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.

The jungle challenge - my answer titled: "Predator"

You are deep in a jungle. You look around and try to absorb this wondrous new world. Many colors, shapes and textures surround you, but you can only choose 3 of those colors to make up 75% of your piece. You must also use a weave structure to represent something you see in your jungle for 50% of the finished piece. The jungle does not care what size or shape you create, but your creation must be woven or knotted/interlaced/spun/felted, but not knitted or you may not make it out alive!

The above was the 2013 Challenge issued to members of the Southern California Handweavers' Guild.  On the right is my answer to the challenge.  I'm not sure I got all those percents right, but I'm sure there's a way to make it fit.

The surrounding fabric is what I showed in earlier posts, a 3/1 twill where the thick wool and thin cotton alternate in the warp.  In the middle section, the wool was left unwoven while the cotton made a plain weave background for the sprang.  The sprang this time is double-layered sprang, with holes or slits left so pieces of the layers could interchange and wrap around one another like vines in a jungle.  The striped vine-like bits represent a tiger prowling around in the foliage.

Last weekend was the big reveal at our guild meeting, and I was all set to show my answer here as well, but my camera and computer decided they weren't on speaking terms.  So I had to wait for a new cable to arrive before I could get the photo uploaded.

As usual it was really fun to see all the different ways that my fellow guild members had come up with to answer this puzzle or challenge, and their beautiful and creative results.  They will all be displayed at our annual Weaving and Fiber Festival, Sunday November 3rd at the Torrance Cultural Arts Center, Torrance, California.

How would you have solved this challenge?

Today's (?) Weaving Trend

I've blogged about guild challenges before; I know many weaving guilds (and perhaps spinning and knitting guilds as well) do these.  Another great activity you can do if you're a member of a group is a focused study group.  I'm certainly getting a lot of mileage out of the color study group that is a spin-off group of my guild.

Here is an excerpt from an old weaving bulletin of the 1950s. The periodical was called "Loom Music" and was published by two Canadian women, Mary Sandin of Edmonton and Ethel Henderson of Winnipeg.

Today's Weaving Trend - Experimentation

One of the most rewarding ways of weaving, in terms of time spent, is a directed, concerted effort by a small group of enthusiastic weavers. In such an experimental effort, weavers of little experience work on an equal basis with those of greater knowledge. Why? One reason is, surely, that in being expected to experiment widely without reference to accepted rulings, the junior craftsman is free from the penalty of being told she is "wrong". In experimentation, nothing is wrong, unless it is deficient in utilitarian qualities. In this way, new designs are brought to attention.
We have noticed, by long observation, that a great many weavers consider themselves unavailable for these experimental sessions for several reasons:
1. "I don't know enough" -- to counter which, see opening paragraph.
2. "I don't want to tie up my loom"-- we say, a small experimental loom becomes almost a "must" for a serious student. They can be homemade with string heddles for a very small sum, and are easily stored.
3. "I haven't the time this coming month". Most people can make time -- it's thinking about it that's the deterrent. Once begun, the fascination grows.
Let us say, then, that it is the duty of each weaver to spare one period per year for non-objective weaving, so far as a finished article is concerned.

The language may seem quaint and outdated today, but I think the sentiment still applies.  Consider it, is it the duty of each weaver?  If not, there still must be a benefit, both to yourself as a weaver and to the growth of today's weaving community.  To some extent you could participate in such a study on line, but there's so much more to be gained if you can actually get together, see each other's work and discuss "in real life".  Do you belong to a weaving, spinning, knitting or other craft guild?  Have you participated in a small-group study?  If not, is there a study group that you might start?  Have you participated in an online study group, and was it as rewarding as a real live group?  Leave a comment here about your experiences or ideas.

You can read archived copies of "Loom Music" at the handweaving.net Digital Archive, along with other out-of-print weaving literature.

Bliss: My answer to the 2012 SCHG Challenge

Fall, leaves, fall; die flowers, away;

Lengthen night and shorten day;

Every leaf speaks bliss to me

Fluttering from the autumn tree.
- Emily Bronte

For our Guild's challenge for 2012, last spring we each chose a paper bag and got a card with these rules to follow:
1. use at least 50% green
2. use a twill and/or tabby weave
3. incorporate a circle
4. may be folded, bent etc. and must fit inside and be returned in the bag/sack
5. the size of the sack you choose will determine your entry size

Here's my finished project which I turned in last weekend:

I wanted to try some warp painting, using sprang to form a frame for my painting.  I untensioned the dark green warps and pushed them aside.  You can see at the bottom of the image that I should have either stopped weaving sooner before starting to paint, or else rotated my image so that it didn't overlap fabric already woven:

I used fluid acrylic paint, thinned with GAC 900 medium which is meant for fabric painting.  I found this much easier to control than when I've tried to paint with regular dye.  The finished feel of the fabric is a little stiff, but since the finished product isn't meant to be worn or touched and just stays in two dimensions, I think it works fine.  Underneath the warp I used a laminated placemat to provide a surface against which to press the brush and yarn.

