April TotM - Weaving

Here are some spring flowers growing in rows, to say "Happy Easter".

If you're weaving along, follow the draft in this post.  Weave plain weave for a hem and a bit further until you are where you want to start the flowers.  Then use one pick of the pattern with your colored yarn, and one pick of tabby with your ground yarn.  Then the next pick of the pattern with the color, then the opposite tabby pick with the ground.  Weave 7 picks of plain weave between each flower row.

Weave along and get a chance to win the Towel of the Month!  You do not have to weave every month, just the towels that interest you.  If you are weaving along, please leave a comment to let us all know.  Put a link or url in the comment to a photo (on your Flickr, Picasaweb, Photobucket, your blog etc.) of your work in progress. Deadline to post you r comment is midnight GMT Apr 30, 2014.

April TotM - Flowers in Rosepath as Overshot

Is everyone dying to find out this month's Towel of the Month?  Sorry I missed posting this on April 1!

April's Towel of the Month structure is a simple point twill threading known as "rosepath" - here woven as overshot to make rows of flowers in spring colors.  (The flowers are upside down as a drawdown in the image, but will be right side up as you look at them as you weave)

The threading is a repeat of 8 threads, plus 1 thread at the end to balance.  The towel like all the others in this series is about 19" wide on the loom and is set at 30 ends per inch.  The total number of warp ends is 8 times 71 repeats plus 1, or 569 ends.  The warp is 40/2 linen, and the ground weft will be 20/1 linen.  The flowers are made using cotton floss.

I'm measuring and will be getting my warp onto the loom soon.  Will you join me in making this pretty towel to brighten your kitchen?

Weave along and get a chance to win the Towel of the Month!  You do not have to weave every month, just the towels that interest you.  If you are weaving along, please leave a comment to let us all know.  Put a link or url in the comment to a photo (on your Flickr, Picasaweb, Photobucket, your blog etc.) of your work in progress. Deadline to post you r comment is midnight GMT Apr 30, 2014.

March TotM Miniature Overshot towels completed

It's the end of March, the Towel of the Month is finished, and one of them is on its way to my next test kitchen!

The towels are 40/2 linen in the warp, 20/1 linen weft, with borders in "miniature" overshot.

The one on the left is using 6 strands of cotton embroidery floss in the overshot, the middle is 10/2 cotton and the right is 5/2 cotton.

New Digs for My Macomber

I did some rearranging in my house, and now my 16 shaft Macomber loom lives in a place with more light.

March TotM - Update: Weaving the Overshot Borders

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I have the borders going now.  I used 6-strand cotton embroidery floss, and it comes in so many colors I couldn't resist using a bunch of different greens.

Perusing the Hayes pattern book, I see suggestions for either 10/2 or 5/2 cotton as a pattern weft when the ground is set at 30 epi, so I'm going to try those on the other towels.

Again I am not getting a balanced weave, so the design is turning out much taller in the warp direction than was suggested by the draft I posted, but I like this shape better.

I put the small border close to one hem.  The large design will be farther from the opposite hem, to be more centered when the towel is hanging up on a towel rack.

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

March TotM - About Miniature Overshot

I was curious, so I did a little research, and here's what I came up with regarding miniature overshot.  First, an internet search turned up the names of two weavers from the earlier half of last century who made designs in miniature overshot.  Josephine Estes worked on miniaturizing large overshot drafts in the 1930s.  Similarly Bertha Gray Hayes in the 1940s created overshot designs with fewer threads than in traditional patterns.

Then I went to my personal library.  Many of the designs in A Handweaver's Pattern Book by Marguerite Porter Davison, chapters 13, 15, 17 and maybe others are examples of these smaller designs.  In her book Weaving Overshot: Redesigning the Tradition, Donna Sullivan shows examples of miniatures by both Estes and Hayes.  In her section on altering scale, she refers to many patterns already reproduced in miniature, and then describes the process of reducing the size of a pattern by removing pairs of threads.  Carol Strickler, in A Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns: From the Friends of Handwoven , gives a rule of thumb for miniaturizing overshot.  Whether reduced from a larger design or made "from scratch" by using shorter blocks, the miniature draft ends up as Barrett describes as point and progressing twill threading.  A final clue comes from Estes, where she says a design has been miniaturized when it has been reduced to the point where it cannot re reduced further without losing the character of its pattern form.

A miniature overshot, then, is one that is sometimes reduced from a larger design, and whose scale is appropriate for items smaller than a traditional coverlet or items meant to be viewed up close.  Examples of uses would include runners and mats, smaller upholstery, pillows, scarves, purses and yes, even a border on a kitchen towel.

Belonging to a weaving guild has many benefits, any one of which can make it worthwhile to join one.  Access to a great library is one of these perks.  I am fortunate to belong to a guild with a fabulous library including many out of print titles.  I looked up Estes and Hayes.  We have in our library the Complete Book of Bertha Hayes' Patterns: 75 Drafts and Design Effects, as well as Minature Patterns for Hand Weaving Parts I and II by Estes.  I also found (at the suggestion of weaving friend Anna) this gem by Strickler & Barbara Taggart called Weaving in Miniature , in which the concept of miniaturization is taken to the extreme for the purpose of making textiles appropriate in scale for dollhouse furnishings.

The drafts shown here are one example by Bertha G. Hayes of a miniaturization she named "Gallinger Gem".  The first image is the draft of a larger pattern, the second one the miniature version of it.  There is a more recent publication of Hayes' overshot patterns by Norma Smayda, Weaving Designs By Bertha Gray Hayes: Miniature Overshot Patterns