After I cut the linen warp off the loom and cut the towels apart, I hand washed and air-dried one of the towels to see how it would react. That came out well, so I screwed up the courage to throw all the towels in the washing and drying machines. They came out well! The weave and the fiber relaxed into a nice drapey hand. Next step was to press them and hand…
Finished up the linen weaving project tonight. Seven loom-controlled-lace towels complete! They are cut apart, the edges sewn and ready to be washed tomorrow. After that I’ll hem them by hand and they will be ready to use. Its hard to believe that this project was started just a week ago. What a fast, fun experience. I really enjoyed weaving with linen and I can’t wait to do another project. So many plans in my…
Part 1 of this series can be found here. The yarn I ordered arrived today for the Rus Kaftan cloth project. I am very pleased with the colors. The reddish color is exactly the dark maddery red-orange I was hoping it was from the little bit on the sample card. I was inspired to calculate the warp length I will need. My process is a little different in that I work backwards from the amount…
Spent most of the weekend working on getting the linen weaving project on the loom. Saturday, I sleyed the reed and completed threading. Sunday, with some help from a friend, I was able to wind on the seven yard warp and start weaving. The sleying and threading wasn’t all that different from the wool warps I’ve done before. The big difference was in the winding on. It went FAST. No tangling. No fuzzies. No stretching.…
Tonight I made good progress on the linen weaving project. The warp ends have all been measured and are hanging in chains from the hanging beater of my loom (because I have a cat). There are a total of 386 warp ends at 7 yards long. The ends will be sleyed in a 10 dent per inch reed. This weekend, I’m hoping to get the sleying, threading and winding on of the warp completed…
Since I have to wait for the wool for the Rus kaftan cloth project to be shipped from across the country, I’m considering putting a smaller project on the loom in the meantime. Few years ago, when I first got into weaving, I bought a linen towel kit from an online vendor. My thinking then, was that a kit, with complete instructions, would be a gentle way to be introduced to weaving with linen. I…
Now that the big road trip is over, its time to get a new warp on the loom. My next big project is going to be cloth for a Rus Kaftan for my husband. The yarn I’ve chosen is Jaggerspun Maine Line 2/20 worsted wool. I’ve ordered three pounds each of two colors – Sable, a warm, rich medium brown and Bittersweet, which is a dark rusty red. I’m hoping to have a bit of…
In lieu of a real blog post, I thought I would be a photo gallery of some of my weaving projects. For some reason, I thought this would be easier. Not so much as it turns out. I went back through four years of pictures and project notes to put this together. I hope you enjoy this chronicle of my adventures in fabric weaving. I do a LOT of broken diamond twill. 😉
I am ready to start weaving the kaftan cloth. I am excited to see the pattern emerge and to see if the reality was going to match my vision. I always weave a few picks in the header with toilet paper to set the distance between the threads. Then I wove several repeats of the pattern with commercially dyed yarn so as to not waste any of the hand dyed thread. The yarn was slightly…
Because this project is on a fairly tight timeline, I am lucky enough to have several friends volunteer to help me out with the time consuming aspects of preparing the loom for weaving. Here is a gallery of photos to enjoy showing some of the steps involved in dressing the loom for the kaftan cloth.
