Fiber in the Hands of an Angry Spinner

A few weeks ago, I attended a dye workshop with Liz Moncrief at the Whatcom Weavers’ mini conference, Fibers and Beyond, in Lynden, WA. I haven’t dyed cellulose fibers or worked with fiber-reactive dyes before. This was a two-way split warp that I inverted on the loom, to give the middle stripe. I first tried weaving it with the same yarn in a third colour:

(Click to view larger).

But as you can see, it was too much gold, and it muddied up the colours. So I went searching through my stash and found a brighter gold that was thinner and let the warp shine through:

(Click to view larger).

It was just barely dry when I entered it into the Spokane Handweavers’ Guild Annual Sale. I regret to inform you that I did not take a photo of the finished piece, which sold the first day of the sale before I returned from Las Vegas.

This is a shame, as I was especially happy with the trim — I added in thin gold strands, twisted the fringe, and finished it with a Common Whipping in the gold thread.

I know I haven’t been posting about what I’ve been weaving . . . I couldn’t. But I’ve been working deep in the background of this project — weaving things to help the teams make decisions on what to bring into production: Project Jacquard

Finally!  All the warp threads are wound, and placed in the raddle, which allows them to be spaced  on the warp beam for back-to-front threading and sleying.  Back-to-front is really the only way to thread this particular loom, because the Louet Spring allows you to remove the beast beam *and* the beater, and to sit, nicely upright, right inside the loom for threading and sleying.  It’s rather fantastic that way.

Each thread gets its own heddle — so this means that every single thread is threaded through its very own eye.  In this case, we’re talking about 547 threads (16 threads per inch for the cloth, 24 threads per inch for the rails) and several hours of work.

Knotted in bundles on the other side to prevent ensuing tragedy like cats or dogs or small children pulling them back out of the heddles:

(I don’t have cats or dogs or small children at this point, so this must be just to prevent myself from doing something stupid).

Next up: sleying the reed!

To recap: my client had this inspirational photo.

Using the Fibonacci Sequence for striping and colour changes,

I’ve been winding the warp for the Peacock Baby Wrap:

Here’s the warping board straight on:

To conserve space in my studio (which is also my bedroom), I installed the warping board over the light switches.  (This actually makes them easier to find in the dark).   The thing behind the warping board is a child’s counting toy from Ikea that used to belong to Farmertot.  It’s got 100 beads in sets of 10, and it perfect to help keep track of the number of threads as I’m winding.

There’s a sticky note above the warping board to the left.  Here’s a detail of it:

This is the number of each thread of each colour (Brown, Green, Teal, Blue, Purple).

If it’s not evident on the sticky note, there is more green and blue in the sequencing, because they are two of the three colours that are striped into and back out from.  (The teal, in the middle, is brighter, and I needed to reduce the number of threads to fit the width of the cloth, so it has fewer threads, but because its value is lighter than the other colours, I think it was the perfect place for a reduction.

I showed up in the Spokesman Review weaving on the quad at the Gonzaga Tartan Legacy Day.  It was a blast, and the cloth came out beautifully.

For curious weavers, I used a sett of 12 epi using sport weight Brown Sheep Naturespun yarn in Natural, Irish Shamrock, Nordic Blue, and Scarlet, sourced locally at Paradise Fibers.

I will have it at the 13 May meeting of the Spokane Handweavers’ Guild in Spokane Valley, if you’d like to see the finished product.  I fulled it further than I intended, which makes me a wee bit sad, but it would make a GORGEOUS blanket at that weight.

As we learned at the last guild meeting, blue DOES in fact felt at a different rate than the other colours, so I also had puckering of the white squares, which I worked out with a makeshift mangle (large rolling pin) and lots of elbow grease.

The Portland Handweavers Guild hosted Blocks Workshop in February with Rosalie Neilson, and when they had a few extra seats, they let the Spokane Handweavers Guild know. I had a mental block about blocks (pun only partially intended), and jumped at the chance. What fun the weekend was!

Rosalie Neilson Block Workshop

So, of course, when I got home, I set to work on what I wanted to make, scribbling and drafting, and making notes.

Draft and Cloth

I used UKI 5/2 cotton for the warp and the tabby weft, and UKI 3/2 cotton for the green pattern weft, sett at 16epi, which I think was tight enough, but I fear I need to beat a LOT more firmly if I have any hope of squaring up the project. I used a birds-eye/O tiedown of 1,2,2,1.

Front Pattern -- my crosses are longer than they are tall.

Front Detail

Back Pattern

Back Detail

Pre-wash Stats:
On-loom, the warp is 16″ in the reed.
Off-loom, the width is 14 7/8″.
Each motif is 4″ wide and 5 1/8″ long.
Sample = 14 7/8″w x 11 1/2″l, fringe excluded.
Washed on a hot-normal-light load in a Staber front-loader, with a cold rinse.

Post-wash Stats:
Each motif is 3 5/8″ wide x 4 7/8″ long.
14 1/2″ wide x 11″ long, fringe excluded.
Hot Ironed and air-dried.

More stats:
(In one inch of cloth length)

On loom . . . Off loom . . PPI
12 . . . . . 12.5 . . . . in pattern
16 . . . . . 16 . . . . . 5/2 plain weave
13 . . . . . 13 . . . . . 3/2 plain weave
08 . . . . . 09 . . . . . 3/2 + 5/2 in plain weave, separate sheds
10 . . . . . 11 . . . . . 3/2 + 5/2 (ie: 10 each) in plain weave, same shed