Today I was invited as a member of the Somerset Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers to demonstrate spinning at the Heritage Craft Show hosted by Coldharbour Mill in Uffculme. It is a fascinating working museum with wonderful old textile machinery. Well worth a visit.
Home
Cutting the warp off, is for me, a scarey, but exciting part of weaving. I started this inkle band during a workshop with the Somerset Guild of Spinners, Weavers and Dyers several months ago. When I got home I did a bit, but it sat part done in the corner for all this time until I was fired up to finish a few projects off and wove the last fifty or so centimetres yesterday evening.
This morning I cut the warp and will now wash the band. It is in 4ply hand knit/crochet cotton and follows a simple pattern that was set for the workshop. The colours were chosen to suit the living room curtains and if I ever get around to it I will make this band into tie-backs for the curtains, (which was my original intent).
It’s taken me a while, but I have finally made the warp which I will use for testing out my new (to me) countermarch loom.
It’s taken me a while as we have building work going on in the house so I am moving from room to room to escape the chaos. I finally ran out of places to go, so ended up in the conservatory which is HOT. Lots of short breaks needed.
I am in two minds about what to weave. My heart says a fleece rug – I have two in bags in the shed, but my mind says ‘ do you need a rug,?’ What I really need is more tea towels, since my son burned a hole in one of my hand woven ones.
The loom has got an 8 dent reed and I am using a thickish cotton and making a sectional warp because my warping board pegs won’t take more than 80 ends of this. I’ll thread it up as a twill and let myself be guided by the spirit of the day I start to weave.
The loom waiting for the warp. I know I’ll be whining about back ache quite soon…
Although it’s taken me a while I have finally finished this cushion.
The front is Rya tufted and woven with a British wool rug yarn on a linen/cotton warp. The black tufts are Shetland staples and the cream is a mixture of Devon/Dorset staples. Although it’s not that clear in the photo, the squares are reversed; black edging with a cream centre and cream edging with a black centre.
The reverse of the cushion is a faux waffle weave in the same rug yarn that underlies the Rya tufts. Because my rigid heddle loom is only a 20 inch wide, the cushion is composed of four pieces.
Instead of feathers or polyester wadding, the cushion is filled with a pad of lofty carded wool fleece. I will use this cushion to make my chair extra comfortable whilst spinning at my wheel.
I haven’t really woven on a loom since I was a student at college. I have a Spears toy loom which I used for one project but the width is limited and the heddle is quite fiddly to work with. What I really wanted to do was to find a technique that uses up my small bits of handspun yarn my experiments and my texted handspun that I don’t think looks very good in knitting.
The Spears loom is actually quite good, and is very much like using a rigid heddle loom but with the shortcomings mentioned earlier. So I was really pleased when a friend offered to lend me 15 inch rigid heddle loom that she had in her attic. This now gives me the extra width and also the heddle is much easier to manipulate.
And so my weaving adventure has begun. Kindly she put a viscose thread warp on it for me to get me going and I’ve used this to practise using some acrylic DK yarn I had to hand.
Vikki Haffenden 