August 30, 2021

In 4-shaft Weaving, Twills, Weaving

Now that you know a little bit of history, let’s get down to what I have done with this loom this past summer.

I consider Winter and Spring of 2021 to be my “practice time” and seriously got down to putting things I had practiced and learned into something useful.

Towels are the obvious easy start since they are so useful, who doesn’t need a kitchen towel…

I started with Towels for Eric. We have tons of Fiestaware and he wanted towels to coordinate. These were a simple twill using 4 shafts and as you can see, not planned out too much as far as the stripes and twill placement… live and learn.

For the next project, I wanted to pull in some color. I had completed some gamps from Jane Stafford’s online guild and wanted to use a bit of what I learned there. The second set of towels were for my mom. These were just simple plain weave using color gradient as the feature. I used various blues, purples, and pinks to create subtle color shading. I also threw in twining a pink and green cottolin as a weft in one towel and was pleasantly surprised by the “shimmer” effect that it gave the towel. Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures of the finished towels… That will be rectified for all future towels 🙂

Picking colors
Warping
Beaming onto the loom
Started weaving
First towel
cottolin weft in green and pink
cotolin wefted towel
cottolin

Stay tuned for Part 2 of summer projects, the best is yet to come. Turned twill towels on 8 shafts and turned taquete!

Prepping for Weaving

By bradjrohr

On August 16, 2021

In 4-shaft Weaving, 8-shaft Weaving, Twills, Weaving

By the time I had ordered my loom I had already watched dozens of hours of videos on YouTube. I wanted to see different looms in action, see what could be made, etc. I settled on a table loom for the sole fact that I figured it would be easier to convince my husband that a small, foldable table loom would be a good idea to see if Weaving was really for me before I bought a thousands-dollar behemoth loom that would take over our living space. (to be fair he quilts so there is quilting stuff EVERYWHERE!)

So I settled on an Ashford 8-shaft 32″ table loom. It was a good price, looked great, great reviews…

Knowing that due to the pandemic, my loom would not arrive for 2-4 months, I wanted to assuage the wait by learning as much as I could so that I could get started right away. I had already watched the videos on how to put the loom together, Kelly Casanova made a great one that specifically showed the assembly of the Ashford loom.

While watching a video from Andy on his Curmudgeon Weaves channel, I heard him mention that Jane Stafford had an online guild. Now, I had watched videos that Jane had done for Louet and had actually watched her warping videos several times so I was excited at the prospect of more from her. I was amazed at the amount of information that she had for the online guild and how inexpensive the subscription was. I joined in the middle of year 4, so I binged the first 3 years for the next 2 months, watching several of the sections a couple of times. There is such a wealth of information and Jane is such a great presenter.

So by the time I received my loom, I had so much information teeming in my mind, once Eric and I go the loom put together, I wound a warp (gnashing my teeth because it looks so easy in all the videos and it wasn’t), got it wound on (a bit easier but still sweat-inducing), and got it wound on and with a whoosh of self-congratulations after having tied the warp on…

…I broke down because the shed wouldn’t open right, everything looked weird, I was devastated. I had prepped myself, walked through everything as I was doing it, I was such an idiot. Then, I noticed, I had not put the tie-on rod over the cloth beam, but under it. I did the first of many, many, many stupid mistakes. Once I retied the warp the feeling of elation came back and I was weaving!

Next time, my first real project.