Thursday, July 5, 2012

Some off-loom (sort of) sprang work

The current project (a plain-weave-with-sprang piece) is off the loom, only to be put onto another loom.  Here's a picture of the setup I'm using to accomplish the sprang in the center section.  I took the pegs out of the top beam of this Swedish tapestry loom (which incidentally I have not yet used for Swedish tapestry).  The piece is draped over and clamped to this beam with the help of a stick shuttle.  See the unwoven warp yarns between the two woven sections.



I'm working the sprang with a new-to-me tool I picked up at CNCH in May, called a locker needle hook.  It's used for hooking rugs somehow (a fiber art I have not tried - yet?).  When I started doing these sprang pieces on the loom, I developed a method of working where I'd work a section using a crochet hook, and then slip a long weaving needle through alongside the hook to pull a cord through to save the twists.  I thought that it would be great if somehow I could combine the two tools, either by drilling a hole through the end of a hook, or forming a hook at the tip of a needle.  Alas, metal is not my medium!  So imagine my delight in the vendor hall when I realized someone had already done it.  The tip of the hook itself seems more pointy than a normal crochet hook, which works really well in this application.

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