Table of contents for November/December 2020 in Handwoven

Since 1876 Arizona FIBER CREEK Prescott AZ 86305 (928) 717-1774 fibercreek@hotmail.com THE FIBER FACTORY Mesa (480) 969-4346 California CUSTOM HANDWEAVERS Mountain View Tel: (650) 967-0831 Fax: (650) 967-1005 www.customhandweavers.com webemit@sbcglobal.net CUSTOM HANDWEAVING Redondo Beach Tel: (310) 316-0910 or: (866) 656-1060 www.nancyscustomhandweaving.com customhandweavin@aol.com JULIAN WEAVING WORKS Julian (760) 765-2432 info@weaverslink.com SAN FRANCISCO FIBERS CO. Oakland (510) 893-2015 www.sanfranciscofiber.com lou@sffiber.com Colorado BOUNTIFUL Livermore (877) 586-9332 info@bountifulspinweave.com www.bountifulspinweave.com Florida SERENDIPITY FARM & STUDIO Leesburg (757) 651-2632 serendipityfarmstudio@gmail.com Illinois FINE LINE CREATIVE ARTS CENTER St. Charles (630) 584-9443 www.fineline.org info@fineline.org Indiana THE WEAVERS LOFT Guilford (812) 576-3904 weaving@nalu.net www.weaversloft.com Kansas THE YARN BARN Lawrence (800) 468-0035 yarnbarn@sunflower.com Kentucky THE WOOLERY Frankfort tel: (502) 352-9800 fax (502) 352-9802 http://www.woolery.com info@woolery.com Louisiana WEAVIN' PLACE Folsom (985) 796-8048 www.weavinplace.com cheryl@weavinplace.com Maine HALCYON YARN Bath (207) 442-7909 (800) 341-0282…

A PHOTOGRAPH OF RIGID-HEDDLE weaving in Jane Patrick’s The Weaver’s Idea Book has intrigued me for quite some time now. It shows a fabric with a pick-up pattern that pulls thick accent warp ends out of position, allowing them to deflect in the cloth. Through sampling, I realized that to weave a scarf sett at 12 ends per inch (epi), the smallest heddle size I have, the warp and weft floats would be too long. I adjusted the pick-up pattern so that the floats are more manageable, and lost some of the deflection, but I like the subtle, wandering lines and the patterns they create in the cloth. I wove my scarf on a rigid-heddle loom, but using the drafts in Jane’s book, I was able to re-create the pick-up…

ONE OF MY FAVORITE WEAVING STORIES dates back to when I was a beginning weaver. With help from my instructor Lucienne Coifman, I wove a series of scarves to give as gifts based on eight-shaft twill patterns from A Weaver’s Book of 8-Shaft Patterns edited by Carol Strickler. I used Jagger Spun’s luxurious silk/wool blend, Zephyr, for warp and weft. For my mother, I picked a navy warp with a forest green weft. The scarf was beautiful, and I wove away enjoying the lovely patterning and colors. It wasn’t until I took the scarf off the loom that I realized one of the tie-up pins had fallen out causing the underside to look different from the top. It was only a slight variation—an error that only I would ever notice.…

Double delight The Jack Loom shows its versatility by weaving very delicate yarns into a soft, beautiful fabric. You will need: Loom: Eight shaft Jack loom Reed: 16dpi sleyed 2, 3 Warp and weft yarn: 65% Cashmere, 35% Silk Nm 65/3 ca 21,000m/kg, 2ozs (60gm) red, 2ozs (60gm) dark grey Here’s how: Number of ends: 324 (plus double floating selvedge on each side) Sett: 40epi (16epcm) Warp length: 196ins (5m) Width in the loom: 8ins (20cm) Finished size: 181 x 7½ ins (4.6m x 19cm) Weave structure: Double deflect Warping and Weaving Wind the warp in the colour sequence of four threads grey followed by four threads red. For the draft showing the threading and treadling, and both patterns, go to www.ashford.co.nz/blog Hint: Always go over the floating selvedge when…

SMALL LOOM WEAVING PROJECTS Clotilde Barrett Annette Lamb If you weave on a four-shaft loom that has a width of 25 inches or less and are looking for projects, Small Loom Weaving Projects might be the book for you. The book comprises 26 projects, some with multiple variations, and the majority of which are placemats and runners. It’s divided into four chapters, but the first is by far the largest. It contains 17 doubleweave overshot patterns and an introduction that includes instructions for adapting overshot patterns into four-block doubleweave. I’ve seen a fair amount of doubleweave overshot, but rarely have I seen it used with multiple colors in the warp so effectively. Many of the drafts are based on familiar overshot patterns, and it was interesting to see how those…

I KNOW THIS SOUNDS A LITTLE CRAZY, but I believe that every piece of cloth has a story to tell. When I go antiquing for examples of textiles, if I find a particularly wonderful piece, I hold it for a while and try to imagine its history and how it came to be. Some pieces are definitely easier to decipher than others. I love coverlets, and I love it even more when the coverlet has a cartouche in the corner giving the name of the weaver, the weaving location, and the person for whom it was woven. I can try to find out more about the weaver based on that little bit of information. A sampler might have a cross-stitched name and date: “Hannah Bailer is my name and Lancaster…

TWO-SIDED PLAID AND CHECK FABRICS have appeared in fashion accessories and garments for a few seasons now. After examining a piece from my personal collection, I realized that the fabric structure was stitched double cloth and could be woven in two layers of 2/2 twill on eight shafts. Stitched double cloth requires separate warps and wefts for each layer. The front and back layers are stitched to each other because a shaft from the top layer is down for every other bottom-layer pick (first shaft 4 and then shaft 2, on treadles 6 and 8 respectively). Unlike an interchange doubleweave, the face and back layers do not exchange positions, and no pocket is created between fabric layers. To weave a 2/2 twill requires four shafts, thus the need for eight…

