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!

Home Again

My sprang-and-woven scarf returned home from its visit to Interweave Press, where it had its photo taken and an article published.  Look for it in the March/April issue of Handwoven magazine, with instructions to make this scarf.  http://www.weavingtoday.com/magazines

This is similar to the design I used in my workshop on this technique.  We had a great time in my class earlier this month.  Several people came up with ideas to try that I'd never thought of!

Weaving Night and Day

Weaving night.  With some twilight, and a little bit of the Golden Hour peeking out in midsummer.

Upcoming Workshop: Layering Sprang on Woven Cloth

In about three weeks I'll be leading a workshop in making these sprang designs on a twill cloth.  We'll be using a supplementary warp technique to float some warps over the fabric, then plaiting the warps.  The stretchy fabric that results forms an interesting curved shape.

Participants can make a sampler, trying out different size, shape and placement of the motifs as well as various weave structures and even different yarns, or they can choose to repeat a pattern and create a scarf like this one.

To register for the workshop, you can visit this page at the Southern California Handweavers' Guild site.

Workshop at Canta Cruz Handweavers

I had a wonderful time with the Santa Cruz Handweavers last week.  To start with, my gracious host lives in a beautiful wooded area up in the hills.  This is a view from their deck - isn't that fantastic?

Here is my class, busily weaving away.  This was the first time I've taught this workshop "The Unwoven Warp: Layering Sprang on Woven Cloth".  Everybody in the class was a trooper; they all were intrepid in trying this unusual technique.

Don't they have a nice meeting place?  It's a community building in a pleasant park.

Everyone was able to get in at least a  few sprang motifs by the end of the workshop.

More student work.  I like how she's found a place to store her tools while she's away from the loom.

Some students got creative with their sprang, and got new ideas to try.

Interlaced sprang, and one worked with weft.






Thank you Santa Cruz weavers for your hospitality and enthusiasm!

Finished!

If this were a race between the completion of this blanket and the arrival of the baby, I'm sorry to say the blanket would have won.

Ready... Get Set...

Ready...

Get set...

Weave!

Some samples in linen with cottolin color accents, for toweling.  The setting is 30 epi, the linen warp is 40/2 half-bleached and unbleached.  The weft is 20/1 linen half-bleached.  Block twills, a sort of turned honeycomb, and some Ms & Os.

Predator at Complexity Exhibit in Rhode Island

Predator
19" H x 14" W
Cotton, hand-dyed wool.
Twill and plain weave, forming supplementary warp worked in double-layered sprang technique.

If you're going to Convergence, be sure not to miss this exhibit at nearby Brown University.  See my piece "Predator" and 98 other exquisite woven works.

Complexity
The 2014 Exhibition
An International Juried Exhibition
by Complex Weavers

July 14 - August 14, 2014
Cohen Gallery, Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island

Predator is Packing to Take a Trip

This piece entitled "Predator" was juried into the Complex Weavers show Complexity, so it is leaving to go traveling for a few months.  First it's off to Nebraska, at the University of Nebraska -Lincoln for a month-long show.  Then to Washington state for the weekend of the Complex Weavers seminars in June.  Finally it goes to Providence, Rhode Island, coincident with Convergence, the biennial national conference for handweavers, spinners and dyers by the Handweavers Guild of America.  My piece and the other Complex Weavers fiber art will be on exhibit on the following dates:

The Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery

University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE

April 7 – May 9, 2014

Gallery at the Hotel Murano

Tacoma, WA

June 28 - 30, 2014

The Cohen Gallery, Granoff Center

Brown University, Providence, RI

July 14 – August 1, 2014

Butterflies, flutter-bys and more butterflies

The Designing Weavers show and sale was loads of fun.  There were so many beautiful garments for sale, and I had a good time modeling various pieces throughout both days.

I sold a couple of my "flutter-by" scarves, but I still have some left, so I've put them up for sale in my Etsy shop - go check them out!

I do have a new project on the loom; I've returned to the doubleweave plus sprang construct... but that will have to wait until the next post.

Motif Metamorphosis

Some of my hourglass motifs have turned into butterflies... or dragonflies... well, some sort of flying insect anyway, just fluttering by.  Call it a "flutter-by".

The fabric surrounding the bug is a little 2/1 point twill.  The rectangle where the sprang warp leaves the fabric then becomes a 2/1 straight twill in that area.

