Something new

Here it is almost March and time for the Hawthorn Makers Market to start for the year.  For the past few years the March market has been part of the Glenferrie Festival and we had 2 good years in our tent on the street, followed by a not so good time last year when it was exceptionally hot and we almost had trams in our tent.  Fortunately this year we will be back in our usual venue at the Hawthorn Arts Centre, just a couple of minutes’ walk from the main part of the festival.  The weather this year is forecast to be much kinder than last year but I still think I’d rather be indoors.

I’ve been working on something new – some waffle weave face washers. 

I’d done some waffle weave as part of my weaving certificate years ago.  Perhaps it was the yarn I’d chosen but it certainly wasn’t one of my favourite weaves.  I saw some waffle weave bath mitts in a recent Handwoven and knew I had some of the same 6/2 cotton in the stash. 

I thought face washers might be good and had the warp on and off the loom in almost no time.  I realised that waffle weave was much better than I thought.  It was rewarding to weave and any mistakes were obvious and easy to correct.  I’ve made 9 for the first batch,

I wonder if they will sell?

I haven’t been doing a lot of weaving as I’ve had a sore hip and shoulder.  I convinced myself that it was either weaver’s bottom or some other strain from too much weaving but when it didn’t improve after a break from weaving, I eventually sought some professional help.  I don’t have weaver’s bottom, I do have some exercises which I’m doing diligently.  I can see some improvement already and have been told that as long as weaving doesn’t cause an increase in discomfort, it’s better to keep moving.  There was another bonus – the kilo weights I needed for the exercises were just right to weight the face washer warp, it was one of the straightest and best warps I’ve had for a long time

I treated myself to a copy of Marian Stubenitsky’s book, The Stubeninsky Code and have been making some teatowels.  I finished the first one and wet finished it because I knew that the cotton shrank quite a lot and I wanted the motifs to be round not oval.  They were close to round, pity about the error, just left of centre, which showed up more in a photo that on the loom. 

I found that I had missed one thread, so I fixed it and tied the warp back on.  They are now threading error free, can’t guarantee that there will be none in the treadling and I will have to keep the first for me, its drying qualities will be unaffected by the threading error

A few weeks ago a friend and I went for a drive towards the area where the bush fires had been.  While we were out a fierce hailstorm came through my neighbourhood.  It broke both my skylights, narrowly missing my sewing cabinet

and somewhat surprisingly, they were sealed with what looked like sticky tape – very good quality sticky tape – and they have not given me any problems while I wait for the replacements. 

The one over the carpet is sealed and the one in the bathroom leaks just a little on to the tiled floor. 

My friend was not so fortunate, her car had so much hail damage it was a write off.  All we were trying to do was celebrate her birthday

While I was having a break from weaving, I decided to do some sewing as I needed a few new things for the Summer.  Vogue patterns were on sale at a very good price and I went shopping for fabric in my own stash. 

I ended up making two tops,

and two jackets each with a co-ordinating top, one in a jacquard weave

and the other in a Japanese linen with little birds on it

and 2 pairs of exercise pants.  The patterns, trim and some interfacing cost about $30, so a very economical new wardrobe.

I was reading an article this morning by a writer from the UK confessing, with a little embarrassment, that she had started to stockpile food in case COVID -19 starts to affect supplies.  Then it struck me – what if I ended up in quarantine at home, well enough to weave but not well enough to go to work and there wasn’t enough yarn and fabric in my stash?  For a moment I even contemplated sending off a yarn order, but then I relaxed, I know there’s plenty of yarn and fabric for a couple of weeks.  There’s probably enough for several months, although by that time, I might have to work with some interesting colour combinations.  Hopefully it won’t come to that.

Helen

Many balls in the air

I wonder why I feel I have too many balls in the air, even though Friday was a public holiday – for a football match that was played yesterday, not on the day of the holiday – and I thought I would catch up a little.

The Geelong Show is 2 weeks away, and as yet there are no actual finished articles, though one is close and I still think I have time

I have finished the bulk of the sewing, 2 small shirts and 2 small pairs of pyjamas, just want to turn the left over pieces into a back pack.

The Hawthorn Craft Market was on today, there was a new batch of tea towels finished,

also the chenille cowl which was woven in time for the last market but still too damp to sew. I’m very pleased with it, now it’s finished.  Spring seems to have come early here and even though my model looks pretty cool, it was too hot to model it in person, let alone entice someone to buy it. 

