A Few Rugs

Here are a few Rugs I've been working on. They are woven on an 8/4 cotton warp with extra fluffy yarn as weft. I wove these rugs in overshot "on opposites". And "polychrome ". These two methods completely cover the warp and make awesome designs on just 4 shafts.

Weaving Hack

People may think I'm crazy, but I wind all my bobbins for weaving on my sewing machine. I've tried several other methods, but for me, this works best. Enjoy!


Bobbin Winding Hack

A Happy Mistake

As you can see from my past posts, I'm a huge fan of Kauni Yarn. I had a beautiful Fall colorway I wanted to weave, so I wound the warp. I was so excited to get this project onto my loom that I made a mistake I've never made before. I began chaining my warp and then realized that I didn't tie the cross! 

I was devastated. The gorgeous ombré that I was going for was now a jumble of color. After a minute or two, I realized that it might still work. Instead of trying to figure out where each thread should go, in color order, I just began sleying & threading. 

I had planned on weaving plain weave & then experimenting with 6 shaft M's & W's. I decided to go ahead with that plan however the warp came out. As I had hoped, the colors blended together seamlessly. Here are my happy results...

Plain weave on the loom....

M's & W's on the loom....

Just off the loom....

The finished product 😀

Happy Weaving!

Fine Arts Fair This Saturday

Come out and see my weaving this Saturday, October 8, at the Fine Arts Fair at Deep Run East Mennonite Church in Perkasie, PA from 10-4. Proceeds to benefit Worthwhile Wear, and organization supporting victims of human trafficking.

6 Shaft Shadow Weave in Chenille

The last time I did color & weave or a shadow weave, it was on 4 shafts. My 1st piece was a log cabin runner woven on my rigid heddle loom. It was my favorite, until.... I got my floor loom. I did a table runner in 4 color log cabin. It still is one of my all time favorites. I've been having a hard time deciding what to make for some upcoming craft shows. Ultimately I decided to try to use up my chenille and make some shadow weave scarves. 

When I searched "8 shaft shadow weave", I found several links to Eva Stossel's blog. Using her specs as a guideline, I began to wind the warp. In the end, I went with a 6 shaft pattern and I decided on a sett of 17 1/2. Why this odd sett? I have two reeds; a 5 dent & a 10 dent. Eva recommends a sett of 16-18 for her various projects using chenille. I should add, I'm using 1400 ypp rayon chenille. The closest I could get is 17 or 17 1/2 epi. I decided to go with the closer sett.  This whole experience has sold me on the absolute necessity of an 8 dent reed ;)

Threading; my least favorite part 

Here is my draft.

Fast forward about a day and im having threading issues. I'd fix one error only to weave another inch or two before finding another. I also thought I could get away without floating selvedges. That was another bad plan. After blowing through almost 2 bobbins and about twice as much warp as I had planned for sampling, the pattern was perfect......

....sort of. I noticed that certain warp threads appear as if they are floating. This is due to the sett of 17 1/2. To sley in the 10 dent reed, I sleyed 2,2,2,1. The threads that appear to be floats are where one thread is sleyed in a dent. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will even out when off the loom. 

I did another version using purple....

 

And another with green in a diamond pattern....

Fringe is a must with these scarves and fringing chenille was a lot more tedious than I had anticipated. The fringe looks great, but I'm not looking forward to fringing the rest!

Fast forward to wet finishing. I soaked the 1st scarf in hot water. The water turned pink immediately so I continued rinsing until the water was clear. I rolled the scarf in a towel & then put it in the dryer. Some of the fringe got a little wonky but the finished fabric is like "buttah" 😉

Happy Weaving!

Next up, Fancy Twills on the 8 shaft 😀

8 Shaft Pinwheels

One of the 1st drafts I saw when I started weaving was a pinwheel draft. I've always wanted to try this weave and I had a bunch of 6/2 cotton to go through, so pinwheels it was. 

This was a bit tricky for me because I have a 10 dent reed. The closest I could get to 16 epi with a 10 dent reed was 17epi. Sleying the reed was quite interesting since I had to count out the sleying and keep track of the 8 thread stripes at the same time. That being said, the threading was easy because it was a straight draw 1-8 with an 8 thread stripe.

