2025 Finishes: The Year in Review

It's been a remarkably productive year!   Still many more WIPs to finish in the coming year ...

 

 

Stained Glass Quilt 

 

 

Blue Resistance Quilt - Tied with a wool batt

 

 Here's a "straight-on" view of this quilt top.

 

Double Wedding Ring Quilt Top

 

 

Cherokee Marsh Bargello Quilt Top

 

 

Deep Blue Log Cabin Quilt Top

 

 

 Nordic Star Table Runner in Blue

 

 

Koi Pond Mini Duckworth - Initials Challenge for the EAA Quilt Show

 

Koi Pond Duckworth Scrap Quilt Top

 

 

Disappearing Hour Glass Quilt Top No. 2

 

 

Wandering Vine Cotton Towels x3

 

 

Weaving -  Red Wandering Vine Coverlet (wool & cotton)

Re-programming the Loom to Make a Different Pattern

Trying something new!

I finished the first waffle weave bath towel out of that kit.  And I have to say: I'm over it.  Overshot is so much more interesting!  I have enough warp left to weave 1 more bath towel, or 3/4 tea towels in some other pattern.  The heddles/shafts are threaded in a point twill pattern, which is basic and versatile.  If I use the same threading (the dots across the top of the diagram below) through the heddles and shafts, but change up the tie-ups (the upper right corner of the diagram below) for the treadles and the treadling, I can have a whole new pattern weave.  Add some color and voi la!

This is the first one I tried (actual woven fabric on the loom in the photo at the top of this post):  

 

The treadle order (the dots down the right side of the diagram) is almost the same -- just running up and down the 8 treadles. 

I think I am in love!  What an easy way to re-kindle my love for weaving. ;-) 

I am using some red Brassard cotton for the weft.  But I have other colors I can use, too.

It's pretty darn amazing that you can have such a completely different weaving pattern, just by changing the treadle tie ups -- which is easy enough.  I can't believe I didn't have to spend 2 months starting over with a new warp and threading all those heddles.   With a simple change in tie-ups (about 20 minutes), I can be weaving a whole new pattern!

There are lots of other possibilities with the same standard threading, just varying the treadle tie ups.  Here are some other possibilities I might try:

  

  

We are finally getting some nice fall color here.  Ahh! 

Unfurl the Cloth Beam! Wandering Vine Edition

Unfurling the Wandering Vine Cloth

Unreeling 12 yards of warp in a wandering vine overshot pattern on the 8-shaft loom, though I only used 4 shafts for this particular pattern.  I am still getting used to using this bigger loom.

It's always so satisfying to see fabric that I wove line-by-line come off the cloth beam:  

I made this cloth! 

 

This is my sturdy 8-shaft Kessenich Floor Loom, built sometime in the 1960s.  

The weaving width of this cloth was 37 inches wide.

 

End of the warp.  End of the line. 

 

12 yards of cloth wound onto the cloth beam. 

 

I use the tape measures to help me keep track of how far I've come.  This helps to keep panels that need to be the same size roughly matchable when it comes time to piece them together. 

 

The last bit of weaving as seen through the steel heddles from the back of the loom.

I got this far, and just could not get a clean shed anymore, so I gave up the ghost.

This is as far as I could go on the sectional warp before I couldn't get a good shed anymore.  I  wove as far as I could on the 12-yard wandering vine warp and the rest woven in cotton for towels, plus 2 samples to try out some wool yarn. 

The sectional warp worked very well, and mitigated a lot of tension problems I might have had otherwise.  It worked so well, that we will be outfitting the smaller 4-shaft Kessenich loom with a sectional warp.  I think that is going to become the coverlet-making loom.  I don't mind weaving extra panels if I can make the joy of weaving last a little longer.  ;-)

2 panels of red wool and cotton for a Wandering vine coverlet.

How much loom waste?  about 27 inches total

4 inches on the front (cloth beam)
22 inches on the back end

 

American Maid Cotton is nice to work with -- very strong with few broken threads in the warp.  

That said, it is dusty, even though I think it has some beeswax on it to help it behave during the weaving process.  I vacuumed this haze of fiber dust off the old cloth beam which sits above the new sectional beam, so all the warp flowed over this bundled beam and dropped bits of cotton fiber with every treadling.  That's just how it works!

 

More to come:   Stay tuned for the finished coverlet and towels ...

Wool Singles from Maritime Fibers: Is this what I've been waiting for my whole weaving life?

Teal 

Just look at that luscious and rich teal!

 

Maritime Family Fiber - Sport Single Ply 100% wool  yarn singles

100% pure wool locally sourced from small flocks and farms, Sport is a single-ply, generous 4 ounces (113 grams) and 430 yards (393 meters), giving you plenty of yardage for lightweight lace or your colorwork masterpieces.

