Puttering…

As the summer comes to a close, the stifling heat and lack of rain, makes going outdoors depressing, I just hang in my studio, where they like me, and I have just a bit of control over something, and all is well.

The interesting thing about control in my studio is that, I’m in control if I know what I’m doing and I’ve done it a number of times before. But I’m crossing into some uncharted territory these days, doing things I haven’t done before, trying out structures and theories and even though things go wrong, the point here is to learn.

I designed a draft, to explore turned overshot. I had finished and delivered a half dozen overshot placemats for a friend, and wanted to explore what happens if you turn a draft. For those who aren’t weavers, this means nothing, I’m sorry. But I know enough about drafting and have weaving software that does the job for me, so that worked fine. I wanted just a narrow band of overshot across one side of my body in an easy summer shirt. No problem. Except, since the turned overshot took up 6 shafts, I had two left for the plain weave on either side of the band. And I’m working with 20/2 cotton sett at 30 epi. Which means that each of the front two shafts has 15 inserted large eyed heddles per inch, making things really dense.

So dense that the warp doesn’t separate when I step on the treadle. So I have to manually push down either the first or second shaft, each pick. Tedious and annoying. And I could have just redesigned the draft to have completely fixed this issue, but that’s why I’m in uncharted territory. To learn.

For a brief moment I considered pulling all 700+ ends and starting over, with a corrected draft that spread the heddles over four shafts instead of two, and just decided to carry on and deal with it.

I’m making progress…

Meanwhile, I cleared the loom of the Iris Leaf Mats I’ve been weaving, cut them apart, and hemmed each one.

Then I trimmed all the stem ends from the back.

I washed each mat in hot water to get the warp to shrink, which it did, and then I hung each one to dry. I pressed the first one, the others are in a stack on the ironing board, and I’m so happy with this experiment. I have to decide if I should harvest another batch for next year…

Tomatoes from my garden in a berry bowl made by my weaving buddy Limor Johnson.

Of course now that I have an empty floor loom, I have to put a warp on it. I’m playing around with combining drafts, which I do all the time in my regular fabrics, but I wanted to see what I could come up with on only 4 shafts. The last fabric I did like this was on the 12 shaft… Since I have a ridiculous amount of 8/2 cotton, and this is going into fall, I thought a small run of dishtowels wouldn’t hurt.

So I wound, threaded and beamed cotton warp for a run of towels.

I played around with a draft combination and worked out an easy treadling.

I finished off the first towel and now I’m starting the second one in blue with a different treadling pattern. The draft is part of a potential article, so I am not at liberty to share it yet.

And there is the mohair that just seems to keep on going. I put 18 yards of mohair on my 45″ loom, actually I squeezed out 46″, but who’s to know… I just finished blanket number 6.

And of course I always have an assistant.

So I’m starting blanket number 7, and this will be the last one, and I’m hoping I can squeak out 60″.

Because…

The knots…. The sections aren’t all the same because I pre-wound the 18 yard warp in two inch sections and then wound them directly onto the sectional, each section at a time. Some of the loftier mohairs packed slightly differently, so they didn’t all start in the same place. Still, I’m pretty close. I may have to squeak the short sections by adding a dummy warp to them. Not sure how that will work in mohair, but I’m willing to try anything, because, well, I’m here to learn…

I’m trying to get out a bit more, I met with a knitting group this week, and I did give a remote lecture to an American Sewing Guild chapter in Kentucky. Lovely group. And Friday was the final finishing up of some of the most fabulous costumes I’ve ever worked on for a production of Metromaniacs, at the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, which opens in 4 days. The costumes are 18th century with an over the top contemporary twist. Lots and lots of handsewing… I hear the production is hilarious. My tickets are in a couple of weeks.

Enjoy what’s left of the summer dear readers. I thought about pulling a couple of my little Structo’s out and taking them outdoors to weave. Instead I just sat in my cozy studio and wove instead. I made some progress on the 8 shaft Shadow Weave on Sisko…

…and the 4 shaft overshot gamp on Riker.

And finally, each morning I grab a small stack of books to enter in my Librarything.com database. My library is called weaversew if you are on Librarything.com. I just hit something like 995 books. I’m working through my dye library and then will start on the sewing books. I look at each book carefully and want to try/do/experience it all. And then I find a gem like this…

Maybe not… My weaving buddies decided that to make a full bust adjustment on this pineapple apron they would probably need five motifs…

Stay tuned…