weaving – Page 5

Summer Weaving

July 13, 2017 | 1 Comment

Summer is a time when my weaving projects must take priority since that’s when I’m home to work! Yet summer offers SO many wonderful distractions! The garden, family and friends visiting, lots of conferences to attend. I want to kick back and enjoy the season, but I also feel the pressure to make as much progress as possible before I leave home again.

These are the scenes that greet me each day on my walk along the Connecticut River, although the peonies and iris have shifted to roses, and now the roses are being overtaken by hydrangea.

It’s been a banner year for roses in my own garden. I have to give all the credit to Bob since he has fertilized every time I’ve asked, and he’s also used some kind of eco-friendly spray when the gypsy moths fell out of the trees on to the rose bushes.

We have a granite wall that is about 100′ long and planted in pink and yellow roses, interspersed with lavender, daisies, and boxwoods.

I’m going to back up a bit and reminisce about the trip I took to Tennessee to attend the Southeast Fiber Festival back in April. Back in April? Time flies! I took three weeks to drive down to Gatlinburg and back. It was a perfect mix of relaxation and adventure. After spending Easter weekend with my new granddaughter and her parents, I continued south to meet my good friend and tapestry weaver AnnaByrd to make the rest of the trip together. We had a wonderful 500 mile drive through the Shenandoah Valley and into the Smoky Mountains. Both going and returning we stopped in New Market, Virginia, and enjoyed lunch in a cafe at the civil war museum there. We were both taking a 3-day class with Jon Eric Riis on Coptic tapestry techniques.

In spite of the terrible destruction in Gatlinburg by last autumn’s fires, Arrowmont is still a stunning place. There is plenty of evidence of the chaotic and destroying force of fire, but I was relieved to see that there was still plenty untouched. This view is not the direction of the fire came from.

A view of the main building from the dining hall. The dining arrangement is the best I’ve had at a conference. I wish I’d photographed the dining room. It is cafeteria style, and the food is excellent. You sit at real wooden dining tables that have real chairs. Although there are a lot of tables in this large room, it feels quite like gathering in a home situation because the food is excellent and so obviously prepared with care, and the setting is so comfortably home like. Well done!

My few photos from this trip are not memorable, but the memories they conjure for me are too good not to use. Here is Jon during his keynote address for the conference.

The slides of his work covered most of his weaving career. I had no idea he’d been weaving for 50 years–how can he be old enough to have had such a long career? I have always loved his Icarus tapestries, and I no idea just how many works he’s done over the years. Look at this assemblage of pears! I know, it’s a bad photo– what can you expect of a photo of a projected slide during the presentation?

AnnByrd took this photo of Jon and me together, and it’s a great memory for me, even though blurry. Some day the memory of the workshop will become like this photo….a bit out of focus–but hopefully not too soon.

On display in the instructors’ exhibit were a series of partial faces that Riis wove entirely in metallic yarns. I don’t know HOW he got such a beautiful surface with such challenging materials. On the last day, after this work was crated, he unpacked a few and let us pass them around. Look at the curve of the chin–and the shading!

There are 20 partial faces in this series that hang together in a grid. The piece is called “Diaglogue.” You can see it here.

About 10 days after I returned home from this adventure, I was off to the Cape with a couple of lace making friends. We were headed to the Sacred Hearts Retreat Center in Wareham, Massachusetts, for the annual weekend retreat of the New England Lace Guild. It’s a wonderful setting near the beach, all our meals are served to us family style at big tables in a large dining room. We have private rooms and shared baths, and we can stay up all night making lace if we like, go for walks, take classes, and even buy stuff from the Van Scivers who always come. For the past two years I’ve opted not to take a class, and instead, filled my days sitting in the sunroom with a couple of my own projects that needed uninterrupted attention. There are plenty of other lace makers who do the same.

I spent the weekend working on this project while also keeping track of the eagle cam that was following the eaglet Spirit, on the Anacostia River, just off the Potomac in Washington, DC. You can just see Spirit at the edge of the nest (upper right) on my computer screen.

Here is one of the two classrooms….. since the center is in a large Georgian house, the rooms are generous and furnished from decades past.

Back at home, with the summer unfolding, we’ve celebrated our 40th anniversary, and been treated to a long weekend with both our sons and daughter in law, along with cherished new granddaughter Tori and a few good friends. I’m working on a couple of floor loom projects and two tapestries.

One tapestry is the line of text that our son Christopher asked me to weave. As of this week, I am 20% done. It seems like an insane thing to weave, and even Archie tried to dissuade me from this project, in spite of having woven quite a lot of text himself. Yet I find it both relaxing and challenging. Chris made the font and then hand manipulated the spacing of letters for my cartoon. I am not making any marks on the warp, since I’ve found that I have more success working from a cartoon when I let the cartoon be an idea of the weaving, rather than trying to actually follow the cartoon slavishly.