A couple of sales including a tea towel from the last batch but none of the new ones.  There were not huge numbers there, maybe it was the long weekend, maybe they were hungover after the football yesterday or out celebrating the victory – it is the Hawthorn Craft Market after all and Hawthorn won the game – or maybe it was that Daylight Saving started this morning so they missed an hour’s sleep.

I decided to take part in one of the Weavolution Halloweave teams.  For a long time I have admired woven tapestries but decided they were not for me and then I started to take more of an interest.  When Spotlight had small weaving frames on sale recently I bought one and thought I could give tapestry a try, I unearthed some photos from a visit to the Getty Villa in LA which I’d always thought had potential for weaving and when there  was a Tapestry House – Weaving Spells forHalloweave,  it just seemed like the right time. 

So far I’ve put a warp on the loom, unearthed some yarns that should work, found my single tapestry bobbin and a small comb but haven’t put weft to warp yet.

There was an interesting piece in the Halcyon Yarns newsletter this week about Ann Collier, who is an academic psychologist at the Northern Arizona State University in the US, who is also interested in textiles.  She’s been researching why working with textiles or even with hands in general is good for you.  I looked at her academic site and was even tempted to complete her survey but it had already closed.  Seemed like a lot more fun than the traipsing all over town interviewing people with macular degeneration I did years ago when I was studying psychology.

Off to make some more progress on the entries for the Geelong Show, it’s good for me

Helen

This and That

I’ve been busy working for the Geelong Show so most of the current work has to stay under wraps for a while but here’s a selection of some of the smaller things happening in my world.

I almost had another oops – I was tidying up the ‘studio’ when I found this shuttle.

It's a spring loaded one and I wasn’t sure how I’d got the bobbin in there and was even less sure about how to remove it.  The good news is that the fine tipped pliers did the job first time so yet another tool to be added to the weaving kit.

The GeelongScarf Festival is over for another year.  This was the first year I entered and while I joked that I was hoping for a small parcel and a large cheque rather than a large parcel and no cheque when it finished, I was pleasantly surprised to find that 3 of the 4 scarves had sold and the one that was returned was the one I liked best, made from a re-purposed silk blouse.  I’m not sure whether it will go into the market collection or my scarf collection.  Last year the theme wasn’t announced until later in the year but this time the 2016 theme - Myths and Legends- was announced as the 2015 Festival closed so I guess that gives me almost 12 months to be inspired and make something.

I made a trip to my local IKEA store last week to check out their new collection.  I found some inexpensive small glass bottles with sealing lids to replace those I’ve been using for dyeing, same shape, slightly bigger, also inexpensive but where the threads on the lids bear only a passing resemblance to the threads on the necks of the bottles. I also found some excellent LED strip lighting and had it attached to the castle of the loom with a few sticky dots in no time.  It does need to be plugged in so I will have to be careful on that side of the loom but there’s enough stuff stored there that it’s no longer a passageway. 

Before:

And after:

It makes quite a difference and the little red lady – she’s one of a pair of felted dolls someone gave me.  They make excellent pincushions, one for each floor loom and on the smaller loom the feet are at much the same height as the beater so she dances as I weave.

I’d been thinking for a while that a notice board would be useful near the loom but all the walls are taken up with shelving for yarn storage.  Then I had a bright idea – I only need to access the boxes every few weeks and there was no reason why a notice board couldn’t hang over them for the rest of the time.  I went to the local office supplies looking for something the right size, half cork, half magnetic and when that didn’t exist bought one the right size, half cork, half aluminium and a small magnetic tile.  It’s probably a bit lighter than the one I had in mind and as I’ll need to take it down from time to time, that’s not a bad thing.

I guess I’m lucky to have a garage sized space to use as a studio but space is limited so the notice board is a good use of the available space, it also just covers the temples but I don’t need to get at them all the time either.

Now when I see something in a magazine or elsewhere that’s worth keeping, I’ve got somewhere to put it, and ideas and colour schemes are piling up faster than I can use them.

I’ve also been working on some glasses cases,

weaving bands but not sewing together and some tea towels for the next market on the first Sunday in October.

I received a nice parcel of yarn from California, there was also some 12/6 Seine cord and a Majacraft Turkish spindle which seem to have missed the photoshoot.  The black cotton on the left came from the local yarn shop, not California, very good price and a bonus crochet hook

and I’ve been sewing for a small boy of my acquaintance – piped edges on pyjamas for a 4, almost 5 year old might be a bit over the top

but I’m hoping they will look just like the ones his grandfather wears.

