Category: Weaving

General category for weaving

End of Summer 2021

On September 26, 2021

In 8-shaft Weaving, Turned Taquete, Weaving

Being sick sucks…

So, as you all know, getting sick sucks. Over the past couple of years, I have had bouts with what I thought were ill-timed cases of stomach flu… those are the symptoms I had; stomach ache and fever.

A few weeks ago I had another and after running a high fever for several days. Not able to get into my doctor I called the telehealth line, they advised if it didn’t go away to go to urgent care or the ER. A day or so later it did indeed get better. Fast forward 3 weeks and I got the same thing… too soon for another stomach flu; the same thing, fever, and stomach ache.

I called my doctor and let them know that I thought maybe it was gall bladder or something and was able to get in the next day. After some poking and prodding, she said I needed to get to the ER right away and that they were going to call an ambulance.

After a horrible 23 hour ordeal in the ER, I was finally wheeled into surgery. It turns out that my appendix had perforated and leaked several weeks ago, caused a cyst, and I was lucky it hadn’t burst. I never had “traditional” appendicitis pains since my appendix apparently liked to travel and was hiding behind my colon… Good times!!

So now the weaving!

The second to last big project that I worked on this summer was from the May/June issue of Handwoven magazine. They are the turned taquete towels by Susan Poague. I loved the mid-century vibe that these had enhanced by the colors that she chose. I decided to use the same color palette the first time, believing that this was something that I would want to weave again.

I was right, these were so much fun to weave! After a few false starts with the threading and denting I was able to get started. I had enough for 5 full-length towels with enough left to play… and I came up with some marvelous alternate patterns.

The original pattern comes with circles, checks, and then a third treadling for circles that brought the underside to the top and back. These were all three wonderful patterns.

Circles
Circles Back to Front Alternate

I wanted to see if there was a way to get circles and squares in the same towel. and it is possible! I love the design of this and how pronounced hte squares and circles are.

When first weaving these, I noticed that some threads were just coupling oddly. After playing around and asking advice from some of the fabulous people on the weaving groups on Facebook, I realized that there was a super simple fix. By moving the threads one dent over and splitting them (they were wound on the warping mill 2 at a time), it made them all separate. More details are HERE

I ran through several other possible patterns, some of which are listed below.

First is the square within or “I” pattern

This next one has the “eye surrounded by waves. This was a stepping stone to one of my favorites.

I love the following one, I’m sure someone has come up with it before, but I am just imagining upholstery fabric made from this. I’ve called it Eye of Ra because, well, why not?

Note that there are a few different variations on the same theme. I am excited to try this again.

So that ended the turned taquete for now. I will definitely be re-warping this one for several other towels and possibly some yardage.

Summer 2021 Projects Part 2

By bradjrohr

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.