I have a new loom! Isn’t she beautiful? I’m starting a new project! I’m giddy with excitement! Keep reading to learn more about what I’m up to.
Contains articles about my adventures in weaving.
I have a new loom! Isn’t she beautiful? I’m starting a new project! I’m giddy with excitement! Keep reading to learn more about what I’m up to.
How would you like to know what’s on my loom right now? August was an insanely busy month for me both professionally and personally. My focus was simply surviving and trying not to drop too many balls. Sadly, the big floor loom was naked for all of that month. An air of reproachfulness emanated from the loom room as she doesn’t like being undressed. Good thing that room has a door that can be closed. But,…
Last summer I wove a pair of leg wraps in a color combination that particularly appeals to me, blue and orange, and, recently, I took the time to wet-finish the cloth and hand finish the ends. This is the result.
The Iron Age Finnish Mantle project, completed in July 2013, was a wonderful opportunity to learn a variety of new-to-me textile techniques. One of those new experiences was creating table woven bands integrated with the body of the mantle. These bands served a dual purpose in that they were both decorative and functional, keeping the cloth from raveling.
The iron age Finnish mantle is such an interesting project; rich in texture and steeped in history. The mantle is just one part of much larger effort to make a complete female Finnish costume. I am grateful to work with a group of passionate artists who really care about history and the quality of their work. In this post, I’m going to talk about the process of weaving the mantle cloth.
The Finnish mantle warp is on the loom and I’m ready to start weaving! Here are all the details on that process or you can skip over that part and go straight for the weaving eye candy as I have a largish gallery of photos documenting the process.
I wrote this tutorial back in 2008 and thought that I should share this trick for weaving nice selvages on narrow woven bands, whether inkle or tablet with all of you. I was shown this method by a good friend and it instantly improved the look of my woven products.
One of the things you should probably do when you get a new loom is figure out how much loom waste it generates. Loom waste, also called “thrums” is the unwoven yarn left over from a weaving project. It is the yarn used to tie the project to both the front and back beams, as well as the portion of yarn its simply impossible to weave due to the shed being too small through which…
In my last post, I introduced you to my latest project, weaving a shawl inspired by an iron age Finnish mantle. Now that you have the background, its time to get down to some specifics. I am making changes to size, color, and fiber content, as well as making guesses to some of the construction details where they are not known. If I was hard core, I would be doing this on a warp weighted…
I am starting a new project with a hard deadline of the third weekend in July. This project, an iron-age Finnish mantle, combines cloth weaving, tablet weaving and coiled wire work. I fully expect the next six weeks to be filled with insanity, frustration, ah-ha moments and, hopefully, joyous triumph. I’m looking forward to it!
