Over the past year, I was able to transform three weaving challenges into one project.  Although I like a challenge, having too many at one time can be too much.  It started over a year ago when a group I meet with once a year came up with a challenge of designing something using ten as the inspiration.  I’m not really good at this type of challenge and I noodled around with several ideas that didn’t go anywhere.   The last idea seemed doable, what was the phase of the moon on October 10, 2010?  Lots of tens in that.  I found a couple ..read more

I recently wove a rag rug as a guild challenge.  I used 8/4 cotton carpet warp for the warp and yarn weft and cut up t-shirts for the rags.  I was asked how I turned a shirt into a ball of rag weft.  I thought I would show how I prepared the fabric strips.  I got the idea of how to do this from The Rag Rug Handbook by Janet Meany. I started with a t-shirt and cut off the body from just underneath the sleeves.  The tube body was turned 90 degrees so that the open edges were on the sides and the top and bottom facing me were the tube sides.  I folded the bottom ont ..read more

 20211 has been another year of spending time at the loom.  I've been doing some different things with the towels I've woven as well as visiting tried and true approaches.  I was motivated more by weaving challenges and classes this year.   A lot of people have been weaving Susan Poague's Turned Taquete' circles.  I finally succumbed to this structure, which can be a lot of fun, because of a group challenge to weave something using the 2021 Pantone Colors of the Year.  This design was adapted from her article in Handwoven Magazine, May/June 201 ..read more

I guess we all thought that we would be long finished with COVID by now, maybe soon. But I have continued to wade through my yarn stash and have been making scarves while mostly at home. I've just about used all of my available tencel yarn and need to make more inroads into the silk.  I started off 2021 finishing off the last of my Just Our Yarn 10/2 tencel yarn.  For the first scarf, I need to use yarn from two different skeins fr the warp.  The blue with a little maroon went nicely with the basic blue yarn that I had picked for the warp.  This scarf was treaded to an ext ..read more

The one thing the COVID-19 pandemic has given me is time to weave. It’s amazing how much extra time one gets when all your meetings are just “down the hall” rather than a car ride away. We are all tired of the images of that virus appearing everywhere, but in 2020 it held a bit of fascination from a design perspective.   In the past several years, I have been studying how to use ProWeave software to create weaving designs. Last year, I also was interested to see if I could create a pictural representation of that COVID-19 graphic that had been holding our attention. Using ProWeave ..read more

Finally for this phase of the pandemic, scarves are really the true story.  In March, I wove a silk merino scarf in colors that weren't really my thing.  This yarn was 50-50 merino and silk blend.  I used it in the warp and weft, weaving an extended point twill design.    Coral-Green Merino Silk Coral-Green Merino Silk - detail ..read more

It's been a long eight months so far.  I've taken the opportunity to use up some yarn.  I usually think that shawls are the best way to really create empty spaces in the yarn tubs, but it doesn't seem to work out that way.   While I've woven several shawls this year during lock-down, there aren't as many as I thought I had.  Most of these shawls are primarily wool.  Some have nylon and others alpaca/silk blend.  They are all woven on eight shafts in some sort of twill.  The tie-up for all of these is a 2-2-1-1-1-1 twill.  The warp of this shawl ..read more

Having been in lockdown for eight months, I thought I would review what I've been weaving during the time of COVID-19.  I have a few towels that were woven before March 2020, but most of these were made since then. All of the towels were woven using 10/2 mercerized cotton in both the warp and weft, sett at 30 epi.  Each set of towels were woven as some sort of point twill - most of them were different - on eight shafts.  The tie-up for all was a 2-2-1-1-1-1 twill.   I am still using pictures as color inspiration and creating random stripes as the color design.  An ..read more

 The pandemic is still happening and I am still weaving scarves.  I had a friend ask if I ever wove scarves without fringe.  I hadn't but I knew there were ways of approaching that.  I wasn't interested in doing a turned hem because of the potential bulk.  I have weaver friends who wove scarves that had what is called a doubleweave or tubular hem.   The technique involves weaving two layers of textile at either end of the scarf, i.e., doubleweave.  Once finished, these two layers are folded inward and the folded textile is sewn together.  This gives a ni ..read more

I realize it has been a while since I've posted here.  I have been doing repeats of many of the things I have woven before - towels by the dozens; shawls and some baby blankets.  I wasn't sure that I had anything new to offer.   During the current shelter-in-place, I have been weaving a lot:  a dozen towels, two shawls and some scarves.  The scarves were a bit of a departure for me. Typically,  I have used a merino or merino/nylon blend for scarves.   In thinking about all of the yarn I have, I thought about a promise I made to myself several year ..read more