A New Project–Monksbelt

By Robbie LaFleur

Our Scandinavian Weavers Study Group has a project underway, a group monkskbelt warp on the Glimåkra loom at the Weavers Guild of Minnesota. 15 yards of cottolin warp! Our pieces will be modest, only 24″ per weaver, 16.6″ wide.  Interest was high; we have 17 people signed up. Jan Josifek offered to wind the enormous warp.  I bought a kilo of 20/2 cottolin in a half-bleached color.  She wound the warp and had almost NOTHING to spare. We chose a pattern from an old Väv magazine, #3, 1975.  (I am not going to post the whole article for copyright reasons.)

Extremely important pieces of thread to repair broken warps.

Threading underway

It took us a while to make progress on warping and getting started–you may have heard about the winter weather from hell in Minnesota this year. Jan J. was so excited about the pattern that she interpreted the draft in 8 shaft turned twill blocks for towels at home.  Beautiful! She definitely gets extra points.

Judy Larson was the first to weave, she took on the job of making sure that the weaving would go well for all the subsequent weavers.  Happily, she reported, “It wove up beautifully with no issues!” Here is her beautiful green color; she used doubled Shetland yarn for her pattern weft.

I was second, and wove four large blocks in saturated colors.

The third weaving is underway; Lisa Torvik is using green linen for the background weft, and wonderful color bundles for her expert experimentation.

Keep tuned in for more colors and variations on the warp in the coming weeks.