Mom and I have switched back to our original looms but we both decided to reuse the weaving patterns that are on the looms, in my case it is a lovely 8 shaft fancy twill.  I put on another hand painted silk warp, this one is 2/22 and is a lovely fresh green with a sinuous purple curves. For the weft I was sure that a blue would be perfect, but I tried royal blue, navy and light blue 2/8 Tencel.  The darker blues matched the purple and would have hidden the pattern and the light blue over powered everything. Next I tried Tencel in straw, taupe and birch, a silvery green.  They ..read more

I have seriously been considering selling my 12 Shaft Louet Spring Loom, since for the past ten months it has been idle.  Well, now that my knee pain is under control and I’m feeling perky again I thought I’d give the Spring one more warp to make sure that letting go was the right answer.  We have two Louet Springs in the studio, a Louet Spring 1 from 2008 and the other an Original 1990’s Louet Spring; so we thought we’d better see which one we want to keep. So Ngaire and I swapped looms and I put a warp on the Original Spring loom.  We thought it would be interesting to see wh ..read more

It has been a long time since I’ve blogged but summer is starting to wind down and there is more time for weaving.  It has been a busy summer with lots of guests and with that a lot of travelling up and down the island, showing off all the beauty and wonders.  This photo is one of the local beaches on the left is the mainland of BC and on the right is Hornby Island with Vancouver Island behind.   To get back into the swing of things I put on one of my hand painted silk warps, they are always a favourite to weave.  This one is 2/22 silk and is half pink and half purple ..read more

I can’t believe its been a month since the last post!  I’ve finished weaving the autumn leaves silk scarf.  To remind you the warp of the scarf was hand dyed in orange, plum, moss, bronze brown and scarlet and the weft is eggplant purple Tencel.  The pattern is a personal favourite, it is a network twill that kind of looks like leaves. The finished scarf is quite lovely, the bright hit of the orange really stands out.  I think that a scarf needs to be bright and cheerful against a dark winter coat.  For Sale. We went on the first botany walk for the year and while t ..read more

In the last post I mentioned that the hand painted 2/22 silk warp that I had picked for my latest project looked like autumn leaves with its splashes of red, orange, plum, brown and moss.  So I went with a tried and true pattern, a 10 shaft network twill that I think looks like leaves.  It can be difficult to pick a weft colour, I like to try a lot before deciding.  First lot of weft choices are 2/8 Tencel, in scarlet, moss and spice.  I wanted to pick colours in the warp so I could highlight the colours of the warp but, nope, nothing worked, it all kind of blended into the ..read more

The navy blue tea towels are off the loom and the yellow ones have already gone to their new owner.  The red tea towels have had their final product photos taken and are almost ready to go up in our Etsy store. Now I’m trying to find something to put on the loom.  All week I’ve taken out different bins of yarns to see if anything leaps up and grabs me.  So far nothing has inspired me, maybe it’s the grey sky. I finally just pulled out the painted silk scarf warps that we painted last fall.  They are gleaming in the light and they are definitely making me happy!  I li ..read more

As a follow up to my last post ‘It’s All in the Sett’; I did decide to work on this tea towel pattern. The pattern has so much potential and by sleying it at the wrong sett I did the pattern an injustice.  I did however get some really lovely tea towels, just not exactly the tea towels I wanted. I had to make 42 more ends to have the tea towel come in at the correct width, so this entailed reworking the entire pattern to ensure that the stripes are well balanced. As well as adding more ends I was running low on the aquamarine blue, so I had to swap out some of the stripes.....essentially ..read more

After I finished weaving the 4 tea towels that are fulfilling a commission, these four were woven in golden yellow. I can now turn to the 2/8 cotton stash for the last 2 tea towels on the navy blue warp.  There is so much colour to choose from blues and teals, pinks and purples or the oranges, reds and greens. I went for the bright red for the last 2 tea towels.  It is a classic colour combination for a reason and deservedly so; its such a lovely combination. The 6 tea towels are finally off the loom and they make a satisfying pile.  I cut them into pairs and using the sewing ..read more

The bright happy tea towels are off the loom and ready to hem.  I have worked on creating this pattern for some time and have in the past woven a very similar pattern it without issue. My goal this time was to create a very colourful, uplifting tea towel that was really thirsty and would really hold water well.  So, I decided to change the sett on the weave. I chose pink, magenta, blue and aqua green for the warp colours. I decided to sett the tea towels at 20 epi as this has been recommended on several recent articles I have read with the goal to enhance the functionality of the te ..read more

It’s January, so it must be tea towels; that seems to be our slogan here at Dust Bunnies. As I was trying to figure out what tea towel pattern I wanted to do, I got a commission for 4 tea towels.  The colours are navy blue and yellow.  In the picture you can see that the tops of the tubes have been coloured.  When we get a new order of 2/8 cotton, we colour the tubes so that we can keep the different dye lots separated.  The bottom tube of navy is a slightly different colour and in the dark days of winter it could have been hard to notice when pulling the warp, so I'm glad ..read more