Twisp of Fate

At the Chamber Music Festival last July, I ran into a woman who was interested in some of my undulating twill towels in “black and red” to go with her kitchen colors at their second home north of Winthrop.  I discovered I already had a cone of black 8/2 cotton, about 2 lbs so enough to put on a 12-yard warp.  So, even though I thought I was done with those towels, I tied on a new warp a couple of weeks ago, and on Monday of this week, finished them off.

I don’t remember where I got that black cotton, but it turned out to be a pain in the neck.  Quite “tender” so I had a lot of breakage problems.  I finally figured out how to coax it along – just the right amount of tension, don’t advance it too far so the fell line (where the beater hits the cloth) remains in a narrow area where the reed is vertical, etc.  But it was worth it!  I really like how these turned out – so much so that I have ordered more black 8/2 cotton from WEBS and it is on its way to me now.  It is their own line, Valley Yarns “Eight-Two”.   Good stuff, and a decent price if you order enough to get the 25% discount.

Here are two of the black and red ones:

undulating twill towels, black warp and red weft

I did 4 other colors:  banana yellow, turquoise green, elm green and madder brown.

Also this week I was trying to respond to the final call from Confluence Gallery for submission to a show they will open the first part of November.  It is titled “Visions of Verse”.  They have 33 works from local poets and ask visual artists to respond to the written works.  I was really drawing a blank, and also couldn’t see how I could get anything significant and new, done in time, as I will be gone on and off for most of October.  But then it came to me – these new towels are perfect for a poem by Danica Kaufman titled Prayer Flags of Daily Life !  So there you have it.

Also working on some placemats at home:

new placemats underway

using this fabric!

I decided that this past weekend was the time to finish off the warp on my portable “Baby Mac” loom.  This was what was left from the 3-day “Warp-Faced Weaves” workshop I took in June from Kay Faulkner at the ANWG Conference in Bellingham.  I had previously done a sampler and hoped I had enough warp left for 4 placemats.

I had also worked out various motifs for pick-up in the sotis areas, using Excel for a charting tool.  The plan was to do all the mats the same, except put a different pick-up motif in the 4 corners of each one.

Here’s the first one underway:

first pick-up pattern in sotis cloth areas

I also used, as a guide, Kay Faulkner’s article Sotis Cloth from West Timor in the March/April 2013 issue of Handwoven magazine.  At each end, I wove 1-1/2″ with a single weft in plain weave, to reduce bulk.  These were later turned under twice and sewn down for the final hems.  The body of the mat is woven with a doubled weft.

I only had enough warp to finish 3 mats of the same size, plus another small piece about half their size.  But that is OK, since these are a little wide for a typical placemat (I was stuck with the warp width I had put on, long story).

Will I do this again?  Actually, yes!  But next time, I will use mercerized cotton (for placemats).  For this workshop project, I used Valley Yarns 8/2 Cotton from WEBS, and it is lovely stuff – soft, smooth, strong, great colors.  But on washing, it didn’t so much shrink as “bloom”, especially in the sotis areas where 3 ends go through one heddle (alabaster, in this case) and a single end goes through the other heddle (brown, in this case).  The 3 ends that go together, kind of fluffed up and wound up obscuring the pattern in the wider stripes.  The brown “dots” in these wide stripes are much more visible in the first picture above, on the loom and before washing.

Finally came to the end of the current rug warp – 30 rugs completed, of various sizes, in the last 2 months.  I have more Pendleton selvage material to use up, and things I want to try, but for now I am tired of weaving rugs and ready to do something else on that loom!  I actually started this late last December and have worked my way through two 50-yard warps, weaving 57 rugs and “ruglets” total.

At least they are selling reasonably well – five so far at the Confluence Gallery show, and six so far up at the Lost River Winery tasting room – plus a couple through Winthrop Gallery in the last 2 months.

These two were done in mid-July:

R163 – fiesta orange – sold at winery

R164 – smooth red wool selvages – sold at winery

Then, with the Confluence Gallery show coming up, I got into what I call “mixed selvages” rugs.  I like to combine a variety of Pendleton blanket selvages, combining both colors and textures (smooth “worms” and the more fringe-like selvages).

R165 – for Confluence show, and sold

R166 – for Confluence show, and sold

I liked the above one so much, I made another for us to keep (always a slight variation as I use up materials, though):

R167 – kept this one!

R168 was a little “ruglet” and I didn’t get a picture.  These are a great way to use up small amounts of material from a bigger rug.

The rest of these were done in mid-August:

R169 – a new colorway of mixed selvages

R170 – slight variant of R169 – I kept this one, too

R171 – royal blue fringe alternating with colored worms

R172 – another one for Confluence Gallery, and sold

R173 – a third one of this type – for Confluence

R174 – and END OF WARP!!

A few days ago I finally unfolded my Baby Mac workshop loom, got out my notes from Kay Faulkner’s 3-day workshop on Warp-Faced Weaves at the ANWG Conference in June, and went back to figuring out what to do with my 4-yard warp.  I last blogged about it in this post after the conference.  I hadn’t made it much farther than getting the warp on the loom.

My warp is threaded for a combination of plain weave sections alternated with the Sotis cloth (patterns from West Timor).  Kay’s notes are based on a nomenclature she came up with that makes sense to her, but isn’t terribly clear until you figure it out.  I also had her article from Handwoven Mar/Apr 2013, and studying the weaving pattern from that was a great help.  I wound up making my own notes about how to weave the 6 basic patterns she gave us.

Basic Sotis patterns 1-4

Basic Sotis patterns 5-6

In the above photo, you can see where I was trying the “warp wrapping” with a banana yellow color, in one of the plain weave areas.  Not with a great deal of success.  However, I am not sure I want to use this technique in my project so may or may not follow up with more experimentation.

I was more interested in getting a pattern motif in the Sotis areas, which has to be done with manual pickup of threads for this simple threading.  After a first attempt, I was starting to understand how this works, and made a plan for a motif.

Sotis motif plan

and what do you know – it worked!

Basically, this is done within the context of Basic Pattern 4.  In my sampler, of the 60 heddles threaded for each side section, 30 are threaded with a single dark brown thread (can be thought of as “tabby a” for the section) and the other 30 alternate heddles are threaded with 3 cream threads run together (can be thought of as “tabby b” for the section).  The ones with 3 threads are referred to as “heavy”, to alternate with the dark brown “fine” threads.  But, those 30 heavy threads can also be lifted in alternating groups of 15.  This is how you get some of the patterns.  The pickup motif is done on a ground of basic pattern 4, where one bar uses just heavy “a” and the next bar uses heavy “b”.

I may try out the “exposed weft” technique next, then move on to weaving some placemats using combinations of the basic patterns, and incorporating my little pickup motif.

I also now know why Kay does some of her more elaborate Sotis pieces on a 24-harness computer loom, where she can treadle the Sotif motifs and not use pickup!  It works, but is slow and for now at least, requires vigilant attention to detail.