I’ve also been minding some plants for Gayle, amazing what benign neglect, well I did tie up the flower spike on the orchid because I couldn’t bear to see it on the ground, can achieve.

Tomorrow I’ve got an unexpected day off, hoping to make real progress with the sewing and weaving

Helen

One out of two is OK

It’s easy to have delusions about the time needed and available to complete projects.

I was sure that I had plenty of time to complete a ‘hand woven article’ – HWA - and a ‘hand woven garment’ – HWG - before the Bendigo Sheep and Wool Show so entered both.

As usual, life intervened in the form of full time work to say nothing of the very early arrival of winter, making weaving at night in the garage particularly uninviting.

At the week end sanity prevailed. The HWG was well under way but the HWA was struggling – fine wool yarn, double weave, breaking ends, weird things happening in the layer I couldn’t see and unevenly hand dyed yarn producing a lot of unplanned stripes.  I realised that I had at least 16 hours of work to do but only 11 hours of spare time available so I made the sensible decision, took my time to finish the HWG properly and it was delivered with at least an hour to spare. 

About this time I read Tien’s blog and could really relate when she talked about ‘the gap between what your mind can envision and what your hands can create’

The HWA was nowhere near what I had envisaged.  I had made a sample scarf in the same design and yarn without any dramas but on the table loom.  I thought it would be easier to weave on the floor loom and it was as there were only 4 different picks.  Maybe the floor loom was the problem, putting more stress on the fine yarns.  I will sort out the HWA when the weather is a little warmer.  There are 2 scarves on the loom, the first one will be sample 2, I think the second one may work with a different weft yarn – or might turn out to be sample 3.

Other things have been more successful.  Before I could start weaving for Bendigo, I finished the rainbow painted Tencel which had been on the loom for far too long. 

I've ended up with a panel to put in a garment and 2 scarves, all in variations of plaited twill. Here it is in all its rainbow goodness and I've even managed to capture the sheen of the Tencel in some of the photos.

And I just looked at the Woolcraft catalogue – the HWG, now properly identified as a jacket, has been placed first in its section.  Here are a couple of progress shots, I always roll my hand woven fabrics on to a cardboard roll before I cut them out, that way I can almost convince myself that they are 'store bought' and that cutting into them will be easy.

More about that and the Sheep Show next time

Helen

Preparing for the Sheep Show 2014 – it’s that time of year again

One of  the most important events for the local spinning and weaving community, to say nothing of the farmers and the wool industry,  is the annual Australian Sheep and Wool Show, held in Bendigo towards the end of July each year.

It’s like  an agricultural show or a county fair but just concentrates on everything to do with sheep, and a few alpacas and other fibre animals included for good measure.  For everyone involved in creating textiles there are competitions, and opportunities to top up the stash from the vendors and to actually touch equipment from interstate suppliers.  For the producers there are fleece and meat competitions, ram sales and displays of all sorts of farm equipment – I wonder what a lot of it does.

It’s held at the Prince of Wales Showgrounds in Bendigo, guaranteed to be freezing cold in the middle of winter.  Preparation for a visit starts with important decisions about warm and very comfortable footwear as well as the number of layers.  Actually preparation should start well before this when the Woolcraft competition schedule arrives in the mail.  There’s the will I/won’t I enter debate and if the answer is ‘yes’, then which classes.  I had several metres of hand woven fabric just asking to be made into a garment so ‘Handwoven garment’ was definitely a possibility.  Entries were due about the same time as the bad cold I had recently, the one where I wasn’t even interested in lifting a shuttle.  I assumed that eventually I’d be lifting a shuttle again, added ‘Handwoven article’ to the entry form and sent it off.

I had an idea for a double weave scarf but couldn’t quite work out the details, so I settled for 8 shaft Summer and Winter.  I had plenty of black 2/22 wool for the warp and tabby weft and fancied a dyed weft with long repeats.  I’ve seen the blanks for dyeing knitted on knitting machines, but as I don’t have access to a knitting machine, decided it should work with a mechanical knitting nancy which I do have.  I did the maths, worked out that I would need around 50 gm of yarn made into 30 metres of knitted cord and started knitting.  It gets quite twisted in long lengths so I ended up knitting on the upstairs landing and letting the cord fall into the stairwell to untwist.  Then I set up the laundry for dyeing, and dyed the knitted cord.  Each section of colour wove about 3 inches of the scarf and the pattern repeats were about 4 inches, I even managed to get both ends of the scarf to match.  The changes of colour weren’t quite as gradual as I had planned but it still worked well.

