Scandinavian Weavers Meeting, March 2012

Veronna started off a really interesting discussion of hems and edges of textiles when she described a recent project, monksbelt runners in pearl cotton.  “Oh,” she noted when she took them off the loom, “It looks like I was drunk at one point and here at another.”  Hardly.  There’s more on that discussion on my “Bound to Weave” blog, “Showing Your Good Side.” She shared two interesting lessons from that piece.  She made color windings of the yarns, around a card, to test out combinations.  Then she made both a black-and-white photocopy and a color photocopy of the combinations.  The black-and-white helped show relative contrast of dark and light.  Also, when you weave monksbelt with the same color for the base and pattern weft, it is really two colors, because of the reflective properties of the yarn.

Veronna suggested we look at the swatch photos for patterns in Mary E. Black’s New Key to Weaving found in a new digital collection sponsored by the government of Novia Scotia.

Judy brought rouched scarves made with lace-weight yarn, silk  120 inches long, 72 inches, and Jaeger zephyr wool silk.

She made a rug in monksbelt pattern using fabric strips. She sleyed poly-cotton carpet warp at 12 epi.

Patty Kuebker Johnson talked about the color and weave study group sponsored at Color Crossing.  It’s especially useful for those who don’t do a lot of fine thread weaving.  “Unless you have a weft-faced or warp faced weave, you are always dealing with the interaction of the thread colors,” she explained.   Once it’s on the loom the study group members sign up for time slots to weave off samples.

Robin Meadow noted that a new session of the color exploration class, Stripes and Structures to Create Tantalizing Towels, was starting soon.  She’s taken it twice, and as a new weaver, found it enormously helpful each time. You work in different structures, different color palettes,  and it requires diligent production weaving.  Why take it twice? You deal with different color ways, different loom personalities, and even different weave structures from one class to the next. Patty said that she uses the towels she makes as runners until they become dishtowels.  Below is a jumble of the towels Robin wove in her last class, a bad photo of lovely items.

Melba Granlund spent a fantastic week taking the basic Swedish weaving course at Becky’s Vavstuga. “You weave like you’re crazy,” Melba said.  There were eight people in the class, two of whom had never woven before.  Her completed pieces were beautiful.

A perennial weaving problem is time, never enough time for weaving. At one point the issue was raised about weaving just a bit each day on a project. Isn’t  there a problem with a difference  in beating? Are some portions more tightly woven than others?  Patty noted that she encounters this more with with knitting than weaving.  She advised, “Warping is the hard part!  Reward yourself for each step of the way.  Today I wind the warp – that’s the assignment.  The next day, put it on the back beam.  Break it into segments and reward yourself for the completion of each.”  Meeting with our group is good for encouragement – the encouragement of example, and the encouragement of tips.