Dear
Summer is in full bloom and the farm is full of rich color from the rich green pines to the popourri of flowers that fill my everchanging flower beds surrounding the homestead. Summer brings many outdoor chores that gently nudge for my attention.
I am weaving and I wanted to share my newly developed creative process. I began this project in my usual willie nillie way... finding some unique yarn or copying a pattern or object that I found in a fiber arts store, warping and weaving the object without any goal other than to get it off the loom and move on to the next yummy yarn purchase. This time somewhere in my stash of books I found Ann Sutton's Ideas in Weaving...her creative process began to gel and my willie nillie project began to take a more structured form.
My project is a scarf using 8/2 tencel which is a first for me. It is a shiny thread and pretty non-elastic but appears to have nice drape..I choose a varigated yarn and a solid gold and warped stripes of varying widths....
This is an experiment to see just what this tensel is made of..
1. How does it perform on the loom?
2. Is it sticky, wirey, stiff or slippery?
3. How is my beat?
4. What do my selvages look like?
I warped about 245 ends and used a 10dent reed. My sett is about 20epi and my weft is about 15 picks per inch, weaving 5 picks of varigated and 10 of gold using an end feed shuttle.
Well ... I am very pleased.. the drape appears to suit the finished project of a scarf... the colors are blending nicely.. they don't knock your socks off but are pleasing to the eye.. and my selvages.. whoa.. they are perfect which makes the whole project worth its weight in gold...also.. as I weave I am measuring my picks and I appear to be pretty consistent. I have noticed slight slipping in one or two places as the fabric rolls over the front beam but not too darn bad..
I like tensel..
This is a plain weave project and I wanted to begin this new found fiber with a simple weave structure. I did not want to complicate the process. In the weaving world we tend to assume that more shafts means more complex, however, I believe weaving plain weave strips away all the bells and whistles exposing a weavers ground revealing the foundational elements of technique, form and effectiveness of cloth making.
As I weave this piece, I am concentrating on my technique, my form..i.e. throwing the shuttle, my beat consistency, my selvages, my speed.. how did my warping and beaming techniques hold up.. are my end threads doing their job?
No broken threads here :) and it appears that my warp threads remain uniformly tensioned..
I like plain weave for its purity as it exposes my weaving talents and reveals my weaving flaws. I see in this project what I have accomplished along my weaving pathway and all of the bad habits I have picked up along the way...
Plainweave.. back to my weaving roots.. grounding me..an opportunity for weaving reflections and critque. Most of all this is yet another correlation to my life's journey.. .. keeping my eye on simplicty, understanding the ground I stand upon and always mindful of my roots as I look for opportunities for self improvement and still enjoying this blessed journey!
blessings to all,
Bee