A RYA DEMANDS YOUR ATTENTION, its long pile abstracting the design and pulling you in. On the floor or on the wall, it is taken for granted that the pile side should face up, showing off the beautiful wool and the weaver’s aesthetic and technical savvy. However, any rya weaver will tell you that the back is always equally appealing, with a rhythm all its own and a different, often secret, interpretation of the motif. Where I live in Scandinavia, looking at the back of a vintage rya in a thrift shop can tell you how it was made; mid-century rya were often bought as kits to be worked in front of the television, the pile sewn onto a prewoven base. These have a contrasting weft every 10 centimeters (4…

ARIZONA Fiber Creek Suite 123, 1046 Willow Creek Rd Prescott, AZ 86301 (928) 717-1774 fibercreekprescott.com Purl in the Pines 2544 N 4th St Flagstaff, AZ 86004 (928) 774-9334 purlinthepines.com Tempe Yarn & Fiber 1415 E University Dr Tempe, AZ 85281 (480) 557-9166 tempeyarn.com The Spinster 624 E Beale St Kingman, AZ 86401 (928) 753-3660 spinsterinkingman.com ARKANSAS Red Scottie Fibers 51 Eureka Springs St Eureka Springs, AR 72931 (479) 253-0711 redscottiefibers.com CALIFORNIA Cardigans Yarn and Fiber 3030 State St Santa Barbara, CA 93105 (805) 569-0531 cardigansyarnandfiber.com Dharma Trading Co 1604 4th Street San Rafael, CA 94901 (435) 456–1211 dharmatrading.com COLORADO Knot Just Yarn, LLC 1250 S. Buckley Road Unit H Aurora, CO 80017 (303) 990-3310 knotjustyarnllc.com Lambspun of Colorado 1101 E Lincoln Ave Fort Collins, CO 80524 (800) 558-5262 lambspun.com Serendipity…

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 Yarns with Impact Yarns can be more than just spun fiber; they can also be a means to making the world a better place. Some yarns help people by giving jobs to traditional spinners and dyers so they can use their skills to do meaningful work. Other yarns help the environment by using up waste that might be thrown away or by requiring less water or pesticide to grow the fibers. This issue will focus on those special yarns that do good while looking great. MARCH/APRIL 2021 Mid-Century Inspired We just can’t get enough of mid-century modern style and weaving. From the Bauhaus-trained weavers such as Else Regensteiner and Anni Albers, who helped define the textiles of the era, to the fun and funky fashion, we want to…

I BECAME INTRIGUED WITH THE CONCEPT OF doubleweave when I was still a beginning weaver in the early 1980s. It wasn’t so much the idea of having two different sides of a textile that captured my imagination as it was the idea that through layer exchange and pick-up, I could play the colors of one layer against a different set of colors on the other layer. I started with a sampler and learned the basic techniques of weaving two layers: folded cloth and tubular weaving. Then, through quite a bit of trial and error, I practiced some basic pick-up until I felt that I understood how to do it correctly. I wove my sampler with a solid light layer and a solid dark layer, so the opposite side of the…

HANDWOVEN’S CHALLENGE MIGHT HAVE BEEN TO create a cloth with two distinct sides, but my self-imposed challenge was to weave two scarves using only yarns from the large stash of silk I recently inherited from Ingrid Boesel. Much of the stash consisted of single skeins of 20/2 silk in different colors, some solid and some variegated. For the two scarves, I combined silk from two skeins in the warp: one was natural and the other was a hand-dyed variegated skein. Initially, I considered satin weave as it is sturdy and wears well, but a minimum of five shafts is required to weave a true satin. Instead, I settled on a satin look-alike: four-shaft ⅓ twill. I love twills and how they can be so different from each other while maintaining…

MY OBSESSION WITH WEFT-FACED wool rugs didn’t end when my “Diamond and Bars Twill Rug” was in the March/April 2019 issue of Handwoven. After weaving several versions of that rug, I began looking for new inspiration. A “farmhouse” rug on the Vävstuga Weaving School website caught my eye. The rug was weft-faced with three vertical panels, and the colors were reversed on opposite sides. Two rugs for the price of one! The only information on the weaving technique was “dubbelbindning.” This left me with more questions, specifically: What is dubbelbindning and how does one weave it? I was off on an exploratory adventure. I found references to double binding, weft-faced summer and winter, and double-faced block weave. The book Weft-Faced Pattern Weaves: Tabby to Taqueté by Nancy Arthur Hoskins led…

A SLITRYA IS A TRADITIONAL Scandinavian blanket woven with long, fluffy, warming wool pile meant to imitate the best part of an animal skin: the fur. Fishermen have used the blankets for centuries because the woven base remains warm and flexible yet sturdy when wet, unlike the leather of an animal skin. This project is a lightweight version for a stroller or a crib, although you could make an adult-sized bedspread by doubling or tripling the darkbrown warp section, doubling the length, and redesigning the knotting pattern. If you’re going to design your own, make sure to use graph paper with rectangles that are about twice as high as they are wide. Slitrya are distinctive because they are used with the pile side down, whereas many would assume that is…

I ALWAYS KNEW 2020 was going to be a special year; little did I know how special it would be. This last year, I have had time to reflect on the world and my place in it. We label ourselves to identify who we are and how we fit in the world—family, personality, occupation, hobby, etc. I have been using the weaver label for 40 years, first to denote my favorite hobby, and for the last 20 years, it has described my occupation. As a weaver, I have been a student, teacher, author, and shop owner. The weaving world has seen the closure of many local shops. Weaving is a niche business, and it is hard for one community to support a traditional brick-and-mortar store. Business owners today have to…