  I’m providing a home for a friend’s slightly larger but not full sized knitting machine while she moves house, I’m hoping that it will make better blanks.

For the ‘garment’ I used the green fabric from an earlier post, something that had languished on the loom for months.  


I fancied something with a Japanese flavour and settled on a hanten with a kimono collar, drafted the pattern with Garment Designer.  At the start I wasn’t quite sure how I would finish the edges but it all fell into place with a wide mitred band around the fronts and lower edge and a matching edge on the sleeves.  I attached the lining around the back neck and along the inside of the front bands and used the kimono collar to cover the raw edges.  The fabric was a little bit fragile for tailoring as I found out when I joined the first 2 seams together and then tried, unsuccessfully to serge the edges.  After that I serged first and then joined the seams without any further dramas. 

I was pretty happy with the end result but there was no time for proper photography, just a quick press and I delivered it to a friend who was able to deliver it to Bendigo.

As  well as the Sheep Show I’m spending Saturday night with an old family friend who lives nearby and if there’s time on Sunday I’ll try to get to the exhibition which is opening on Saturday at the Bendigo Art Gallery – Undressed: 350 years of underwear in fashion, including I believe a pair of Queen Victoria’s knickers.  It should be an interesting weekend.

A little maintenance

I started writing this post a few weeks ago, but life – in the form of a really nasty head cold – intervened and it was all I could do to get to work and home again.  I knew I’d been under the weather when I realised that I hadn’t lifted a shuttle in weeks.

Last post I wrote that my loom needed new cords and then for good measure my sewing machine and serger both needed new globes.  I suspect my 1975 Elna which has made everything from underwear to tents is only on its third globe.  It’s not that it hasn’t been used, it’s been used most weeks and has never missed a beat.  I think it’s because changing the globe is such a challenge that it trains me to turn the light off as soon as I’ve finished sewing.  I managed to get the old globe out with some difficulty and then managed to buy a close – 15 watt – but not exact – 25 watt – replacement.

Getting the new globe in wasn’t going well as it’s a very restricted space and even my small hands were not small enough.  Of course it took me a while to admit defeat and consult the book and I had forgotten the important step of putting a screwdriver in the hole on the top of the machine to push the whole lamp housing down.  Once I did that and after several more attempts, the globe eventually clicked into place.  It will take quite a while to forget how hard it was and by then I will have been re-trained to turn the light off when not needed.  Fortunately the Bernina serger has a screw in globe and went in without any drama.

The 4 shaft loom now has new cords and a rub down with furniture oil.  Getting the cords around the pulleys, 4 for each shaft, is a pain although this time I used venetian blind cord and it was much easier than the heavy cord I was replacing.  I sealed the ends of the new cord on the gas jet on the stove and they were firm enough on the ends and still flexible on the rest of the cord that I could work them round the pulleys.  Last time with the heavier cord I had to thread the curved upholstery needle with some strong yarn and sew it to the cord, thread the needle and the attached yarn round the pulley and then guide the cord through the rest of the pulleys.  It took ages and a few days after I finished we had very heavy rain, so heavy that the drains blocked, water went into the ceiling and the plaster sheets started to come down.  That was bad enough but the wet insulation all over the newly refurbished loom just added insult to injury.

Here it is with new cords and a good rub down with furniture oil, I do hope there are no storms on the way.  It was made here in Melbourne in the 1970s but it looks surprisingly like the Dorset loom, the predecessor of the Schacht's Baby Wolf, on Weavolution.  I can’t say it’s a copy but I do wonder if there was a common ancestor somewhere.

I decided to put just one last warp on the loom before I replaced the cords.  I had a bag of mixed yarns, one of those treasures from a workshop, a guild meeting or live in course where someone had cleaned out their studio and made up bags of leftovers to be sold for a worthy cause such as guild funds or scholarships to help textile students attend the event.  All the yarns were in shades of pale aqua and I knew I would have plenty in similar colours at home to add to the mix.  There was enough for warp for 4 scarves and weft for one, some of the recycled wool and silk from the wardrobe clear out was the next weft and I bought a couple of balls of knitting yarn for the other  two.  