After the paint dried throughly, I resumed weaving.  I really liked what the woven twill pattern was doing to the colors in my image:

As you can guess, this is why I was experimenting earlier to see if I could do sprang using weft as well as warp.  Here's the sample I was working on:

The major purpose of the sample was to see if I had the proportions right to make the four sprangwork curves form a circle.  You can see above that I didn't.  So in the final piece I expanded the middle section to make the curves longer.

One thing I learned in this project that was exciting is the relationship between the simple twills I used.  The 3/1 twill in the corners, when every 4th warp is lifted out and left unwoven, becomes a 2/1 twill.  And when every 4th weft is either omitted or left unwoven, it becomes a little 2/1 point twill.

Mondrian minus 30 degrees

The 2008 challenge was called a "Conversation in Fiber", where we were to interpret the style or works of either Piet Mondrian or Georgia O'Keefe. I chose Mondrian, which presented the first challenge, since he worked only in primaries in his signature works, and the pallette was to include colors from the upcoming conference in Riverside, none of which were primaries. I decided to assign three of the conference colors to be "my" primaries. These were a red-violet as "red", a gold as "yellow", and a teal green as "blue". These are pretty close to an equally-spaced triad as primaries are, just "rotated" about 30 degrees on a color wheel.  The little marks in my diagram each count an inch in my layout.

 I designed a block threading for a taquete rug, where the black lines alternated with the white
rectangles, Mondrian style, and wove the colors in some of the rectangles by a "meet and part" sort of method where I exited the shuttles at a point in the center area of the warp. In a couple places, where there were more than one of the colors, I had 3 shuttles going up and down at various points...fun! This was one challenge where I did not end up with a handbag. I almost feel like I have to do this project again in miniature and sew it into a bag, just to have the collection complete.  Here is the rug on display at our guild's November annual event.

Return to Sprang

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....

...and I did the opposite on the other side of the bag. The drawstring handle is cardwoven in a pattern repeating the curved sprang pattern, the ends then braided together.

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.

A little about Challenge projects for groups

It has become something of a little tradition in my guild (SCHG) to issue a "challenge" project each spring, due in the fall. We don't meet in July or August, so it becomes a project to work on over the summer. Our guild allows lots of leeway: any fiber technique is encouraged, though we are a weaving guild so we hope to always have woven works.

These challenge projects have taken various forms: Sometimes particpants are given certain supplies they must use in creating a piece. Sometimes there are design constraints in color, line, materials, motif or theme. Sometimes we are directed to find inspiration from the work of artists in other media. In our group, participation is entirely voluntary, but my experience is that no matter what my current technical level or latest focus, I always learn something, and it is so fun to see how differently other people approach solving the same puzzle.

Sometimes setting contraints for oneself helps to focus creativity, especially when in a creative doldrums. Just having some of a project's parameters delimited, thereby eliminating a lot of choices that one could have made, helps focus in on a few points of attention. If the "rules" are tricky or somehow contradictory when juxtaposed, this can help stimulate the thinking and problem solving processes.  The addition of a deadline also helps to just get going!

So if you are in a weaving guild, spinning or knitting group or other creative-type club, then you might consider organizing one of these projects. Be sure to write out the "rules" explicitly yet simply, and repeat them a couple times in your newsletter or other communication. I've described some of our past challenges and my solutions to them in other posts.

Discontinuous Messenger Bag

This was a guild challenge issued in 2002. The parameters set out for us were: incorporate a diagonal in your design, use discontinuous weft (to be

loosely interpreted by those not actually weaving their piece), and use a monochrome-with-an-accent color scheme.  My colors, as I recall, were dictated by what I had on hand in my stash. I selected some blue wools and a little bit of orange as accent.  The structure of the cloth is simple; just plain weave,

with these insets using discontinuous weft inserted in a diagonal pattern.  I honestly can't remember where I found the idea to weave these insets, or whether I wove them hand-manipulated by counting warps or if it was loom-controlled. It's just plain weave in one spot on the warp for a few picks, and then you continue with your full-width weaving until it's time

to put the next set of insets, and the weft deflects around them. Since the pattern is a diagonal, eventually all the warps get the extra weft, and it all sort of evens out in the end. Fulling the wool a little helps as well. For the

handle, I chose a diagonal spiraled round braid to make from the same yarns. The bag is big enough to carry a large 3-ring binder.