And here is the work in progress on the design I created in Riis’s Coptic workshop. The workshop was titled “Unraveling Coptic Weaving,” and we were to bring family photos to reinterpret in a Coptic style. I balked at that idea and brought a lot of other images that intrigued me more–Minoan dancers, Greek vase paintings, and one of the bas relief religious figures from the facade of St. John the Divine Cathedral in NYC. Anyway, after playing with those compelling ideas, I settled back on the idea of a family member…..dear little Tori.

The warp is sett at 16 epi, which is considerably finer than the finest sett I’ve ever used before — 12 epi. Between the fine sett and the neutral color of the warp thread, I am struggling to see what I’m doing! Still, when I pick the right threads, the weaving is also compelling.

It was a good challenge for me to draw this cartoon. Tori will be surrounded by clouds with hearts in the corners….schmaltzy for sure, but I hope to balance that a bit by using some tertiary colors. Each cloud and each heart is somewhat different from each other….the only way I can do it. We’ll see.

This morning I measured the lace that I started at the retreat. It’s also for Tori. I just photographed it after I put away the measuring tape. It is now a whopping 32″ long!

So I’d better get back to work on these projects so I can get some of them finished before the season changes!

When Weaving and Sailing Converge

June 13, 2017 | 1 Comment

The month of June is shad season all along the East Coast of the US. This is the time of year when many communities have shad festivals. Our festival in Essex took place over the weekend, although Bob and I were not able to take part in it. The day after the festival, we happened to be visiting the Connecticut River Museum, where Bob enjoys volunteering. We visited the new exhibit on shad fishing along this river, and I learned that the town of Moodus, just across the river from us, used to be the twine making center of the US. Amazing that there is such a thing! The twine making center of the US, in quaint Moodus. There were numerous mills for making gill nets, the type of nets used to catch shad. These nets work by trapping shad right behind the fish’s gills, in a way that they cannot free themselves by swimming either forward or backward.

Many tapestry weavers use cotton seine twine for warps, and it is getting harder and harder to find. Most of us rely on a Swedish brand of twine that comes in several sizes. I had no idea that this very type of twine was made in this part of the world.

Here is the gill net making machine invented by Wilbur Squire around 1872.

A close up of the knots

The twine made in these mills was also used for warps for rag rugs that were woven on industrial looms in this area, for sewing sails for boats, and a finer cotton yarn was used in commercial sock making, and even the cotton string used inside yo-yos! If this kind of history intrigues you, you can read more here.

The Moodus River is a tributary of the Connecticut River. It’s a small, fast flowing river that feeds into the Salmon River, which flows into the Connecticut River at Haddam. In the hey day of twine making there were 15 mills along this small river. If you happen to be in the area and want to take at look at the remains of some of these mills and the dam that used to harness the power, travel along Rte. 149 to the East Haddam Land Trust’s Hidden Valley Farm Preserve, and also Grist Mill Road off Route 149 just east of its intersection with Route 151. The Bernstein Preserve is on Falls Road/Route 149.

Here is some of the interesting information about the twine mills and net making on display at the Connecticut River Museum.

These are netting shuttles that are used to make nets by hand. The very day that the shad festival was taking place in Essex, I was at the monthly meeting of my Connecticut lace group, and one of my good friends was teaching herself how to make netting with a shuttle just like one of these–an interesting coincidence!

Another member of our lace guild made several small pieces of netting for Mary to for use in the centerpieces for our annual lace retreat on Cape Cod. That little piece of netting makes just the difference, doesn’t it? It is just the right size to go with Mary’s driftwood sailboat with lace embellished sail!– and the tatted the tatted sea turtle! Pretty impressive! Mary takes making these centerpieces very seriously! Each year she makes five or six centerpieces for our annual lace retreat that takes place on Cape Cod. There is always a beach or seaside theme.

I am intrigued by the interesting history of my new home along the river. Ship trade in the Caribbean gave Connecticut it’s name “the nutmeg state,” and the area around Willimantic had a number of silk mills, where local farmers tried their hand at raising silk worms for a few years in the hey day of the Industrial Revolution. Although it’s not unusual to have textile production and ship trade coexisting in a community from that time period, it is interesting to me to live in such an area now, where I can enjoy the textile history and Bob can enjoy the maritime history.

I took this phoe of the Onrust at her new home on the river, from the 3rd floor shad exhibit at the Connecticut River Museum.

A walk along the river at any time of year is beautiful, but maybe June wins because of the wealth of spring flowers. In early June azaleas and rhodies are at their height.

Peonies and iris are a fleeting burst of color in late May and early June.

And the first roses of early June along the river.

Keep on Keeping on!