As I wove them they reminded me a lot of the glaciers I’d seen on the West coast of New Zealand on a trip years ago.  So here are my 4 plain weave glacier scarves, whipped up from a mystery bag of leftover yarns, a few yarns from the stash and a couple of balls of knitting yarn, and all posing in front of the village of miniature china houses at the back of the kitchen bench.

Below, from left to right the wefts were mohair from the mystery bag, sage green knitting yarn, blue recycled 60/40 wool silk and pale aqua baby acrylic and wool.

Time to get ready for the Hawthorn Craft Market on Sunday, at least we’re inside, it’s no fun being outside in the middle of a Melbourne winter. 

A Place to Start

Portia’s Cloth is a group of handweavers who completed the 2 year certificate course at the Handweavers and Spinners Guild of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia.  At the time the Guild met in an old scout hall in Shakespeare St.  When we started a weaving group we wanted a name with Shakespearean connections.  Eventually we chose Portia’s Cloth.  Of course we know that she wasn’t a real person, but we know from ‘The Merchant of Venice’ that she was rich, beautiful and intelligent.  The only cloth she would have known would have been handwoven and we aspire to produce cloth of the quality she would have known, but with a more modern twist.

I volunteered to start a group blog and when I understand how it works, I hope some other group members will be posting as well.

It’s hard to know where to start but a bit about me followed by a tour of the looms and the works in progress seems the obvious choice.

Like many who practise textile arts, I started early.  I’d mastered running stitch by 4 and was knitting before I started school.  My mother was a big influence and with little sewing knowledge, she would tackle evening dresses from Vogue patterns, only the complicated ones, and always with expensive material.  One day she came home with upholstery fabric and proceeded to take the sofa apart, make a pattern from the old cover and put it all back together, successfully, I should add.  In later years she became expert in cross stitch.  At high school, I was able to substitute dressmaking for geography, much to the horror of my academic friends.  We had an excellent teacher whose mission in life was to make sure we could turn out garments that looked ‘handmade not homemade’.  I‘ve never missed the geography and am sure that travel is a great substitute

After university, I completed a basic weaving course.  I loved it but didn’t have the sense to buy a loom.  Later, I learned to spin and bought a wheel but the desire to weave was still there.  Another short course or two and my first loom, a 4 shaft table loom, followed me home in 1985 when the Guild had a clearing sale as they moved to new premises.  Yet another short course and I acquired a 4 shaft direct tie-up floor loom as well.  I had started on my weaving journey. 

In 2005 and 2006 I completed the 2 year certificate course in weaving run by the Guild.  Two years of formal training, plenty of weaving practice and documenting it all in a folio was a great experience.  It’s given me the confidence to try all sorts of projects and it’s hard to stop.

When I’m not weaving I work as an optometrist in my own practice.

And now to the looms and works in progress.  

The original 4 shaft direct tie-up loom lives in the house near the TV. It was made by the Druva family who migrated from Latvia and manufactured wheels and looms in Melbourne in the 1970s.

I use it mostly for simpler projects like the warp faced band I’m weaving at the moment.  This is a 10 metre warp in 3/2 cotton.  If it ever ends it will be made into glasses cases which sell well at my practice and the local craft market.  The loom has had a lot of use and had performed well until I made some rag table mats late last year.  Weaving these under high tension was probably beyond its capabilities.  Cords snapped for no apparent reason, well maybe it was all that tension, and then one of the dowels used to tighten the warp beam, fell out.  With hindsight it was probably a bad design but the warp beam is now a bit fragile, hasn’t stopped the weaving, but it will have to be replaced.  I’m hoping a friend with woodworking skills and a few Leclerc spare parts will solve the problem.

The other loom is an 8 shaft Toika countermarch loom, also from the 1970s; it’s the model that is the forerunner of the Liisa.  It’s been modified with something similar to the 20+ tie-up system with the cords secured by golf tees. It lives in half the garage but fortunately our climate is mild enough that I can weave there most of the year. I bought it in 2006 and was told that it had some sort of draw loom capability.  I was excited this week when I read an article in VÄV about old shawls from Gotland, and suddenly it all made sense.  The project used a loom with a 4 unit draw device.  This is just the way my loom is set up but whether it actually works might be quite another matter.  At the moment I’m about 2 metres into a 6.5 metre painted warp in plaited twill 2/24 wool for yardage (or should that be meterage?) so the exploration of the draw loom will be delayed for a while.

There are of course many other projects in the pipeline too, but they will have to wait til next time

Helen