Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Beginnings

Not sure yet where this will lead me, but here are the beginnings of my next project.  I went to school with Andrea Donnelly and love the new work she is doing with warp painting and ikat.  I am also looking at the work of Catherine Ellis (sorry best website I could find).  I did a lot of woven shibori work in college both for myself and as an assistant to another artist.  The two fabric samples on the right are knit fabrics I made in college.

I think step one will be some dye samples and deciding where to start with the warp.  I am not sure if I want to use Ikat techniques to dye before I put the yarn on the loom or paint the warp once it is on the loom.  (Not sure I have the space for that)

Then I will explore the weft yarns and see which best shows off the work I am going to do on the warp.

Finally...many, many moon from now...I will need to decided if and what dyeing to do to the final project.  Oh yea, and what to do with the end fabric.  I am not a huge planner, so this will probably be about all you get.  From this point I usually just dive in and hope for the best.  Usually things turn out ok :)

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Complete!!!

Here is a picture of my double weave fabric off the loom!  I need to twist the fringe (which will probably take longer than the weaving, grr), throw it in the wash and then it will be 100%.  The perceptive eye may tell that it is not a square.  Some shrinking and shifting will occur when this is washed.  Most likely it will be a square after that.

I am surprised at how heavy the fabric is.  It is a double cloth and each pocket (256 of them) is stuffed with polly-fill.  It is approximately 36 x 36 in.  End use?  My original thought was baby play mat.  It may go on the wall.

There is enough yarn on the loom to make another piece this size.  Now that I have finished, I kind of want to go ahead and weave that as well.  I want to do stripes in stead of the squares using my favorite two weft yarns from this piece.  Stay tuned :)

Monday, August 6, 2012

No Really...

I really do intend on weaving, and blogging about it.  But since it has been over a month since my last post, I am sure it is hard to believe.  July was a hard month, looking forward to August being more...colorful, yarn-filled and fun.

So here I was Saturday afternoon and again this afternoon.  I am 3/4 finished with the project so maybe tomorrow afternoon?  or Friday? I can show it off the loom.

I am so ready to move on from this project.  The tension has been really weird making weaving very slow.  I hate weaving slow.  I have another project in mind and need to get some notes down.  Maybe I can share those soon as well...maybe even some samples?

I was tempted mid-July to scrap this project and come back later, but my tiny weaving room wouldn't allow that.  I have two looms, but they can't both be extended fully at once.  I had started this piece of fabric so I couldn't fold up the loom and work on the other.  It is probably for the best.