November 20, 2016 | 1 Comment

Years ago I knew an editor who said that we must all find a rhythm in life that we can maintain for at least 30 years. I’m still struggling with that. My last birthday put me into a new decade, and at this age I’m not sure I will ever learn what speed I can maintain. So must settle for the mantra to just keep on keeping on….

This was an excessively busy week which seemed perfectly do-able when I first signed on to participate. First came a 2-day workshop on rep weave with Lucienne Coifman who recently published a book on this subject.

Setting up my Baby Wolf for this project was rather daunting. A pre-workshop on Lucienne’s method for warping a rep weave project should be a must-do in order to have a stress-free experience. I think that’s entirely possible if you take an on-going class with her. This was her traveling 3-day workshop crammed into 2 days for our guild’s annual November workshop.

There were 18 participants in a round robin class, where each of the looms had a different rep weave structure, from traditional Swedish designs to Lucienne’s designs. It was impossible to weave all 18 designs in the space of 2 days, so it was somewhat stressful. Most of us skipped breaks of any kind, including eating lunch. But look what we got!

This is Lucienne’s sample of the structure she gave me to put on my loom. This is in her new book.

Other designs we wove:

The little tags were for identifying different treadling methods.

There were more wonderful designs choices to weave than there were hours in this class. As the last hour approached we all had a moment of disappointment at the designs we did not get to try. When we cut off the yardage on our looms we brought them all to the front table.

Lucienne gave a number of lectures during the two days. It was hard to tear myself away from weaving to listen and take notes, but all the information was important so I had to do it!

I still have a bit of warp on my loom with which I will weave some samples for the women who did not get to my loom. And I sure hope there will be enough warp left over for me to weave a little something useful–perhaps a book cover–for myself!

So Friday evening we all packed up our looms to leave–no simple feat. I unloaded my car and then reloaded with the tapestry paraphernalia that I needed for the next morning’s talk at the state guild meeting. I was to give a program for the morning open lecture that is part of our regular meeting agenda. My talk on images in contemporary tapestry was well received. I was quite nervous about doing this talk, mostly because I had almost no time to prepare for it. But I slept well the night before, especially after two intense days of weaving rep weave on strange looms! I woke up Saturday morning calmer than I’ve been in months for which I was very grateful. A couple of good friends promised to attend to give me moral support, and nothing beats that! Quite a few people signed a list to receive more information from me on how to get started learning how to weave tapestry, and that was the point of the whole thing! So I guess that means it was successful!

The afternoon program this month was given by Norma Smayda about her experiments weaving ondule fabric with a fan reed. Schiffer Publishing will soon be coming out with Norma’s new book on this subject! I can’t wait to get it.

Norma took us through her entire process, and that gave me quite a bit info for doing my own experiments. I have almost bought a fan reed from Sara von Tresckow of the Wool Gatherers twice but balked at spending so much on something I had no idea how to use well. Look what Norma has been doing with it.

If you plan your stripes you can accentuate the movement of the reed. You can also get undulating selvedges or straight selvedges, depending on how your thread your reed.

After buying a reed that had fans going across the entire width, Norma then ordered some fans she designed herself with straight pins for part of the width and fanned pins for the rest. It allows her to have areas of straight weaving and areas of undulation. Quite beautiful! The blue/orange wall hanging is all one piece, with straight weaving on the left and undulations on the right. Try to ignore that bit of another woven piece in red at the right edge of the photo. I did not want to touch Norma’s work so I could not get the red wall hanging out of the way.

And here is the red piece from the corner of the previous photo–it’s so graphic it vibrates!

Norma is wearing a vest that she designed. I don’t remember who sewed it for her, but she did a fabulous job! There is a placket at the back of the jacket where the seamstress inserted one repeat of the ondule fabric…such a wonderful touch!

As you can see, I’ve had quite a week! I went to bed at 8.30 last night because I could not keep my eyes open any longer! My head is full of ideas — now just to find the time. I just have to keep going, even if it’s slower than I’d like.

Weaving Connections

August 2, 2016 | Leave a Comment

Today is Tuesday, August 2nd, and Convergence, the biggest gathering of weavers in the US,with lots of attendees from overseas as well, began over the weekend. Facebook is full of posts from the many participants. Do I feel left out? Well…..maybe… just a little.

My tiny part of the world had its own weaving weekend though. On the hottest Saturday of the summer (so far!) members of Area 4 of the Handweavers’ Guild of Connecticut had a beautiful display and did demonstrations of weaving and spinning at the Historical Society during Old Lyme’s 30th annual Old Lyme Festival. It was steaming hot, but we all had a great time. We heard that we were the most popular event at the festival, and I have to admit that I’ve never seen such a crowd at any of my past demonstrations in New Jersey. Although the historical society headquarters are not yet air conditioned (supposedly next summer it will be), I wonder if being in an historic grange building with lots of fans (that would be rotating, air circulating fans–not enthusiast fans!) was still more enticing to the hordes than being outside in the 90-degree sun. Or maybe we just really were a compelling option for visitors.

