Our local mountains change from orange to pink to purple every evening as the sun sets. There really is nothing quite like it. In her Purple Mountains Napkins from the September/October 2018 issue, Susan Porter captures this imagery in a beautiful way.
Take Jean Hill’s Bands of Color Napkins from the Sept/October 2018 issue of Handwoven. She took what could have been a beautiful, but somewhat boring, twill napkin and made it stand out with simple bands of color in the warp. The bands almost look like
Summer weaving isn't the same as winter weaving that often involves weaving for the holidays.
A weaver friend was explaining weave structures to me the other day. I’m a newbie weaver, it was a long discursive chat, and at the end of it I came away with one thought: I'd be happy weaving twill the rest of my life!
I can admit it: not every skein of handspun yarn turns out as well as I’d envisioned. In fact, there’s the occasional skein that is downright unsightly.
What's the best way to strengthen your selvedges? Madelyn has the answers!
You can always start a weaving project from scratch: dream one up, find a draft. I do that, but I often use Handwoven to jump-start my projects, whether it is to explore a color combination I like or try a weave structure or yarn I’m not familiar with.
One of my absolute favorite books as a teen was The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. It taught me to always bring a towel, although now as a weaver, I might amend that to always bring a shawl.
Tien Chiu is an award-winning designer and weaver, evident in her Flower Scarves from Handwoven May/June 2018. Based on colors from a photograph of flowers, Tien carefully planned a striped warp that highlighted her chosen colors.
For weft threads that interlace less often than in a balanced plain weave, the weft angle will need to be less steep. Experiment, following the steps outlined here until you find the angle that works.