Designing Weavers Annual Exhibit and Sale

My latest lacy leno scarves off the loom!











See these scarves and other fiber art by me and other Designing Weavers this coming weekend at Art for the Home, Body, and Soul at the Sierra Madre Woman’s Club, 550 West Sierra Madre Blvd, Sierra Madre CA.  Saturday Nov.19th & Sunday Nov. 20th, 2016 * 10am-4pm each day.

WeFF is happening this weekend!

Sixteen-shaft pinwheel throw, wool and wool blends, woven on my 60" loom.














More fiber fun is coming up this Sunday, at the Weaving and Fiber Festival in Torrance.  The Southern California Handweavers' Guild presents this event annually, with fiber vendors, demonstrations, a finished handmade goods boutique, used weaving equipment and books, fabulous door prizes, a fashion show (2 pm) and more.  Join us Sunday Nov 6, 10 to 4 at the Torrance Cultural Arts Center.

The Holiday Shows Begin...

Scarf in leno weave, 100% cotton.

This weekend! See my work at the Irvine Arts Center Holiday Faire.  Friday & Saturday Nov 4-5, 14321 Yale Ave., Irvine, CA.  irvinefinearts.org

My work will be in the South Coast Weavers and Spinners Guild booth in the Fine Arts Center.

 

Pumpkin medallions

Happy pumpkin season!

Danish medallion worked on a crammed-and-spaced warp.

Wall of Shuttles

Finally got my shuttle wall put back up, having moved the studio nearly a year ago now.  Well, half of it is up anyway.  This is one of those overcoming-inertia things.  Hopefully the other half won't be too long to follow.  It feels pretty good to have the shuttles have a home.

Summer is Winding Down

I haven't posted in a while; been in a slump during August.  All my focus and anticipation seemed to be directed at the trip to Convergence in Milwaukee (I had a great time!), and I guess it kind of sapped my energy once it was over.  Now that the sun is dropping in the sky and the evening light is coming sooner and sooner, I'm a little sad that the summer has flown by.  I always have such high hopes for productivity for the summer.  I did have fun going through sample after sample adapted from Recueil d'Armures Fantaisies by J. Moiret.  Here's a scan of one of the more intricate weaves.

New (to me) leno weave variations

I've been working through weaving some leno structures from a book published in 1908.  The book is in French, and doesn't have much explanation for the diagrams, so this is my interpretation of the weaves.  The ones pictured here all have two ground (stationary) warp ends for every doup warp end (the end that crosses under the grounds and back).  They are 10/2 cotton set at 18 epi.  Some extraordinary variety is possible on just one or two threadings!

Doup leno sheds - AVL

Continuing the experiment, here are the sheds I can get on the AVL, which has a smaller shed than the Macomber.  Using top doups, crossed shed.

Top doups, uncrossing shed.

The normal shed opening for this loom with the top doups installed.

Using bottom doups, crossed shed.

Bottom doups, uncrossing shed.

The normal shed opening for this loom with the bottom doups installed.

Top vs. Bottom Doups

The first in a series of experiments comparing top-mounted doup heddles to bottom-mounted.  This experiment is on my Macomber loom.  The first photo is using the top-mounted doups, the shed where the doup warp end is crossed under the ground (stationary) end.  You can just barely see the crossing going on in the shadows behind the reed.  The lower warp ends have lifted well off the shuttle race and the shed is small compared to what the loom usually produces.

The second photo is still the top-mounted, with the shed open where the doup warp is raised on the usual side of the ground, uncrossing the warps.  The shed is larger and the lower warp ends are still on the shuttle race.  But it's not as large as the normal shed on this loom, because the doups are deflecting the upper warp ends a little.  Again looking in the shadows reveals this deflection.

In the third photo, I rethreaded the loom using bottom-mounted doups instead.  The crossing shed is much larger than the one using top-mounted, but the lower warps are still lifted off the shuttle race.  I've found that on this loom I can alleviate this by not pushing the treadle all the way down to the floor.

The fourth photo is bottom-mounted doups, uncrossing shed.  This shed is the same nice large shed that the loom produces in normal weaving without doup heddles, because the bottom-mounted doups don't interfere at all with this shed.

Leno Iridescence - result

One of the scarves I wove in this series - they're all iridescing (is that a word?), but this photo shows it up the most.

Leno Iridescence?

My summer project is to do some more experimentation with leno and gauze weaves.  One thing I wanted to try is to push the boundary of how light and airy I can go with this structure, so I am trying some very fine silk yarn.

I also thought that with all the different angles the yarn takes, it might be a candidate for iridescence.  The real proof will be when I get it off the loom, but I think it is happening: here are photos of the fabric on the loom from two different angles.  One angle is showing the reddish weft more, and the other the blues in the warp.  This fabric is plain gauze, with each pair of warps twisting the same direction at the same time.
 

