Holiday Artisan Faire this weekend in Orange County

I'm excited about the Chemers event coming up this weekend.  Come see one of these scarves with sprang on the loom!

What: Handcrafted jewelry, ceramics, mixed media, drawings, lotions, fiber arts and epicurian treats.
When: Saturday Dec. 2 from 11am to 5pm, and Sunday Dec 3 from 1pm to 5 pm.
Where: Chemers Gallery, 17300 17th Street Ste. G, Tustin, CA

WeFF Report

SCHG's Weaving & Fiber Fest was a blast as usual. So many guild members chip in and help, it makes a fun fiber-filled day. Here are Karen F. and Karen L., modeling two tops I had in the fashion show.

The purple and blues one on Karen F. is in huck and huck lace.  The tops have sleeves that are open on top and are secured with a decorative button.

They have a side slit below the arm seam, on a diagonal that gives them a handkerchief-hem look. The green one Karen L. is wearing is in leno weave and has a nice drape.

Photos by Leslie Rodier.

And here's the display of the guild's annual challenge, whose theme was "Fruit". My answer were the towels that are all lined up in 2 rows on the rack. I called them "Fruit for All Seasons Towels", since they were woven in Summer & Winter (haha, get it? - groan!).

Photo by Candy Goodwin.

Currently on the Loom

I guess with the (finally!!!) cooler weather and Thanksgiving coming up I've wanted to weave some fall colors. What will these lustrous golds and rusts become? I've been working on several new things for upcoming sales.

This year will be my first time at the Holiday Artisan Faire at Chemers Gallery in Tustin, CA, December 2 & 3. I'll have lots of my work there. More details to follow...

Come Join Me at Art for the Home, Body & Soul

Assembling some coaster sets, made of naturally-dyed wool. Great little host/hostess gift. Find these and many more new items at Designing Weavers' annual "Art for the Home, Body, & Soul".

Designing Weavers is holding its annual holiday boutique, November 18^th and 19^th, at the Sierra Madre Woman’s Club in Sierra Madre, close to the 210 freeway. Folks from all over Southern California will be dropping by to check out the latest in fiber art and fashion. Join us!
  

 

Art for the Home, Body, & Soul is a wonderful opportunity to view (and touch!) fiber at its best,

• Creations for the home: sculptural baskets, table top tapestries, towels for the kitchen and more.

• Unique clothing and accessories for the body: wraps, vests, jackets, scarves, hats, handbags, and jewelry.

• And fiber for the soul.

What:          Art for the Home, Body, & Soul
When:         November 18^th -19^th
Hours:        10am-4pm each day
Where:       Sierra Madre Woman’s Club
Address:     550 West Sierra Madre Blvd,
                   Sierra Madre, CA 91024

Let the Festivities Begin

Two fun events coming up this weekend! Friday evening and all day Saturday, Irvine Fine Arts Center hosts its Holiday Faire. I'll be participating as a member of the South Coast Weavers & Spinners. 14321 Yale Ave, Irvine, CA.

And Sunday, it's WeFF! Southern California Handweavers' Guild's Weaving and Fiber Festival. 3341 Torrance Blvd, Torrance, CA.

Come see my work and lots of other great things!

Seasons

For the change of season, a run of towels in summer & winter weave, just off the loom yesterday and through the wash...

My work showing now at Chemers Gallery

My work is now in a gallery: Chemers Gallery has a nice space and represents works in a variety of media - including fiber.

A sampling of my scarves are there now, including leno, weaving with sprang, and other weaves "with a twist" (some literal, some figurative).

Chemers Gallery
17300 Seventeenth St, Ste G
Tustin, CA
Hours:
Monday-Friday 10am-6pm
Saturday 10am-5pm
Sunday by appointment

Fiber Arts Shows open this week!

I had the honor of jurying the West Coast Fiber Arts show held by the Escondido Arts Partnership. This was my first time being a juror for a show.

Here's a glimpse of just a portion of the exhibit. Come visit this municipal gallery to see all the fabulous works in tapestry, quilting embroidery, basketry, handweaving, knitting, beading and more. Four of my works are featured in this show as well.

In the same gallery the Designing Weavers, a juried fiber arts group, is exhibiting work for two of our recent themes, "Time Flies" and "Let It Sparkle". Here's a view of the entrance. Come see the whole thing; there's more around the corner!

Both shows run September 8 - October 7, 2017. The opening reception is Saturday, September 9, 5:30-8:30. Location and hours:

Escondido Arts Partnership Municipal Gallery
262 East Grand Avenue
Escondido, CA 92025
Tues 11-5,  Thur-Sat 11-4
www.escondidoarts.org

Loom Upgrade

Okay, who can tell which of these table napkins was woven using a mechanical dobby, and which the electronic dobby? (Hint: I can't, and I wove them both.) These have a section of huck lace in the center of them, with plain weave in the striped borders. In the middle of a run of napkins, the CompuDobby I ordered arrived from AVL Looms. So I decided to swap it in.

 

I had to remove the main roller from the dobby head, and a bunch of parts from the side. Here they are along with some of the dobby chain (wooden bars with pegs) that drives the mechanical system, my box of extra pegs and pegging tool.

The replacement for all that is this black box, magnet, and pair of sensors to tell if I have the dobby bar raised or lowered as I'm weaving. Installation involved drilling one hole, so I had the BF come over and do it -- no way I trust my (lack of) woodworking skills to that! It all went surprisingly smoothly and is working great so far. I like not having to screw in all those little pegs for every project, or swap out chains just to switch from pattern to tabby areas. However it's going to take some getting used to having a loom with an "on" switch!

Art Show this Weekend - Fiber Art and More

See my work and lots more at the annual Studio Arts Festival hosted by the Irvine Fine Arts Center in Heritage Park. I'm participating as a member of South Coast Weavers and Spinners Guild.

