In 2010, the guild challenge was to get inspired by something from our great guild library. The idea was to encourage members to go visit it, check out a book or periodical of interest, and show the completed piece as well as the books that inspired them. I had acquired an out-of-print book Sprang: thread twisting, A creative textile technique by Hella Skowronski. In it is a little chapter on combining loom-controlled weaving with sprang, and I wanted to try this. So I dutifully arranged to visit the library with Claudia our librarian, borrowed a copy of the book, and went to work. I did a 2-block doubleweave using a carpet warp in black as one layer, and dyed in shades of cochineal as the other layer (that's another post maybe). I wove in a pattern of squares for the top edge and bottom panel of the bag, and then on the side sections I left one layer the entire width of the bag unwoven while I wove a single bottom layer. On one side I wove a black bottom layer and spranged the pink and lavender....
I beamed the two layers each on a separate beam, since while I was weaving the background I needed to be able to loosen it to "take up" while the other layer needed to stay taut, and then while spranging the top layer, it again needed to be able to take up independently. I had some warp left over, and played with other colors and patterning in my 2-block threading, and made some accessories to go with my bag: zip pouches, cellphone slipcovers and such.
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