Ann's kitchen towels

This post is really a record for me.  The photos are awful but if you look at the light stripe on the outer edges you will see the treadling line followed.  Threaded in 6 shaft echo, 28 tpi, 2 threads of 20/2 cotton together, charcoal and rust alternating.

My brief was the colours in these bracelets.

 Below, echo weave, pohutukawa green weft. 2:1 twill

 Below, turned taquete, apricot weft, two shuttles one with single thread the other with double thread.  The pattern is not very distinct.

 Below, 4 colour double weave with white and green in weft.

Below, 4 colour double weave, apricot and green in weft 

 Below, apricot weft, echo.

 Below, echo, white weft, treadling line same as threading

 Below, echo with 2:1 twill (which I just read is called jeans twill)

 Below, echo with pale green cotton/linen weft

 I think this last is echo again with a cream weft. 

 I seem to have missed photographing one which I'm sure was 4 colour double weave.
 Out of 9 towels there are just 2 left, 5 will go to the States and 2 are off to France.

Kitchen towels

I've called these kitchen towels, as opposed to the usual tea towel label here in New Zealand, as some have a thicker boucle weft and would be very suitable for hand drying.  They are all cotton warp, some are cotton weft and some 50/50 cotton linen weft. 2/1 twill block threading.

 Teal grey range

 Olive grey range

Turquoise yellow range

After the first run I did rethread the outside stripe onto the same shafts as the turquoise stripe freeing up 4 shafts for a basket weave selvedge which gave a very pleasant edge.

Tea towels

 Before the trip I threaded my loom with a cotton warp in 2:1 block twill for tea towels to be stock for the Cargo Shed Fibre Gallery.  I so enjoyed being back at the loom weaving these. 

Even tied another warp on and wove it off

then I put all 8 towels in the tub to soak and

Disaster!!

And they were so pretty.

I think I've rescued 2 olive ones.

I tried laundry detergent, Friend, Orvis soap.  

If I'd wanted to dye them the colour wouldn't have taken!

Anyone got any suggestions before I iron them and put them in my cupboard.

Not to be beaten I put another warp on. 

Do you recognise these colours Lynette?  

Its taken a while for them to speak to me!

Loom is fixed.

Where are the days going?  One more day and it'll be autumn; must make the most of the sunshine while we have it.

So, I finished two garments for the Festival fashion parade and I hear they have both been accepted and I finished three pieces for the Exhibition, well one really, the other two were woven last year.  Selection is next week.

Since then I have been working on trying to solve the fault with my compu dobby loom.  As I wove away it would just stop, like putting your foot on the car accelerator and nothing there.  Sometimes it would happen after two pics or 200, or anything in between, very inconsistent.  I could trace it back to the start of last year when I changed computers.  We tried everything we could think of to fix the problem and in the end I gave up and accepted it was as good as it would get.  Seems a strange thing to say but I was kind of relieved to learn of another weaver with same loom and same problem and then a third, so, OK this had to be fixed.

Many emails have gone back and forth, even across the Tasman sea.  As I was reading some of them to Peter a light bulb went off, he emailed No. 1 son who came back with the solution to my problem.  Not a hic cup since but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be the answer to the fixit of the other two looms.  I am so grateful to all the help from the weaving community and it is such a pleasure to be weaving properly.

If you're interested it was because I was using a 9 pin to USB converter cable which are notoriously unreliable.

What did I weave on while testing the loom?  Cotton linen towels which I tied on to the previous warp.  This one is echo weave with a pale green (which looks dirty white) ramie weft over green cotton and olive cotton linen.  I didn't realise I was getting long floats at the points, probably not the best for towels.  Don't know how the ramie will work as a towel but this experiment will let me know.

 And the last one is 4 colour double weave which is looking rather exciting though in reality not so bright.  What is showing violet is more a grey.  There are a couple of others on the roll so look forward to seeing them soon.  A fun way to experiment.

Please tell the weather gods its summer!

It has been stormy and quite cool.  Will someone please tell the weather gods its summer.

 

We went for a walk around the Waitekauri mine site and tailing damn. 

 

There has been weaving ...

 There has been weaving of blankets, lots of blankets, which means lots of yarn and mohair dyeing.