 

I have been on the hunt for wool yarn in singles to use as the pattern weft of the next coverlet I want to weave.  Wool Singles will give it that old-timey look like this:

Wool singles (red yarn) used as weft in an antique coverlet.

 

The singles puff up and hold air to make the coverlet even warmer.  

Although I can spin the singles myself, I don't want this to be a 20-year project.  I am getting older!

At long last, I think I found good source for wool singles!  And they are dyed beautiful colors, too!  Again, I could dye it myself, but this saves me time.

 

Here are some other colors I am entertaining:

 

Dark Green - Single Wool Yarn

 

Blue Heather - Single Wool Yarn 

Just my luck!  There was a sale in February, and free shipping!  I put in my order!

My Happy Place: Weaving at the Loom

My Happy Place at the Loom!

I woke up at 6 am this morning, overjoyed that I would be able to weave today.  

I can't do it on a work day.

 

I started on the green wandering vine towel, using up the leftover warp from the red wandering vine coverlet.  I love how these are turning out so far with the Brassard cotton made for towels. 

You can see the blue one underneath.

Wondering what I'll do in retirement?  More of what I did in my working life to attain balance -- quilting and weaving.    That and some kayaks.    And Scotland!

Thanks to my Dear Husband who takes these pictures until there are good ones to share!  He makes me smile, too!

Wandering Vine Coverlet: Panel 1 of 2 Complete and Lessons Learned So Far

I finished the first panel of The Wandering Vine Coverlet.  20 repeats of the pattern filled about 100 inches, plus 3 inches for hems at the top and bottom.  1 more to go!

Once again, I kept track of my progress with a run of adding machine tape, so that I can try to match it block-for-block on Panel 2.  I also used a tape measure to track the whole panel.

 

Lessons Learned:

For the 1 panel, I used 16 bobbins of red wool yarn and 6 large bobbins of 10/2 cotton for the tabby.

1 red bobbin weaves about 5 inches of cloth.    1 bobbin of 10/2 cotton weaves about 14 inches of fabric.

The sectional warp took a long time to set up (about 2 months of Sundays), but it seems to be working as promised.  No tension issues!   The only thing is that I need to be careful when unwinding the warp, or winding the warp forward.  Sometimes the strings like to get hooked around one of the separators, and then they break because they are not where they should be, and the tension gets tight.  Now I check to make sure all the strings are in the right lane before I tighten the warp.

It look like some of the warp hank flipped or twisted when I installed them onto the sectional beam.  Fortunately, that doesn't seem to be causing any problems for the warp.  Whew!

The shuttles on the left side like to fall down through the loom, so I have not been able to use the little side table on the left side.  The solution is to set them on a stool instead.  

I should have enough warp left (12 yards total) to make some towels once the 2nd panel is finished.

Bobbin Winding Options for Weavers

Bobbin Winding with an old drill.

I've been using a cordless drill with a pencil to hold the bobbin.  But some thinner yarns take longer to wind, and even though it's automated, my poor thumb and fingers get fatigued holding the unit for the duration.   I have 2 rechargeable batteries for it, so that when one runs out of juice, and I'm in the mood to wind bobbins, I can switch out to use the other fully charged battery.

Some weavers use a hand-cranked bobbin winder like this one.  I always thought that would be tiresome, and never went that route.  Plus, I don't feel I'm coordinated enough to make that method work well.

The obvious choice (which I never thought of until this week!) is to use one of my spinning wheels to wind bobbins.  It just never occurred to me that I could put those tiny bobbins on the spindle, but the big bobbins that come with the spinning wheel are just oversize versions.  I'm going to see how this works on my Louet S90 with Woollee Winder.  If this works, I'll go with this option--because I already have a spinning wheel.  ...  Turns out the 6-inch bobbins I'm using for this project are just too long for the spindle on my spinning wheels, though it may work for the shorter bobbins.  Save this idea for some other project where I can use shorter bobbins.

I was considering getting an electric bobbin winder for weavers -- until I saw the prices on those.  $250 or $300?  Yikes!  Why are they so darn expensive?   There's really nothing to it!

Someone in one of the weaving Facebook Groups suggested getting a sewing machine motor (variable speed) for $27 on Amazon, along with the shaft kit for a single end bobbin winder (hand crank) for $21, use some scrap wood already in stock for the base and voi la!  A serviceable bobbin winder for a fraction of the cost!  

This is the DIY version we made at home for about $55.  It winds bobbins in about a minute vs. 10 minutes on the drill!  It's fast!  It will take a little practice to get the yarn wound evenly.

 

Here's a little video about how to wind weaving bobbins properly.