Today I am grateful for my wonderful husband of 39 years. I am grateful for his love and kindness, his generosity and energy, his thoughtfulness towards me and others, and his technical assistance without which my adventures on the internet would never happen.
I weave shawls and sell them on my etsy store - touching fibers. I enjoy working with color and texture rather than structure. All my shawls are woven in plain weave on my Toika countermarche loom. I bought this loom because it is easy on my body. I love the way the beater works and the ratchet system for advancing the warp. Obviously, it can do way more than plain weave, and maybe I will some day.
Today I am going to start to explain the design process that I use to weave my shawls. It is a little different than most people use, but it works well for me. I start by designing the warp. First I decide on a colorway - usually 1-3 colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. I like close color harmonies. Then I go through all my boxes, bags and bins of yarn and gather every yarn in that colorway. Some I have a lot of and some just some leftover scraps.
Next I start the weeding out process. I put all the yarn on the floor in my studio. It is on the floor so I can look down on all of it at the same time and see it all at a glance. It may take several days to decide. Each time I walk past the pile I look at it and pull out the yarn that doesn't seem to fit.
Gradually the pile gets smaller. Some yarn won't be good for warp - not strong enough, too fat, too stretchy. The picture above is the final warp yarns.
Some yarn is chosen for weft. Usually I don't use the weft in the warp.
I put on 10 yards of warp at a time. This is enough to make 3 shawls with a little left over in case of mistakes or just to weave up for samples. I choose 3 different wefts - different in color and in texture. This way I get 3 very different shawls from one warp. The last picture shows the chosen warp and weft. The weft consists of the cones and the skein next to them.
As you can see my warp not only has different colors, but different textures. Some of it may seem like a poor choice for warp. Some is wool, some is cotton, some is mohair, some is rayon, some is synthetic. Some is stretchy, some is not. Some will shrink, some will not. This seems like a recipe for disaster; but if everything is mixed well, it works. I make sure that wool is next to cotton, stretchy is next to non-stretchy, fluffy is next to slick. This way they hold each other in check.
Next time: Step 2 - measuring the warp.
I weave shawls and sell them on my etsy store - touching fibers. I enjoy working with color and texture rather than structure. All my shawls are woven in plain weave on my Toika countermarche loom. I bought this loom because it is easy on my body. I love the way the beater works and the ratchet system for advancing the warp. Obviously, it can do way more than plain weave, and maybe I will some day.
I put on 10 yards of warp at a time. This is enough to make 3 shawls with a little left over in case of mistakes or just to weave up for samples. I choose 3 different wefts - different in color and in texture. This way I get 3 very different shawls from one warp. The last picture shows the chosen warp and weft. The weft consists of the cones and the skein next to them.
As you can see my warp not only has different colors, but different textures. Some of it may seem like a poor choice for warp. Some is wool, some is cotton, some is mohair, some is rayon, some is synthetic. Some is stretchy, some is not. Some will shrink, some will not. This seems like a recipe for disaster; but if everything is mixed well, it works. I make sure that wool is next to cotton, stretchy is next to non-stretchy, fluffy is next to slick. This way they hold each other in check.
Next time: Step 2 - measuring the warp.
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