Lilibet Lace: the Big Finish

Ta da! Ready for a close up?

I love the sheen and silky drape that come with tencel. If you haven't tried tencel, try some of the cheaper undyed. It runs about $15 for a whole pound! By the way my next manikin is going to have arms since I like to weave shawls. I'll be keeping my eyes open for one next Okanagan trip as there is a used fixture store I like to visit there.

So let's back up a bit... the weaving went well and below is a picture of the shawl mid way. Notice the blue bow on the right hand side. I measure from point to point and keep a running tally on a sheet. I find a tape or pins too annoying while I weave but a slip of soft yarn is just fine. I'm methodical enough to keep a running count so it works for me. The centre handle on the Louet Spring makes a neat shuttle rest.

Once the shawl ( and small tray cloth) came off the loom, it was set up on my styrofoam board for twisting the fringes. See my post "A Good Twist to the Yarn" for details on on my method of fringe management. In this case I decided to add a little pizazz to the work and alternated warp ends between groups like this:



Sorry this second picture is dark but you should be able to see the effect across the shawl. It added a 'softer' touch to what is a very feminine garment. I'm a huge proponent of not rushing the finishing. In fact it should take as much care and attention as planning the project did in the first place. Why go to all the trouble to weave and then cut corners at the end?


Then I dug out my bead stash bag and settled on three sizes of beads. One is a regular seed bead but has an opalescent quality, the larger one looks like a mini pearl and the the third is a mini seed bead.I start sewing but quickly realize that due to the fancy fringe twisting, the beads won't float to and fro and be seen from both sides when worn. So this means doing a row of beads on both sides, on both ends. Oh, well... better get busy.


Here is the 'raw' cloth with one side beaded. You can see how open the plain weave areas look. I crossed my fingers and pressed on.




Here is a close up of two rows and after washing/ pressing. The plain weave closed up! YEAHHH!



I threaded my beading needle and pushing through the actual tencel, I sewed beads on the cinch points of the Danish Medallions, all three rows and worked front and back at the same time. I used the opalescent mini seed beads. Some kind of silly huh? Can you see them? They are there! They add a sparkle.


Here are both beaded areas and fancy fringe. All in all, the beading took two full days to complete.Then I soaked it in warm sudsy water and let it sit for 20 minutes, then squeezed it gently to help work the lace into their little groups and hopefully tighten the plain weave! I spun out the excess water in the machine and then hung to dry over a pvc rod suspended in the laundry room. Excuse the mess...it's doubling as a storage room for paint cans while we do windows and other home projects. {Lynnette: I have a confession to make. See the small section of green hanger? That's yours... apparently we stole it last visit. It's coming back okay? :) }
I pressed it when dry, using steam and the sheen popped out! I fell in love and couldn't stop fondling it.

So here is the overall effect:

And here's a close up of the lace:

I think Ms. Hammel did a great job in designing this lace! I'll be using this draft again... I hemmed the tray cloth and it looks fabulous too. There is a single row of lace that I brought the hem line up to and blind stitched. Beyond that is a single row of Danish Medallion and the lace blocks after that. The turn under isn't as obvious as this picture shows. I guess the camera flash caught it just right.I'm really pleased with how this turned out and for some reason see it as a bridal shawl. Someone will feel special wearing this.... I loved making it!

Lilibet Lace: The Start

It sure is nice to have my laptop back and things reasonably set up again. Oh, there are email addresses that are 'gone' ( sorry Peg) and it will take time to restore all the little details that personalize a computer. That was a very long month and during that time so much happened here. I'll share it all but you have all been very patient waiting for something weaving related so I'll start on the lace shawl. The shawl is one of two that I planned to weave for the Victoria Retreat at the Oceanside Hotel in Cowichan Bay on April 3rd and 4th. I thought I would make a start on them early and be finished in plenty of time. It's a good thing I did given the home reno's that happened here. Today will be the first of two posts on this huck lace shawl.

Below is the tencel warp being spread in the built in raddle on the Spring "Lilibet" It is 10/2 undyed tencel and this yarn came some years ago from Textura Trading. The various sett guides I have to hand here all say 18 epi for lace, 20 for plain weave and 24 for twills. I thought 18 epi sounded way too open and so went for 20 epi. Even that looked too loose and I did consider resleying to 22 at one point but held my breath and went for the 20. This particular 8 shaft huck lace pattern came from a Complex Weavers' compilation CD and was designed by Christina Hammel. I'm doing that from memory as my Fiberworks program is still not set up again to double check. (I'll edit a correction later if it's not.) I also have yet to work out how to import a weaving draft to here for posting. Got to learn that soon.

All set for beaming...


It sure does roll on smoothly. A real treat actually.

Here the threading is under way for 6 lace blocks and plain weave over 8 shafts. I decided to have only half inch plain weave borders as I wanted the emphasis to be on the lace.

Sleying all completed at the agonized over 20 epi.

Here is the start of the shawl. Notice how open it looks and you'll understand why I considered resleying. I wove some small blocks of lace and then did three alternating rows of Danish Medallions. That was actually a fun thing to work with and good practise!