My next challenge quickly presented itself as I tried to decide how to handle the color change. I wanted to maintain a mostly purple selvedge so I decided to cut and tuck the grey weft while carrying the purple. 

 The sett was open just enough that the excess grey weft did not cause a buildup on the left selvedge. Once I got into a rhythm, the cutting and tucking went fast.

I decided to change the tie up for the 2nd scarf .....

Finally, I had some extra warp and decided to play around a bit.....

Now for the wet finishing!

Happy Weaving!

Craft Fair!!!

Please come out and see me, Lynette of LSG Crafts, at the Deep Run East Mennonite Church in Perkasie, PA on October 8th. Proceeds to benefit Worthwhile Wear, an organization supporting victims of human trafficking. I hope to see you there!

Adventures in Doubleweave

I had a bunch of horrible acrylic yarn I wanted to get rid of so I decided to sample some doubleweave. I plan to do a very large double width wool blanket but before I invest time and money on such a large scale doubleweave project, I think a bit more practice might be in order. 

I only have a 10 dent reed so I had to use a relatively big yarn to get close to 20 epi (10 epi per layer). 

I decided to mess around a bit with color so my warp was threaded with tan as the light color and 2 different blues as the dark color. I threaded 4d,2l,3d,1l for block A and 4l,3d,2l,1d for block B. 

My treadles were tied as follows:

1- shaft 1

2- shaft 2

3- shafts 1&2

4- shaft 3

5- shaft 4

6- shafts 3&4

Doubleweave with interchanged layers 

Doubleweave with 2 separate layers 

This just plain weave (only using treadles 3&4)

The sett was WAY too tight, but I'm happy with the selvedges and I only had one skip on the bottom layer. 

Happy Weaving!

A Few More Rugs

Ok, so now that I'm off pillows, for a very long time, rugs seem to be my favorite "mode of medium" at the moment 😉

I had previously woven a rug that I called the "Heavenly Handwoven Rug". It has been at the top of my Etsy site from day 1. Revisiting the rug this many months later, I felt the design needed to be augmented a bit. 

Where I used 2 ends of 8/4 rug warp per dent in a 5 dent reed before, I decided to sley 2 ends per dent in a 10 dent reed. I then realized that I didn't have enough 8/4 in natural. I did, however, have a massive cone of 8/2 in natural. I wound two threads together and treated them as 1 end. I hope it will add texture to the fringe as well as the rug itself.

When I last wove this rug it was weft faced with no warp showing and was woven in plain weave. I'm trying to make this warp multi-purpose. I'd like to make 2 of the weft faced puffy rugs and one rug, all in cotton, woven as overshot. To accomplish this, I am threading my 4 shaft loom in a design called "Tile" by Josephine Estes. 

I tried overshot with the fuzzy yarn & it wasn't working so I just wove plain weave. I love it!

Light as a cloud!!!!

For the next rug I used grey rug wool & 16/8 mop cotton to weave the overshot. I think it's looking pretty good. 

I've got 1 more rug to finish before vacation. Looks like I'll have a lot of fringe knotting & twisting in my future 😀

Happy Weaving!

A Rug in Summer & Winter on 6 shafts

I've been wanting to weave a few rugs, but have been so indecisive with a pattern. I ultimately chose Trellis by Bertha Gray Hayes, but opted to weave it as summer & winter, using the overshot draft as a profile draft. 

I used "Overshot for Rugs" by Tom Knisley as a guide and inspiration. For his rug, he used 8/4 cotton, doubled, in a 12 dent reed. I don't have a 12 dent reed, so I sleyed 2 ends per dent in my 10 dent reed. 

I had a few sleying & threading snags along to the way which might explain why I completely forgot to weave the "twill" border to the bottom of the rug. I put twill in quotes because what would've been a 6 thread twill border, when woven in overshot, now becomes 24 threads woven in 6 blocks in a converted draft.

After weaving for a while, I also realized that I had omitted a 4 thread block. I cut the weaving, added 4 string heddles, re-threaded and resleyed. Not fun.

