Weaving and more Weaving

Sometime ago, I picked up two cones of pale pink cotton at a thrift store for $1 a cone. I figured it might come in handy for sampling or when a pink urge hit me. A while ago, I decided to warp up the loom with the pink, to weave off some 1/2 twills. It too me a bit of time to warp up the darned thing as the colour was just not exciting me but I did it. I wove a sample of 1/2 twill - okay but I'd put on 5 yards and couldn't see doing 5 yards of straight 1/2 twill as it was too tight a weave to make great tea towels. I did a 1/2 rippenkoper - interesting ribbed effect but I'd paired it with a taupe weft so I could see the structure and it was rather sad and dull in the end.
I cut off the samples and re-threaded the whole thing to do a 1/2 point twill. It took me forever and a day to do this and by the time I was finished I was more than a tad frustrated. The results were better and I wove off the rest of the warp. I have to admit, that by the end of this cotton sampling warp, I really disliked it and was happy to see it gone - enough said.

Then I dug out the shetland I'd finished spinning in March and finally warped the loom. I do have to wonder though, why I stored the yarn in 3 different places. I found one ball in one spot, by accident. Another in a second spot that I obviously had meant for something else and then had to hunt down the bag with the rest, hidden in a safe place! I actually wonder if one of the balls was meant to be mitten yarn as it is obviously a tad fatter than the rest. No problem, I used it anyway as I had just enough to warp the project at hand.
This is much nicer than the pink. It is soft and yummy. I love playing with wool fibres and enjoy dressing the loom with fibre like this, all 473 ends of it! I'm using a point twill threading from Northern European Textiles Until 1000 AD, Lise Bender Jorgensen. I don't have enough black for the weft, so it will be blue handdyed - woad, handspun shetland. I may redye it darker as I've enough pigment left as the blue is rather soft. It will depend on weather - affects drying time and how quickly I get the loom dressed.

Rapier Armour

Remember the photo I posted back in February, of the lovely paper pattern pieces I'd drafted for my husband's new fencing armour? I've finally found time to work on the project. I started it on Monday and spent most of my free time this week on it. It turned out not to badly, all things considered. I thought the fabric was an awesome choice in terms of looks but it turned out that the satin stripes were very prone to fraying. That meant a few seams that were lumpier than I'd have liked.
The shirt however turned out really nicely. I'd tried a method that my friend developed and it turned out an easy to make shirt but that was too small. ( my son is happy though as he got a totally awesome fencing shirt, although he doesn't participate much anymore) I ended up going back to my latest shirt pattern I'd done myself and it turned out perfect, in size, shape and design.
The doublet has 3 layers and was punch tested so it's SCA legal. The tabs turned out well, but they only have 2 layers, woven interfacing and piping which made the seams turn crisply. The 19 button holes need some fray checking and the 19 buttons are brown plastic that look like woven leather. I hesitate to put really nice buttons on a garment which will be tossed in a washer and dryer, poked, prodded and otherwise mal-treated.
The fit is okay, considering I used a totally different pattern drafting method. Although I'm not fond of the collar shape, that is easily changed. The armscyes fit a treat which is good considering it was drafted to have sleeves. The sleeves aren't done and won't be for a while. I wanted the outfit done before this Saturday and so the sleeves will be lace on at a later date.

Oddly enough, the cat really wanted nothing at all to do with the project, other than inspecting the pattern pieces back in Feb. Now to clean up the mess. When I work in my sewing room, I have bags taped to the edges of work surfaces to catch the threads and snippets. However, I was in the diningroom and I ended up using the floor.. egads.. what a mess!

weaving and spinning tools

Last year, I was at a meeting in Fergus when Tamara showed me the wooden sword that her husband had whittled while they were camping. It was stunning to say the least and what totally enthused me as well, is that my first vision was of a weaving sword for a warp weighted loom. I commented on it and suddenly, from the back of her car, Tamara produced a "sword" blank for me. It was a long, skinny, fairly flat piece of wood. I've never carved anything before and even had to buy a knife. Slowly, I hacked away at my piece of wood. I ended up cutting it in two where a knot was as I realized it would be too long to use for weaving at the full size. What I ended up with isn't fancy, but the weight of each is light enough to use and they are fairly well balanced for use as weaving swords.

Now if I only had a warp weighted loom to try them with. Unfortunately, though I was going to get my loom re-vamped to be more user friendly, the photos of the brake system I wanted are on a corrupt disk and can't be accessed. So I'm guessing that my loom will be a good while longer before it's retro fit, since accessing the photos seemed to be the necessary ingredient to this project.

