There are a lot of people who are weaveworthy—who deserve the time and effort and creativity of a handwoven gift—but there are also many who might not be, and you have to be careful about where your handwoven projects end up.
I travel a lot by train and airplane, and there have been many times when I have wished I had a cozy shawl like Deborah Jarchow’s Travel Shawl woven on a rigid-heddle loom.
Two project designers in Handwoven May/June 2018 chose to weave their projects in overshot-patterned doubleweave, a four-shaft technique. One of them was Marcia Kooistra, who wanted to pay homage to Bertha Gray Hayes by weaving one of her designs.
Because most of our readers are rigid-heddle or 4- or 8-shaft weavers, we don’t feature many projects in Handwoven that require more than 8 shafts. However, I found the 12-shaft Black Windows Pillow by Lea Vennix from Handwoven May/June 2018 compelling.
I found Tracy Kaestner’s approach to designing her Silk Blouse in a Wash of Color intriguing, and the resulting blouse spectacular. Using a colorful picture of a Guatemalan cemetery, she chose colors that emulated its colorful yet ethereal feeling and u
You might think that the inspiration for wonderful weaving pieces comes from things that are grand, like the Bolshoi or the Grand Canyon, but in my experience, great weaving designs also come from everyday objects as is the case with these towels.
There is a whole other world of color theory I wish more people would talk about, and that is color preference. I believe there must be interesting cultural differences in our color preferences depending on who we are, what we do, the language we speak, a
We found a glossary of stripes in a couple of old issues of Handwoven (March/April 1983 and March/April 2003) and used them as our guide.
Asking me to write about why you should subscribe to Handwoven is a bit like asking a chef why you should eat at their restaurant. Obviously, my answer is “Because it’s great!”
Most projects need some sort of finishing touches, whether it is knotting, twisting fringe, hemming, or clipping and sewing in ends. And even then, an experienced weaver will tell you that the project still isn’t finished.
