Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Delicate Dimensions

I am back to weaving with fine threads on my sixteen harness table loom.

I have put on several yards of black polyester serger thread as warp and am happily weaving away.

Here is my first pattern...as you can see I have three pieces being woven simultaneously....with two shuttles moving all the way across the loom and three moving only across their respective warps. The ones making the short trips rest on the c-clamps on each side of the loom. My maze pattern is on an excel spreadsheet on top of the loom.

The colors are reminiscent of a tiger...

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Bamboo Samples

I bought six cones of bamboo from Webs last year for some reason that has escaped me for many months. I've got a wedding to go to in June so I have decided to weave some material and make some sort of jacket.

Anyway, I have six cones of 10/2 bamboo which is similar to 20/2 silk in size and feel. I've never woven with bamboo so I figured I should do some sampling.

The photo shows two scarves I wove to experiment with sett [24 and 30 epi], the warp values [one is with only dark values, the other with all six colors repeated in the warp] and a variety of undulating twills. They are much brighter in person than the color in the photo.

For the jacket, I figure the 24 epi sett is best. The 30 epi works nicely on a scarf but doesn't seem quite right for a jacket. There are two undulating twills I like and the appearance of the dark values in the warp is my favorite.

As for the jacket, I have a number of options.

I bought this Six Panel Jacket pattern from Nadine Sanders which uses two different handwovens. It might be interesting using two different colors/twills of green for the panels and have a lapel of all six colors and a multitude of twills. I also saw a real easy pattern in Handwoven last year which got me started...ah...now I remember...that is why I bought the bamboo yarn in the first place. Plus, I have two other jacket patterns that I have bought at past Convergences but never used.

Choices, choices, choices...better choose soon since I need to warp and weave!