 

 Scarf warp on the dobby, cotton 2/20, interleaved threading. Love the blotchiness. 

 

 Sampling of speaker grill cloth for son in law.

Design Award

At the end of the last post I said I was off to the opening of Creative Fibre Experience Exhibition in Hamilton.  I have been walking around with a smile for two weeks having been rung to be told I'd won the Design Award kindly sponsored by Gisler Architects of Te Awamutu.  Its the first weaving award I've earned at a national level so doubly delighted.

 Apparently I clinched it with the border at top and bottom.  As I said to the audience last year it differentiates the article from a length of fabric with tassels to a designed garment.

Peter had his camera and took many shots of the exhibition but it'll take a while for them to be developed from RAW.

 

A comment from a recent post was ....the whole idea of putting my weaving out there scares me witless!  I've always thought that though there can only be one winner for each award it takes many entries to make an exhibition worthy of an audience, to make it worthwhile for the many volunteers who work real hard to make it happen, to make it viable for the sponsors, to make it worthwhile for viewers to travel often many hours to get to and from the exhibition.  I work to the best of my ability and if the magic is there I enter it.

 

I will add that I'd paid the entry fee for another piece to be entered but, a. it wasn't finished in time and b. to do it in a hurry it wasn't going to be as good as I new it should be.

 

I do hope Creative Fibre is going to continue to support and finance this wonderful Experience Exhibition as it is a great window to the Society.

(PS - the leg is healing well.)

Shibori cotton

 I have a problem in that I can't for the life of me dye cotton with Procion dye.  I almost get hysterical at the prospect and when I try the dye doesn't take.  Acid dye on protein fibre, no problem but cotton, hopeless.  I have several big bags of cotton that I've acquired over the years thinking I would overdye to more desirable hues but .. see above!

This rust cone I have given away twice and it comes back unused so its time came to try an experiment with watered down bleach.
The fabric was about 20" (51cm) wide before pulling the resist threads.

 The first pic was taken as the soaked sample went into the solution so it is darker than in reality.  (A light bulb just went off here.)  The second pic is after four hours of soaking and I just realised that that is also darker than it would be when dry.  You can see the edges have really bleached out to a dirty white.

This is the first glimpse as the resist threads are released.

This is the above stripe sample washed and pressed showing that even deliberate stripes come out very organic.  The bleach solution was painted on one side of the sample only.

The next sample was covered in the bleach solution and left soaking for two hours.  It has 6 rows of tabby between resist threads which I like better than the samples I did with 4 which is a bonus timewise.

I think this last is my favourite but the one above does look a bit reptilian.  I used a weaker solution of bleach for this and I'm liking the three degrees of colour, the original rust, an orange and its tint.

So now I think I'll tie on a couple of metres of navy blue cotton which I know bleaches out to purple and see what I get before putting on a long warp.  This is all unmercerised cotton.

Click on all pics to bigify.

Fabric

Enough of the dog already.
Next weekend is Professional Weavers Network annual seminar in Auckland and after seminar we're having a workshop on designing/styling fabric/garments from handwoven cloth with Sue Scarf so I thought it time I got out my fabric stash and fulled it, finished it and had a jolly good look.  Both pieces have been maturing in the fabric stash cupboard for some time.  Do you know they do improve with age!  I rather like them now, can see possibilities.

This is wool, teal and anenome stripes with a variegated stripe every so often.  For some reason I threaded it and wove it with a space every 2 inches of about half an inch and of course the threads moved to fill the gaps.  I can imagine it with a contrasting (maybe hot pink) lining peeping through the spaces.  There is at least 5 metres.  A jacket is the obvious style but maybe a long tunic top.

The second bolt I wove so long ago I couldn't remember which loom I used until I saw the network drafted pattern so it must have been on the dobby and that must be two or three years ago.  Yikes!
Its mostly cotton with one acrylic thread which didn't shrink and has made little loops at irregular intervals - I think that's why it was never made up.  Again there is about 5 metres and I had planned to use a Burda pattern for a shirt with a tie feature at the front.  Hmmm.  Apologies for the photos but if I went back to try again this would never be posted.  You can just see the networking on the blue bolt.