Weaving at the senior center

I've started going over to the senior center in town, where surprisingly they have a weaving room, which has accumulated a half dozen floor looms, most of which are sitting unused.  I thought I'd come hang out and see if I can lend a hand at getting the looms operational and in use.  One of the looms has had an abandoned cotton and linen warp sitting on it for a few years, so I fixed some errors and got it tensioned and weaving after a fashion.  I'm told it was to be a tablecloth.  I chose some various whites and off-whites and a turquoise accent to complete the windowpane check.

You can see one of the apron straps had frayed and finally broke, which we'll have to replace.  I'm wondering if anyone recognizes this loom.  It has an interesting side-tie-up system.  It's also missing its ratchet handle, which makes it difficult to tension, so I'm hoping we'll come across it and can get that back on once I get this warp woven off.  The loom will be pretty much impossible to use by someone without much grip strength.

Cool colors for a hot project

Painting a warp for some gauze scarves in fine silk.

Master-inspired palette

The artist-inspired pallette I used a couple posts ago resulted in this double weave and sprang piece. The painting from which I took the colors is "The Pink Cloud" by the neo-impressionist Henri-Edmond Cross.

The scale is really too large for my taste.  The fabric is about a yard high and even bigger in the width.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it.

...but whatever I decide, I do have a series of coordinating scarves to go with it.

Off the Loom

Throw blankets, off the loom and wet-finished.  Going up in my Etsy shop.

Color Challenged

A project for my color study group, where we each picked an artist "Master" to study.  I chose the impressionist painter Henri-Edmond Cross.  His work certainly has me putting together combinations of colors I would not have thought to try before!

Another Dye Day

Yesterday was the third annual Fiber Day I've participated in at the Huntington Library and Gardens.  Weavers and spinners were there demonstrating, as well as us dyers.  The dyeing we do at this event feature dyestuffs from plant materials.  This year I tried dyeing with kamala (Mallotus philippensis) and indigo (Indigofera tinctoria).

Top row, kamala on wool premordanted with (left to right) iron, copper and alum.  Bottom row, left to right, indigo on unmordanted wool, and indigo overdip on the same three kamala-dyed as above.  The indigo was such a strong color it overpowered the yellows, so I got teals instead of the greens I was after, but still pretty.

Late on the Loom

Some stash-busting throw blankets in a color-and-weave star pattern.

Reception - Uncommon Threads

There was a nice turnout for the reception for the Uncommon Threads exhibit.  Thanks to all who showed up.

There was food and drink and lots of great fiber art.  If you missed it, the exhibit is still up through May 14 at San Fernando Valley Arts and Cultural Center, 18312 Oxnard St in Tarzana, Tue-Sat 11-5.

Uncommon Threads exhibit in Tarzana, CA

Artists' Reception April 30, 2016 5:00 - 7:00 pm
San Fernando Valley Arts & Cultural Center
18312 Oxnard St., Tarzana, CA















Samples of my work included in this exhibit:

 

Uncommon Threads - It's Up!

Some action shots from hanging the exhibit at SFVACC.

We had a nice-sized set of walls to cover.

Plenty of Southern California Handweavers' Guild members contributed a diverse variety of pieces to show in the exhibit.

Now on exhibit through May 14, 2016

Uncommon Threads

at San Fernando Valley Arts & Cultural Center

18312 Oxnard Street, Tarzana, CA

Tue-Sat 11-5

Newwwww Shoooooelaces!

Great news for those of us who use a shoelace method for tying onto the front apron!  Nadine Sanders, aka The Singing Weaver, is once again offering flat braided polyester shoelaces.  I was getting pretty concerned since I was unable to find these at a decent price and mine were starting to wear out (not to mention a couple I've accidentally cut - oops!), so I'm glad to see she has brought them back.  My order of 40 laces arrived earlier this week.

The "shoestrings", along with her booklet "Warping on A Shoestring", are available at Nadine's site singingweaver.com.

LA Yarn Crawl Days

I spent a couple hours last Thursday and again Saturday afternoon demonstrating sprang at The Knitting Tree L.A. in Culver City, during the L.A. County Yarn Crawl.  The pretty rainbowy yarn is a skein I bought at the shop.

CNCH 2017

Now that CNCH 2016 is behind us ... it's official:  I'll be teaching at next year's CNCH 2017.  I'm so excited that it's going to be held at Asilomar Conference Grounds again next year!

I'll be teaching "The Unwoven Warp: Layering Sprang on Woven Cloth".  Keep the dates in mind; this is a wonderful retreat-like conference in a lovely Pacific coastal setting, and I'm sure there will be plenty of exciting workshops on offer.

Home again from CNCH 2016 Modesto

I just got home from a weekend at another great CNCH, the Conference of Northern California Handweavers, where I took a one-and-a-half day workshop on doup leno with Patrice George.  What a fun class, in which I learned a different setup than the one I've been using, where the doups are hung from the top heddle bar vs. coming up from the bottom.  In the photo you can see the shed I was getting on my little table loom.  The advantage is that it uses only one harness instead of the 2-harness combination as I've been doing.  I foresee some experiments now to see which system is going to work best for me.

Patrice had us doing some warp substitution, rethreading and resleying to try out different effects.  Check out a couple of the funky knitting yarns I was playing with.  Quite freeing weaving!