Then I started on the lace repeats and then the weaving simply became a wonderful process as I found the 'zone'. What also helped was my new ipod and I listened to music as I wove. The inches flew by!


What also helped was no floating selvedges to watch and no temple to shift. I used my end feed shuttle and the edges just took care of themselves. Over the days I wove off roughly 80 inches not including the borders and left warp of 16 inches for long fringes at either end. The warp length was only for the one shawl but somehow I had added a bit too much of 'something' as there was a lot of warp left. Too much for just samples and so I wove off a small tray cloth as well. A much welcome addition to the sale box. But to be truthful, it's so pretty I may just keep it for myself if I can find the perfect spot for it in the house.

I go the iPod Classic by using my Airmiles points. It will hold 30,000 songs when full in 120 gigs of space. That's larger than the computer I'm using right now! I also got a player/ radio docking station so I have more options and can recharge it faster. I might be a late comer to this technology but I'm glad I found it. I still recall the large bulky walkman's of the 80's and we thought we were so cutting edge then. Quite funny actually.... I'll be downloading Weavecast podcasts once I learn the ropes on how to do that. One of the main reasons for getting the player actually. Incidently it will hold pictures, entire e-books and videos... probably a movie too. Amazing.

So next post will show the shawl off loom and finishing techniques that I used. It feels good to be back and thanks for hanging in there!

Gilding the Lily: beading and final finishing scarves

Okay, fair warning... this is a long post with lots of photos. Lynnette will love this one. :)

Today I'm talking about how I bead and finish scarves ( and by extension, shawls etc) so this is a sort of 'tutorial'. I'm working on the four scarves I recently took off the big Woolhouse and you also saw in the fringe twister post. All fringes are twisted, but the tassels are not trimmed yet. Below is my bead stash. It's a hefty bag of goodies! Beads and other shiny things grab my attention like a magpie. I'm always on the look out for beads in certain colour schemes as those are the colours I know I weave more often with. If I get down to Victoria I always stop in at Beadworld at the Johnson Street Market. Tell hubby to stay away for at least an hour and settle in for a good browse as the place is *loaded*.

I start by dumping them all out and then removing obvious mismatches for colour and making a pile of possibles. I let the colours, bead size, yarn grist of the handwoven and my mood 'talk' to me as I pull together a grouping of beads to try. Sometimes I have lots of choice and others not so much. (I make a note in my wallet journal of the colours that need more attention next time at Beadworld.) Finally a few more are weeded out and now we are down to real potential candidates.

Which is narrowed further to the ones I want to work with on this scarf. This scarf is 100% tencel warp and weft. Since I'm a neat freak, they are all sorted into little bowls. Beads need corralling! You still have plenty on the floor when you're done any way...

Then I get out my superfine beading needle ( magnifier lens to thread it with along with my progressive bi-focals!), thread conditioner 'Thread Heaven' and other useful items, such as a bright light. In this picture you can see how fine this needle is by judging it against the ordinary sewing thread.

Thread Heaven is a soft malleable waxy compound that you drag your polyester thread through and it will now magically behave. It reduces the twisting and kinking that can happen with sewing threads. { I have used older sewing threads that were my mothers and they don't do this! What have the manufacturers done in the past years that makes these threads so difficult to work with now?} You can also use a block of natural bees wax and this will accomplish much the same effect. You will need to reapply from time to time as you sew and it washes out. Not that it leaves any sign that you've used it though...

I take a good long length of thread, thread the needle and coat the thread ( run through fingers to eliminate the static charge). Then using no knots, I sew UP the side of the scarf, then back down to the bottom edge again.

Then turning the work, I work the needle across to the first gap between fringe bouts:

Then I start 'composing' with the beads and may try several arrangements before I settle on a combination. Mainly I just go with what feels right. I aim to have two or three feature groups of beads per end and keep to a fixed arrangement. I lick my (clean) finger tip and the beads cling nicely. Pick them up with the needle point and when done I insert the needle back down through the beads MISSING the end bead.

In this case, five blacks, and three reds and I go back down through the two lower reds.

The needle slips into the edge threads and I tug the thread through all the beads. I check to make sure there is no extra thread hung up somewhere. This can happen, so be sure to check both sides.

Then I move the needle across the base of the next fringe bout and come up in the next space. In this case, one of the two special groups per side:

In this spot I have the 'special' beads to thread down back to the base again, always with a bead on the end to hold everything. Check for snagged thread.

Then onto the next section and so on. I find that keeping the sewing thread under tension is a big help in controlling the work and its progress. Much like warp threads on the loom!

Here I've looped the thread over my finger tip as I work the thread back down through the beads. It's also hard to do all these steps AND take pictures but I somehow managed!

Then at the opposite end, just repeat the initial steps to end the work. Turn and do opposite side of scarf. Admire work. Ask opinions of anyone around! If you decide you are not happy about the bead combo, just snip and off they come. I usually go with my first instincts...

Okay one scarf done and three more to go!

Here are the bead combo's for the silk cashmere weft. ( bead stash needs more added to this category!)

