New Rigid Heddle Loom projects

 

This was such a fun and easy weave!  It's fabric that will be turned into a project bag.  It was a short warp of 4/8 cotton or maybe a tad larger.   I think it was a smallish cone of thread that someone passed on to me because they didn't want it.   It was perfect for this.   The weft was a ball of a synthetic tube yarn stuffed with a soft cord or filling.   It was leftover from placemats I'd made ages ago. 

  Now if the weather will cool down a bit so I can start up the iron. It's been so hot and humid here.  The humidex has been over 40C several days and close to the rest.   Too hot and muggy for me to iron.  I have this project bag, which needs interfacing ironed on, then to be sewn to shape.  The lining needs to have some interfacing for pockets, and a welt pocket in the lining.  I also need to figure out what to do for a handle, or if it needs a closure.   But it should be pretty when done.

Now on the loom is a 100% wool warp for a blanket.  It will be woven in two pieces and sewn together up the middle to make a blanket.   There are three stripes on this, so three on each side.  I mucked up the placement because with a bit more effort, I could have made it so the sides to be sewn together had a smaller teal section, and the wide stripes would appear to be even.    

This isn't quite so much fun to weave.  It's wider, so it's slower going.  Plus the wool is  a bit sticky, so I have to be careful about skipped threads.   I'm not 100% happy about the sett.  However the next larger reed I had for this loom was 10 dents, so I went with the 7.5 dent reed.  I'll be fulling it up when it's all said and done, so it will be fine.   It will soften up as well.

This is a more accurate colour of the yarn.   Direct warping is quick and easy.  I didn't get the tension quite right this time though, despite tensioning it twice over several hours, leaving it overnight and checking again before tying it on, and then fixing it again.    I think it might be an issue with using the cardboard slats as separators as I've never had this issue with a good paper warp.  Years ago, I purchased a roll of heavyish, but not high quality water colour paper.   The poor sales person at the shop was warning me about results with that paper, and yes, I did try some water colours on it, and it was awful paper for painting on.  However, it made fabulous packing paper and sewing patterning paper.  I ran out recently and haven't got an art store near me to see about replacing it.

The lawn tractor died.  We put a huge amount of $ getting it fixed last year and it didn't even last the summer.   The timing sucks though as not only have we had to replace all of our kitchen appliances, we also had to replace our non-functioning furnace and tank.  Then a critter chewed through the cable from the wifi dish to the house and that took a couple of days to fix  What is next I wonder?