On Saturday we wandered off to Knight's lumber, a real lumber store in Guelph. None of the big box building supplies, but a warehouse of real wood. The place smelled incredible and they had varieties of wood that I'd never seen before. I found a really nice piece of maple which I wanted to turn into a niddy noddy. I got the design drafted and then hubby took the project over - please note, I didn't ask him or expect it, I was going to attempt this on my own - however, he decided to make and I knew that I'd get a really nice niddy noddy 'cause he is so precise, careful and always does a good job on these things. The three pieces just need to be attached. I think it is awesome and beautiful. Joint projects can be very fun. I got the design and the finishing aspects which are the parts I really love best.

Project finished!

Finally done! After getting waylaid and distracted over the past couple of weeks with things which included working and the worst chest cold I've experienced in years, I got the darned bag finished. It was a little smaller than I'd originally planned. I realized this once I had the lining put together - medium weight linen, lined with fusible woven interfacing and a couple of pockets. I was going to redo the lining as I hadn't cut the handwoven fabric yet. Then I lifted it up, and realized that the couple of extra inches I wanted to add would just add weight, and I still had the strap to add on, so I finished it as it was. Turns out, while it is a big narrower than I wanted, it will work just fine. It looks good and the pockets turned out in the right spots.

Now, to hem the leftover pieces into towels, a pouch, maybe a hat and of course keeping a sample swatch for future reference, so I can remind myself how nice a 10/2 cotton in a twill weave is. I still wish I had enough of that thread to make a shirt or something for myself but it was two small cones from a $2 leftover cone sale bin. I'm not even sure what it was, though it is obviously cotton and wove up so nicely into fabric with a lovely hand. Really, too soft and drapey for a handbag, which is why everything is interfaced to death, but it worked.

Basketmaking 101

The therapeutic nature of basket making has been known and used for many years. So, on Saturday, I went for a bit of therapy and spent the day with a dozen wonderful ladies learning about basket making. The class was a basic skills class, revolving around making a useful basket covering skills which would allow us to make more baskets in the future. We had a choice of 3 styles, a market basket, a tote bag and a square basket, which I chose.

If I was going to make a useful basket, I thought something to hold fibre or fibre tools would be a good thing to own. This baby will hold a lot more than I thought! The base is 12 inches square but the weaving opened it up another couple of inches. It is a good 6 -7 inches deep. It is made of flat reed, oval reed with handmade ask handles, although I didn't make the handles.

It is a good outside activity though, since it does require lots of water and wet reed that invariably ends up on your lap. The dog and I spent part of the morning outside in the lovely weather, being chided by the birds for being too close to the feeder, while I finished up lashing the rim. This was an awful lot of fun. It wasn't rocket science, but did require some effort, planning and detailed thought. The sad thing is that in Canada, basket weaving supplies are a little pricey.

Madder and Indigo

I started my seeds too early. With commercial madder seeds, I found them to take up to two weeks to germinate and be slow growing after that. The fresh seeds I harvested last summer must be happier as they started germinating very quickly and look at them now!
I've lots of them as well as a few extra for a friend who was unable to start any this year.
As well, I've got Japanese Indigo sprouting. I had read that it can be difficult to germinate and fussy to keep as seedlings. I was lucky though I guess as a number of the seeds I planted germinate. I haven't tried to grow Indigo ( indigofera tinctoria ) though as we really are much colder than the required growing zone and I am not sure using the limited space in my garden is useful for that experiment. Maybe I'll be like medieval dyers and just buy my indigo. That way, my limited space will be used effectively.

Hubby's car died and he's using mine, so I'm effectively sans car for much of the time. When I get a chance, which doesn't include having to use the city bus, I'm going to pick up some row covers and start some woad seeds directly in the garden and see how that works. I know that it says you can just direct plant into the garden once the soil is workable, but this does seem like a good excuse to start playing with pushing the growing season.

Sprouts!

The first Madder sprout of 2008! Hurray! It is so nice to see that my seeds are viable and are growing. So far I can say that these seed which I harvested myself last fall are germinating faster and more completely than any I'd purchased in the past. Last year I put 3 seeds in every pot, hoping for 1 seeding in each pot. I had a couple of pots with two, but probably 1/3 the pots with nothing at all and the rest only 1. This year I put 2 seeds in each pot and have signs of growth in all but 2 pots, and many have both seeds growing. The 2 pots with no signs yet maybe just a little slow.

This is a container with Dyer's Knotweed. Also known as Japanese Indigo or Polygonum Tinctorium, it is another of the few plants which yield indigotin. The seeds are exceedingly tiny and very difficult to find. I searched high and low earlier this year for them but couldn't find a source which sold them. However, I was given some by a lovely gal at the Guelph Guild of Handweavers and Spinners as she had some extra and I'd given her Madder and Woad seeds. Pretty cool and very nice of her. So most of them are planted to see what will happen. They just got in the soil yesterday so it's a tad early yet.. I was just excited.