The end result.....

Then my personal fav, silk yak blend with it's steely grey sheen:

Then last, the silk wool blend; the beading work is under way here:

And the final edge is done!

They all went into warm sudsy water and soaked for 20 minutes and I squeezed them thoroughly to help shift threads, and also to wash out any spinning oils and possible dye particles. Tencel doesn't shift much or full but the protein weft fibres will move. Rinse twice, with a drop of fabric softener in the last rinse water. I used the spin cycle only in the washing machine. Then I took them to the ironing board and gently worked them into shape and pressed them with a medium setting and no steam. It is more or less to get their shape back and flatten them and remove wrinkles created by washing and spinning. I hung over old towels over night to dry. The next day I trimmed off any weft tails carefully and them gave them a hard pressing with a medium iron, using full steam. (I use a Rowenta iron and like it very much.) Then I carefully straightened the fringe and combed the ends. Held them down with a ruler and then trimmed them off with a rotary cutter at approx 1/2 inch to 3/4's of an inch. Now gently tack sew my new labels into position..

Admire again.... a lot.
My new labels come from Sterling Name Tape Company . They were recommended by Dave

I got some made in black and beige. I just ordered more in white and so I will have a nice selection. They will only go onto scarves, shawls and more higher end goods I weave. ( My next goal is to get new hang tags designed) Okay, here's the fashion parade! 'Scuse the model, she's a bit stiff. :)

Cashmere and silk with tencel

hand dyed silk wool blend with tencel

tencel with tencel.... geat sheen!

Did I mention this one is my favourite?

One Step Forward, Two Back...Three Ahead...

So this is a 'state of the studio' address :)

Above is my Louet Spring, 'Lilibet' and she has been languishing with a double weave sampler. This picture was taken few days ago and I now have the double weave sampler woven off. The end result is I will warp up and weave another double weave project soon but this time use 2/8 cotton over the cottolin I used this time. I have downloaded some neat workshop notes from Double Weave pro, Paul O'Connor and will try his method. But for now, the next warp going on this loom is white 2/10 tencel and a huck lace pattern for a shawl. That will be inspiring for me to weave. The warp is all wound and ready to go.

The fine huck lace in bamboo on the Louet Jane ' Cricket' is sort of in limbo. I moved it out of the way to get the old loom dismantled and off to it's new home and I just haven't picked up where I left off.
Why? Its because of this project on 'Emmatrude':

I want to do a shawl project, using tencel ( I have scads of the stuff!) so I chose my colours and even ordered a particular dye lot batch from Yarns Plus to ensure I had enough. Worked out my colour scheme, my draft, my project width and all particulars. I started to wind my warp and one colour, my main colour was *not* the 2/8 I was using but 2/10 instead. I had stored it in the wrong storage box!

So now I had to go entirely with the other taupe colour throughout and just skip the other. I wound the warp and was winding it on the loom. It just didn't excite me, but I got it all on the sectional anyway.


I even threaded it in the elaborate M's and W's. Sleying went well. Two per dent in a 12 dent reed. Tied it up and sat down to weave. I had forgotten to take the front apron rod over the back of the knee beam. Seems all the messages I was getting and ignoring were coming with a firmer 'oomph' now. If I had to untie, to fix the beam problem, then why not fix the entire problem? Okay. I replaced the cross once more, untied, unsleyed, unthreaded, then one by one I snugged each bout back into it's one inch section on the sectional beam. Then I unwound the three stripes and removed them and wound new replacements. Then started the process all over again, but now going ahead. Why all this? We'll take a look at the colours:


I've used this colour combo before to good effect but for some reason I placed taupe inbetween the red and black. It did nothing for the red at all. But I had thought " the black weft will fix that". Here it is on the lease sticks waiting for threading. I persevered despite that feeling something isn't working here.


Here's my spinning chair all set up for the threading:


So was it worth it? I feel much better with the new look and it was worth the changes and the work. You see I also changed my mind about the treadling as well. It was originally going to have a 'Coast Salish' Aboriginal feel to the colours and pattern. The colour change meant the advancing network twill treadling that created tall feathers was nice but it wouldn't work given the colour change. I opted for a complex M's and W's treadling with runs to and fro. No interruptions, phone calls or distractions... again.


Lots of impact now! The wimp factor is gone. :) So a closer look at the pattern...

Knowing my love of pattern, would it surprize you to know that you are looking at three repeats of a straight run of 1 to 12 on the treadles ( see bottom of photo) then from that point up to the fell is ONE repeat of the main pattern. It reminds me of some of those beautiful Nordic sweaters with the intricate pattern work. The true inspiration for this style of bands came from my viewing the stunning work of Master Weaver Inge Dam. Please look at her amazing work and you'll see the effect she achieved. She weaves with tablet bands incorporated into her weaving. This concept came to her through the study of textiles found in Iron Age sites in Northern Europe. While I'm not ready to attempt card weaving on the loom *yet* I thought this gave me the same look until I'm ready to try the technique for myself.


In the mean time I hope that my weaving time in the next few days is smooth sailing and trouble free. (touch wood)