Monday, July 26, 2010

Coverlet

Remember last year about this time... I had just put a project on the loom at Missouri Town (a historical site I volunteer at). Well, it's finally finished. I stitched the two halves down the middle to make one big blanket and hemmed the two ends.


If you've ever read the Kirsten series of American Girl books, it's about Swedish immigrants in 1855, and one of them talks about her mother weaving the coverlets for their beds and thinking that the idea of quilts is strange. So that's what this coverlet would be, a scandinavian type of bed covering.
It's just the right size for a child's trundle bed. Now it's on display in the downstairs bedroom at the tavern. The best part is that it looks like it belongs in the room. It looks just as old as the actual artifacts. It feels good to have completed a project.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Warped


A loom always looks better when it's dressed. I finally got my first project on the new loom and started weaving today. I had forgotten how fast the actual weaving part goes once you get past the set up. I already have two towels done!


I'm using an "undulating herringbone" pattern that I've been wanting to try for years. I'm so pleased with how it's coming out--and I didn't make any threading mistakes, hooray!

Of course, now I'm already planning two more projects. And these are much more complicated than towels. More on that later.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Christmas in July


My first loom was given to me by a woman in the Weavers Guild who had seven other looms in her house. She'd gotten this one at a garage sale for $200. The story was that it belonged to someone's great aunt in Alaska, then went to the niece in California, then somehow to another relative here in Missouri. It hadn't been used in at least 40 years. It's solid cherry and works well, but has some annoying glitches that need to be fixed by someone who knows what they're doing. I wove 3 or 4 projects on it, but they were all narrow--scarves or belts. (I didn't weave the one hanging on it.)

This year, my husband told me I could start looking for a used loom for my Christmas present--the type I wanted to weave yardage on, a Swedish style loom. I started looking around and within a month found this one. It is exactly what I wanted, a Glimakra 4-shaft with a 40" weaving width. If you look closely, you can see it's set up differently than my old one, which is an American style jack loom. If you ever are interested in buying a loom, I would highly recommend getting a used one. There are lots of people who think they're going to weave and never end up using a brand new loom. I paid less than half the price of a new one for this loom.
There are several perks to a Swedish style loom. First of all, a lot of things are adjustable including the bench height, the beater height and position, and the treadle (pedal) height. All that adjusting makes it easier on your body while weaving. It also has cloth heddles instead of metal ones, so no more "clank-clank-bang" noise--very important since I'll probably be weaving when the baby is asleep. Also, it's set up to produce a finer cloth with a tighter weave structure, which is what I'm wanting to do.

I've already started warping my first project: towels. Yes, towels. I never thought I'd waste my time making something like this, but I needed a quick sampler project that I wouldn't mind if it got ruined just to figure out the mechanics of the loom. I had a hard time resisting the urge to jump in and put a 40" wide, 5 yard long warp on right away. But then I actually started thinking about Christmas presents and decided to kill two birds with one stone and do a sampler project that would work for presents too. Thus, Christmas in July, for me and my relatives who will receive the towels. I'm also going to try a new pattern called "undulating herringbone" that I've been wanting to do ever since I started weaving. Hopefully I'll be posting woven towels on here in a month or so, if the baby is cooperative and lets me work on it!
Have you ever made a project that you weren't interested in? Did it end up being worthwhile or not?