Kicking the weaving rock means trying new things without a really firm plan in mind. About 15 years ago, I wove a striped rep weave runner.
It might just be a learning path, otherwise known as a mistake, but there could also be times when one path leads to another, and you find yourself weaving something you weren’t expecting. That’s when the quirks of handweaving take control.
For this doublewidth Harrisville wool blanket from the Best of Handwoven: Doubleweave, Doublewidth! eBook, I decided to push the time I had with the warp at the loom by designing in the reed.
Kathleen Farling, like many weavers, loves samples, especially guild samples. One such sample spoke to her and led her to design and weave her Centuries in the Making Runner.
For A Scarf for a Man from Three Centuries, Allen picked an old weave structure (4-shaft bumberet) and then wove a scarf using yarn he dyed with traditional techniques and modern commercially dyed yarn.
Sometimes two things come together and make a design come to life. That’s what happened when Angela K. Schneider looked at a rigid-heddle warp she had designed for a class and saw the colors of Mardi Gras. Her rigid-heddle Mardi Gras scarf came to life!
Lucienne Coifman wowed us with her Wavelets Rep-Weave Table Runner woven on 8-shafts. Rep weave as we know it has straight lines, but Lucienne, through a smart use of thin weft picks, was able to break those lines and make them wavy. You might think you k
Deborah Bagley found booklets from the mid-1900s that feature pin loom weaving patterns that are anything but plain. She based her Pin-Striped Pin-Loom Pillow on float patterns she found that add texture, and then she added colors to enhance that texture.
For many of us, 2017 was a difficult year. Sarah H. Jackson turned to her loom to express her feelings about personal trials and tragedies affecting our nation and the world. The result is her Prayer Shawl woven in 4-shaft shadow weave.
I admire people who are able to read a doubleweave draft and know what the fabric will look like. I’m not in that group. When I start a doubleweave or doublewidth project, I have to go to my library and reacquaint myself with the structure.