Honeycomb Tomato Bag

Here's another guild challenge bag, this one from 2003. The problem to be solved was: make it red, employ a curve, and use the provided materials (which were a piece of cheesecloth and some red sequins). Well, the cheesecloth was white, so the first step for me was to dye that red. What was I going to do with this though? A honeycomb weave structure gives some nice curves, satisfying that criterion: I can cut the cheesecloth up into strips and use it as the thick weft in the honeycomb weave. For the base tabby structure I used a red cotton, and of course I needed to buy more cheesecloth than was provided. Some of the sequins I randomly sewed into some of the honeycomb "cells"; I used more sequins in the tassels at the ends of my braided-braid handle. This one gets used infrequently - at Valentine's Day and when I'm feeling bold enough to carry such a bright color.

Blue "Lagoon Ripples" Tote

Here's another "challenge" project. The theme for 2004 was "Making Waves", in which we were to take our inspiration from the ocean, use some provided fibers, and have a triangle somewhere in the design. I chose colors that made me think of the sea. This bag was woven using pique weave, in which the main fabric is "stitched" down by tie down threads that stay hidden most of the time. I had never done pique before, but it turned out well for a first try, and it gave me a chance to try out my second back beam for the first time as well. The straps are a 24-strand flat braid, and some of the braid elements are raffia, which makes the handle stiff - but part of the challenge was to use the raffia! The lining is fabric dyed using "shibori-in-a-jar" technique that Estelle Carlson taught at an SCHG workshop.

I put a cork in it

This was another SCHG challenge project, the one from 2005. Donna & I organized this one. Everyone was provided with a pallette of greens and berry/grape colors, some number of yards of 3 different yarns selected from the pallette, and 6 wine corks.  The design portion of the challenge was to incorporate an isolated motif in the design, that is, a design element that is completely surrounded by a ground.  I must have forgotten that part of it, because I don't see that my pattern has that characteristic.  Do you see an isolated motif in there?

I did a doubleweave of little squares, sliced up the corks (and a bunch more in addition to the six in the kit) and inserted them into the pockets formed in the doubleweave. The handle is a flat braid. This purse has a good stiff body lent to it by the corks, and would probably be good to take boating as I'm sure it would not sink.

Diamond Anniversary

Going backward in time now from that last post... In 2006, my Guild (SCHG) celebrated its 60th anniversary. As we discovered, a lot of guilds seem to have been founded in the late 40s, so a lot of them were having retrospective events. It was decided that the 60th could be a diamond anniversary as well as the 50th, so the Guild Challenge due that October 2006 was to make something that incorporated the number 60 and a diamond somehow. Particpants were provided with some tiny diamond-shaped glass beads to use as well.

I decided to do a little bag in sprang. I had learned from reading Peter Collingwood's The Techniques of Sprang that if you use a striped warp and a double-twist, the stripes move diagonally as you work, converging and diverging, forming a diamond pattern reminiscent of argyle socks. This bag is in cotton and has 60 warp ends. The loops at the top and bottom of the sprang became the casing for the drawstring. I bead-crocheted some diamond-shaped decoration around the top, too.

The pieces that everyone made for this challenge were not only shown at our November 2006 show, but were als featured in our "guild booth" at the ASCH conference in Visalia in the spring of 2007.

Art-inspired fabric

... and here's the Van Gogh "Wheat Field with Cypresses" hangbag.

So it's over four years later. I got busy and the blog thing didn't take. But lately, I've been wanting to write and share about the things I've been busy with. So hopefully this restart of this blog will stick this time, and I'll have some more posts here soon.

Solving a challenge results in new place to sit

Every year my guild issues a "challenge" to its members, to create something within a defined set of constraints. We work on it over the summer and present it at a meeting in the autumn. Last summer's project was to make something inspired from a Van Gogh painting. We each received a postcard, assigned at random, depicting one of his paintings. I got Wheat Field with Cypresses.

My approach was to select a mixed warp of yarns in colors representative of the palette, design on the computer a random network curve in some structure, and then decide what to make from the fabric after it was woven. Probably a handbag. With every challenge before, I've always ended up with a handbag.

I decided to try crackle weave since I'd never really explored it before. I got the warp onto the loom and one repeat of my random curve woven before I realized I'd forgotten the other constraint issued in the challenge: I was supposed to somehow incorporate into the piece the year of my birth. How was I going to do that, I wondered. I looked at the curve I had woven. Could I design curves to actually look like the figures of the numerals of a year? Back to the computer... yes, if I squint I can imagine them.

As I was weaving the fabric, I noticed that at the "new" loom, my bench was a little too short and the edge sort of cut into my legs as I treadled. The fabric might work as upholstery covering for a cushion for the bench.

Here's the resulting cushion in its new home. You probably can't guess my age, though, unless you know what you're looking for - the numbers aren't that distinct.

Oh, and with the leftover fabric, I did end up with a handbag after all.