Here I am weaving the rug at the Mercer  Museum in Doylestown, PA as part of their Heritage Artisan Series.....

Thank you to everyone who stopped by. I had a great time and I am so grateful to the museum for this wonderful opportunity. 

My rigid heddle loom is also very happy. It hasn't seen much use since got my floor loom. I warped it so visitors could try their hand at weaving. 

This is the work of about 5 or 6 children. It was really cool to see them weaving and to see how much they liked it! I know the museum got some pictures of me with the kids and I'll post them soon. 

Back to the rug. Always one to try several patterns on one warp, rug #2 was woven with doubled 8/4 cotton in Spanish Blue with a dark heather grey rug wool for pattern weft. I inverted the treadling for the blocks, ie.: 2-1-1-2 becomes 1-2-2-1 and 4-3-3-4 becomes 3-4-4-3 and so on. 

I had a bit of warp left, so I made a sample with dukagang treadling; only using the odd numbered treadles for pattern. This would make a fabulous rug and I'll definitely do this one again. 

I hand knotted all the fringe and, voila!

I love love love this rug!!!! Here is the blue & grey (pay no attention to the treading error 😢)

Happy Weaving!

Converting Overshot Patterns To Summer & Winter

The I love to weave overshot and I also love summer & winter. I thought I'd combine the two. The John Landes collection of patterns by Mary Atwater, gives threading a for both overshot and summer & winter for most of the patterns. Those patterns were the inspiration for my latest experiment.

I decided to make a few wraps. I used "Periwinkle", a miniature overshot pattern by Josephine Estes, as my profile draft. It is a great little overshot pattern and it's fun to weave. Here is the threading...

To convert the design to summer and winter, you will thread each square in the overshot design as a 4 thread summer & winter block. For example, the twill border, threaded for overshot, would be 4,3,2,1. For summer & winter it would be 1,6,2,6; 1,5,2,5; 1,4,2,4; 1,3,2,3. Here is the draft....

I threaded 5/2 cotton in natural for the warp, sett 15epi. I used various colors of 5/2 as tabby weft and alpaca from Galler Yarns as pattern weft.

Here is the result....

The overshot version of Periwinkle as compared to the summer & winter version.

Same warp, but using a different treadling and color scheme; "winter" side

A view of the "summer" side 

I can not wait to get these wraps off the loom!!!! 

Happy Weaving!

John Landes #2 In Linen; the weaving

So I managed to somehow thread 467 ends on 6 shafts with no threading errors and only one broken warp! Can I get an Amen?! 

Once I wove an inch or two, I realized that I was in for a challenge. The linen was sooooo stiff!!! I made an impromptu bobbin humidor with an air tight container and a jar of warm water. I left the pre-wound bobbins in the container overnight and in the morning the linen was much more workable. I also misted the warp with water as I was weaving. 

My 1st sample used blue wool as pattern weft. I wanted to be able to throw the finished pieces into the washer & dryer, so I switched to a dark purple 5/2 cotton for the pattern weft and a lilac colored 16/2 linen for the tabby weft. The color combination of the natural colored warp with the dark & light purple weft is very interesting. On the "winter" side of the fabric, the mixing of the lilac & natural threads is very subtle, while on the "summer" side it seems much bolder. I'm so enthralled by summer and winter, especially now that I have the eight shaft loom. I may be wrong, but to me, the definition of the weave is more complex with more blocks. 

The last piece was woven all in linen with the Bockens 16/2 warp yarn used as tabby weft and  Euroflax by Louet in navy blue as pattern weft. For the 1st piece, I followed the draft exactly as written. Because of the difference in the epi and ppi the piece and the motifs are rectangular. For the second piece, I tried to square the design a bit by eliminating an entire star motif at the beginning and end and also reducing the number of picks in the center motif. The fabric itself is still a bit rectangular but the motifs are more balanced. 

My warp was WAY too short. I was lucky to get two pieces out of it. 

I'll share some pictures of the finished two pieces soon. For now, here is what I'm weaving at present.....

...4 shaft overshot converted to 6 shaft (3 color) summer & winter. I can't wait to share the finished product!!!!

Happy Weaving!!!!!