They are fluttering around on these scarves, adorning them with their colorful wings.

I've been playing around with different yarns: some wool/rayon, some silks, even some metallics for a little sparkle for the holidays.  Some of these handwoven scarves will be available for purchase at SCHG's Weaving and Fiber Festival, Sunday November 3rd, 2013 at the Torrance Cultural Center in Torrance, California.

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?

Serendipity strikes again

The green/orange/black weaving/sprang is off the loom.  I made quite a bit of warp because I wasn't sure whether I would have to make a second attempt at the sprang part.  It came out all right, so I just wove off the rest of the extra warp, and I really like the look of this fabric.

It looks almost like a warp-dominant or warp-faced plain weave, but structurally it is a 3/1 twill.  Every other warp is a dark green cotton that doesn't really show unless you look very closely.









I especially like the back side, where the black weft and the dark green warp make a tiny outline of each dot of color.

Funny thing is, I would never have set out to design and weave this fabric.  The colors, the stripe sequence, the very close sett... all were designed for a certain effect in the sprang portion of my piece.  The woven portion was just to be a border or frame.  But I might actually think to weave something like this again.

Wrong Way Warp

Got the latest project onto the loom.  I just had to start with a photo of my little helper.  No, he is not helping tension the warp.  He is being naughty and I think he knows it.  But I just had to shoot a picture before shooing him off.  Kitties lo-o-o-ove wool.

It seems that with each warp, there's always something.  With this one, I was so excited to get it onto the loom that I forgot to run the beamed (cotton) portion of the warp through the slot between the two warp beams, so that the weighted (wool) portion wouldn't sit on top of it.  Here I have some stick shuttles sitting between the two layers.  You can see the cotton warp coming up from the warp beam and going outside that additional back beam.  It's supposed to go between the two back beams in that slot, where the handle of the screwdriver is.

I thought I would be clever and just slide that beam out from under the cotton warp, and replace it between the cotton and the wool layers.  Alas, I could only get 3 of the 4 screws to budge.  (The loom is older than me, after all.)

So I ended up constructing an ugly and only partially effective separator from stick shuttles and masking tape.  Yes, masking tape makes many appearances in my weaving path.  Useful stuff.

And it seems to have worked well enough for it to weave, anyway.  Here's the work-in-progress shot.  I have woven a 3/1 twill using both the cotton and wool warp for a few inches, and now I am weaving just the cotton in a back layer of plain weave, leaving the wool warp unwoven to be worked in sprang, or double sprang to be exact.  There is a border of 3/1 twill on each side to frame it as well.

Gallery photo shoot

Fiber artists' response to the "Woven Together: Firestorm" exhibit was outstanding.  Here's a picture of my piece, Regeneration, with others in this show.  Mine's the one in the lower right.

Below you can view the entire slide series of the gallery.

Firestorm and Regeneration

One of my "tree" pieces, Regeneration, has been accepted into the Woven Together: Firestorm exhibit sponsored by Pike's Peak Weavers Guild and the Business of Art Center in southern Colorado.

Regeneration, 22" x 34", wool, in twill weaves & sprang, painted warp.

The exhibit commemorates the many fires that occurred last year in Colorado.  My piece is depicting a sunrise signifying hope, and the resilience of the forests and the people as they recover from the devastation that occurred.  This is particularly poignant to me today as I have the TV news on as I type, with the coverage of several fires right here in Southern California, threatening people's homes.

The exhibit will be from June 21 through August 3, 2013, in the Hagnauer Gallery, Business of Art Center, 513 Manitou Avenue, Manitou Springs, Colorado.

Now the challenge will be to figure out how to box it up for shipping.

Experiment #2 in warp painting for luminosity

Next I tried mixing painted warps again, like in the paper experiment except with smaller "pixels" using yarn, a 10/2 cotton. I divided the warp into three different sheds and painted a similar globe of light on each, again using different colorways grading from light to dark values going toward the edges.

Warp #1:

Warp #2:

Warp #3:

I did a few like this in plain weave:

And then re-sleyed the reed and did one in twill which I think came out more dramatic because I was able to make the bottom part weft-dominant (1/3 twill) and the sky warp-dominant (3/1 twill):

But then I decided I had gone too far in scaling down my pointillist "pixels".  I wanted my main piece to be more weaverly, if that's a word.  To be continued...