The local online newspaper, The LimeLine, covered our event and got a shot of our group working on the behemoth, 9-ft Clemens loom. I think this may be the moment when Jody (in the b&w stripes) began the tedious process of mending broken warp threads. She generously allowed visitors to try a bit weaving at the loom, and there was an incident of over zealousness that led to some broken warps.

These photos of our exhibit are pretty pedestrian. I’ll just whine and say that I was very busy spinning! It’s not a real excuse, but I hope you’ll accept it. This is just part of a display of our members’ work.

Stephanie has a business making rugs and blankets of all sorts and teaching classes in both techniques. She brought a loom to demonstrate weaving and had a lovely array of rugs for sale. Right next to her is a rack of her indigo dyed shibori silk scarves.

I know there are lots of better photos taken by others, but I haven’t see them yet, so these will have to suffice for now. It was a very worthwhile event. The folks who run the festival said we were the most popular participant, and they hope we will continue to be involved in the future. And knowing this building will be air conditioned next year makes us all think, oh yeah, we’ll do it!

The next day a few of us drove together up to Kingstown, Rhode Island, to take a look at the extensive weaving stash of our dear friend, Kathi Spangler, who passed away a few weeks ago. She has been on my mind so much this summer. When I went to see Kate Barber’s exhibition in Providence, I realized we were so close to the convention center where the last Convergence was held. When I left the gallery where Kate’s work was on display, the first corner I walked to had the building where ATA housed our tapestry exhibition two years ago. Kathi wanted to make sure that visitors to Providence would know they had reached a building with a weaving exhibit inside, so she filled all the large main floor windows with works by Rhode Island weavers. It was quite dramatic and such an undertaking to gather all the woven items and display them so creatively. I had a strong sense of her presence as I stood at that corner remembering the scene from two years ago.

At Kathi’s house, Susan, Sandy, and I spent a couple of hours looking through Kathi’s handwoven fabrics. Some things were finished items, like hand towels, scarves and shawls, and table runners. I was intrigued with several lengths of fabrics woven for samples of techniques. This one in particular caught my attention.

Sharon and Jan who had organized all of Kathi’s stash and who were on hand to let friends in to look through Kathi’s treasures, said this piece was called the ‘chicken project.’ Boy, I am SO curious about that. What comes to mind is that the color of golden yellow is rather like a baby chick. Sometime I’ll have to ask Jan how this project got its name.

I took a wonderful table runner in natural linen with a bit of overshot in red at each end. I found two more runners in the same pattern with forest green at both ends that I took for Jody. Kathi had a lot of beautiful sample pieces, and I wonder how many of them became finished projects. The red runner underneath the overshot runner has Christmas trees in huck lace. It just needs hemming.

I was so moved to see that she had finished her wonderful jacket from Sarah Fortin’s workshop. Jan and Sharon had thought to put it on a dress form for visitors to see. Why didn’t I photograph it? Of course, it turned out beautifully, and I hope Kathi wore it a few times before she got too sick.

Speaking of yardage, I am very close to finishing my JOY project. I rewarded myself with about an hour of weaving today after working on Archie’s book. It is really stunning fabric, and I will cherish it even if it never turns into a garment. Those JOY women, Diane and Cathy, have really created something wonderful with their line of handpainted tencel, and using these yarns as both warp and weft is amazingly dramatic! Weaving it has been very therapeutic, as weaving should be.

I neglected to mention what I’m dreaming up for my next project! Sharon has shared with me all the details that her Rhode Guild has discovered about weaving and constructing an origami top based on Virginia West’s examinations of garments constructed from narrow widths of cloth used diagonally. I have an assortment of fine silks that I will soon make into a warp. Photos to come.

8S Advancing Lace Yardage Using JOY Almaza

July 26, 2016 | Leave a Comment

This is an advancing lace structure on a plain weave ground that I found in the Greater Baltimore Weaving Guild’s book Sixty Scarves for 60 Years. The pattern was designed by Carol Bodin, and it is called “Raku.”

Warp:
JOY “Almaza”
Length: 6 yards, 35 epi, 16: wide= 560 ends + 8 ends for selvedges. Total 568 ends

Click on this image for a bigger version:

I threaded right to left and had 2 floating selvedges on the right side, then ended with threading 1,2,3,4 and two floating selvedges. That used the 8 extra threads I assigned for the selvedges.

As you can see there are little huck interlacements on a plain weave ground.

Here is the warp.

The weft is Almaza in a different colorway.

I wove 3 1/2 yards of the lace pattern and 1 1/2 yards of plain weave for fabric to make a jacket.