Date: Saturday, June 3, 2017
Time: 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
Location: 14321 Yale Ave., Irvine (in Heritage Park)
Admission and parking: Free

Layered Sprang on RH loom

After reading my scarf project article in Mar/Apr 2016 Handwoven magazine, rigid-heddle weaver Amanda Cluxton figured out how to do sprang on weaving on a rigid-heddle loom. Check it out in the photo:  where it is woven in, her supplementary warp is just "sistering" the ground warp in plain weave. Cool!

You can see another shot of the project off the loom and more of Amanda's projects at ravelry.com under user acd101.

Dye Day Blah Results - and a Pleasant Surprise

It was a beautiful day to spend at the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens for the annual Fiber Arts Day. I was one of the dyers again (our fourth year now!). We had our usual beautiful setting under a nice shade tree beside the herb garden. I had fun sharing about dyeing and the fiber arts with the hundreds of visitors coming through the Gardens.

My dye results were less than successful, the beauty of the day notwithstanding. Out of my four dyepots I'd planned, only one - the madder - turned out as I'd hoped. One didn't even make it as far as getting the yarn in.  The other three are pictured here. From left to right, olive leaves (alum mordant), olive leaves (copper mordant), madder (alum), madder (copper), avocado pits (alum), avocado pits (copper).

After a long day with less-than-desireable results, it was a super pleasant surprise to come home to a package on my doorstep from Colorado.  Schacht Spindle Company gifted me a beautiful shuttle, complete with a note from Barry Schacht. It made my day!

Whoo-hoo! Cover Girl

My scarf with Danish medallions is on the cover of Handwoven magazine this month; how cool is that? This issue covers all different types of finishing techniques, so it's pretty yummy if you're into handwork like me. These techniques can be applied to almost any loom including rigid-heddle looms.  Pick up your copy at Interweave, https://www.interweave.com/store/handwoven-may-june-2017-digital-edition .

Retreat Report

I had a wonderful time teaching at CNCH! Here are a few photos from my class on layering sprang on handwoven fabric. First, the classroom, which was located about as close to the beach as they get.








Some views of the students work. They all were experimenting and seemed to have a great time doing it.  Everyone got beyond the basic 1/1 interlinking, and they were trying out some fun things I wouldn't have thought of. Innovative, creative work!

Including one who decided to work sprang on the reverse side of her fabric, so we turned the loom upside down!

Shadow Weave - A New Love?

After finding that gem called "shadow huck", I thought I was done - successfully - with trying to find a way to like shadow weave.  Moving on, I started weaving some samples from Peter Collingwood's The Techniques of Rug Weaving, starting with the 2/2 straight draw twill and all its color-and-weave combinations.  But then I started "reading ahead" and what did I find but shadow weave! This is the draft from page 291, a simple 4-shaft with the 4 blocks in a straight twill order, with a reversal.  The first sample on the left is treadled as normal for shadow weave, alternating 2 colors pick-and-pick.

Then he gives a couple ways to expand or extend the treadling so that the pattern isn't so "squashed".  I won't attempt to redraw his nice diagram; this is straight from that page. The second sample above uses (a) and the third is (b).






I needed to convince myself I understood this well enough to apply it to a pattern using more than 4 shafts, so I chose a classic draft from Carol Strickler's A Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns.  This is #301, an undulating pattern that can be treadled to look a bit like leaves. This is actually only a segment of the threading as my samples were only 32 ends wide.  Again the 3 samples are normal straight treadling and the 2 extensions.

That pattern was too large for the tiny sample, so I tried a smaller pattern, this diamond shape flanked by a zigzag, a segment from Strickler #298. I think the design shows best with the (b) extended treadling.

Shadow Weave - An Acquired Taste

I've never been a huge fan of shadow weave; all those little lines going every which way bother my eyes.  But recently I put a sample warp on the "big loom" and made a pegging error in the dobby chain, introducing a huck spot into the weave that made some interesting warp and weft deflections.  Hmm, this could have some potential.






Then I noticed a weave in Carol Strickler's A Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns (p. 72) that she calls "shadow huck".  Well there's another example of there's nothing new under the sun!  It was accomplished by treadling different pairs of treadles - using the "odd" treadle from one treadling block with the "even" treadle from an adjacent block.  So I tried it that way, and got a similar (but not exact) result.





The real difference comes when you flip the fabric over.  The "error" method has floats in the weft, while the "treadle" method has them in the warp.

But, I thought, what if I wanted to have another motif that uses that treadling block, but without that float in it?  If using the "error" method, the floats will show up where I don't want them.








With the "treadle" method, I can make the extra motif without the floats, but what if I like the look of the "error" method spots better?










Answer: add another treadle, so there's one with the "error" and one without.










And as a bonus, here's the "shadow huck" from Strickler, modified a bit.  Front and back sides.

New Tricks

It's always fun to try out new techniques.  A little rug sample got a treatment of Damascus edge plus these cool little triangular knotted bits that taper the warp down in a protected way to be braided.  I tried these both out with the help of our old friend Peter Collingwood.  Open book is The Techniques of Rug Weaving, and on the tablet is his Rug Weaving Techniques: Beyond the Basics.

Fringe-y

Among a bunch of samples I did last month was this fringe-y thing.  It would be cute as a scarf, don't you think?

Upcoming Workshop on Sprang and Weaving

There are still spaces available in the workshop I will be leading at CNCH.  In a 2-1/2 day hands-on class, learn how to incorporate this unique patterning into your weaving.  This retreat-like conference is in the beautiful grounds of Asilomar, on the coast at Monterey Bay in California.  Come join us May 4-7, 2017.

For more information and to register, visit http://www.cnch.org/conferences/cnch2017/