Sweet little overshot

This is my current warp.  It is masquerading as tea towels, but really it's a sample warp for my next coverlet.  My warping board is only 12 yards, I don't have a sectional beam, don't want to shell out for one, and don't even want to change warping boards.  I've used this one for so many years my muscle memory lets me wind quickly and accurately, with no (or seldom any) bumping of fingers and hands.  So, 12 yards is what I have to work with.   Out of a 12 yard warp, I can get three widths for a complete coverlet, but it does not leave any room to sample.  So, I throw on a tea towel warp for my sample.

This is out of "Weaving Designs: Miniature Overshot Patterns" by Bertha Gray Hayes.  This book is full of wonderful small overshot patterns and I've woven several.  This is one of my favorites already.  It's called "Flowers and Ferns" and it's a 52 shot repeat.  I'm using 10/2 cotton for warp, set at 24 epi, 10/2 cotton for pattern, and 20/2 for tabby.

I started out with the pattern threaded to the edges and a floating selvedge.  I wove the first towel off in that manner, then rethreaded 20 threads at each side into a twill for an edge, dropped the floating selvedge, and wove the second one off.  Today I washed them both in hot water, dried hot, and measured shrinkage.

Now I know several things:

I know the extension of the pattern at the edges for 8 threads is too little if I want to be able to make a small seam and match the pieces.  It will need to be twice that.   I know the width shrinkage is 18%, the length 20%.  I know that the size of the float with a twill edge and no floating selvedge washes up to be perfectly acceptable to me.  I know to wind a little extra (I'll have to figure out exactly how many) at each side.  After I make the first length (which will be the center piece) I'll rethread the seam allowance threads plus a few extra in to a twill on the right edge for the second length, the left for the third length.  Then I'll have a small border on the side edges of the coverlet.  We'll see how these plans play out.

So, this is a photo of the right side of the sample, after wet finishing in washer and dryer.  I've had this laid across an end table in my living room the last few days, and the more I look at it, the more I see larger and smaller versions of flowers.






Below is a photo of the wrong side of the fabric, same orientation as the top photo.  Pretty different.






So, now I will continue weaving off this warp, figure width and # of ends for the coverlet warp, and start winding that.  Overshot is fairly slow if you want it even and correct, which is what we all want, right?  After slamming the last plain weave, but prettily striped warp off in a little over a week, it's a change of pace.

In the brain room

Instead of spending time weaving last weekend, as was my intent Friday, the onus of my kitchen that drastically needed paint, etc. overcame me and I spent the weekend on that.  Just pain would have been a smallish thing, but the popcorn ceiling finish had to be removed, plus a wallpaper border, and the residue of glue under it.  I spent the whole day Saturday with prep, made 2 trips to Lowes.  It was a hellishly long day.  Sunday I painted.  It's all done now except the trim, and I'll wait a couple days to do the trim.  Right now I'm painting a microwave cabinet that suddenly looked really ghetto in that newly painted kitchen.

So, I didn't even touch the warp chains for my next project, which are lying over the back of the couch, and only stepped foot into the loom room to open windows for upstairs ventilation.  I did, however, spend time in the brain room.  I want to dye several warps this summer, and it always takes me a lot of thought time about what colors to use.  That means visualizing and then picking out dye colors.  I spend about as much time with this planning phase as I do with the painting phase.

So, I may get my new warp partially threaded this week.  I may not.  I'm in the brain room.

The object of the past week's obsession

Although I have been weaving at least one tea towel a day, for the most part, my free hours have been taken up with this jacket.





As noted earlier, this is for my youngest son.  He's a musician and has a Reggae band in Denver, CO, and requested a neon green jacket for a big gig this summer.  You can probably tell just from that statement, and the above photo, that he is not bound by common fashion requirements.  I hope he'll be happy with it.  It's the bulk of his birthday gift.  (I'm pretty sure he doesn't read this blog).   I plan to ship it off this week.

It was supposed to have buttons, but any button I held up really cheapened it (I mean, really, it did, although it's not quite a high-end couture fabric, etc), so I decided to do away with buttons.  I can't tell you how glad I am to be done with it.  I feel like I can get back to concentrating on weaving!

I have ordered some 8/2 tencel.  I tried to find 10/2, but it appears to have gone out of existence.  I did reach one person on the East Coast who has some that he called defective because of weak spots and, if he can ever find it in the warehouse, I'll have a few pounds coming to me.  It's cheap and I need to see for myself if it's unsuitable for warps.  I thought I probably should go ahead and get some 8/2, though, so I can forge ahead on dye plans.

I want to paint another shawl warp, and probably a scarf warp, too.  I'll just have to sett the 8/2 so it will take 10/2 weft, since I still have a lot of colors in 10/2 tencel.  My goal is to resist buying more colors and get some of my stash woven up.  It's a shame 10/2 has gone by the wayside.  It's such a nice size for wearables. 

I'm nearly done with the blue striped tea towel warp.  That should be finished up early this week, and I'm planning another tea towel warp, this time in a miniature overshot pattern.  It will be my extensive sample warp for another blanket, if I end up liking the pattern enough.

And one more word on sewing, although I'm very glad to be done with the jacket project, I did learn an important thing.  I haven't done much sewing the past 10 years because a) it's slow and a time-eater b) my neck hurts if I go at it like I used to (few breaks).  I found that keeping the sessions at the machine to an hour or slightly over, then doing something else kept my neck pain free.  Yes, it's even slower,  but I'm not on a time line like when I was production weaving, and I could see the progress, and the pain free thing is huge.  So, I found a pattern for a tiered skirt online.  I'll have to see where that goes.



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And now, for something completely different

(to quote Monty Python.)  Although I am still weaving at least one tea towel a day on the blue striped warp, I am also sewing a jacket for my son.  He's a musician and has a big gig coming up the end of July.  He wants to look uber cool on stage and asked me to make him a neon green jacket.  As you may imagine, pure neon green isn't just jumping off the shelves in fabric stores, but I did find a batik type piece of quilt fabric that is neon green with little tan squiggly looking things on it. 

So, that's what I've been doing this week - sewing the neon jacket.  I'm a little over half way finished.  It's a very loose fitting jacket, since this is the only jacket pattern I have left, so I interfaced the cotton with an iron-on interfacing, and am also lining it with a cotton drapery lining fabric, which I happened to have already.  I made the shoulder pads.

I'll be happy when it's done, and it's not taxing my patience as much as I thought it would.  I sew for a couple hours and put it down - go pull weeds or something, and weave when I can.

I'm glad I still had this one pattern.  I've found it's getting difficult to find a pattern for things like a men's jacket.  The patterns I find are quite simplified skirts, dresses, blouses.  I wish I had kept more of my patterns. 

My mom talked about when she was growing up and how patterns were so rare.  She said if anyone in the community somehow got a pattern, it would make the rounds and everyone made a copy.   I hope it won't get to that again, but I'm not sure.  It's a shame to lose the art of sewing your own clothes. 

I'm still looking at overshot patterns, and thinking, and thinking.

New blankets

The blanket above is a little overshot pattern from Bertha Gray Hayes.  It's Queen Anne's Lace, (I think).  Since it's such a small repeat I didn't keep careful track of the repeat sizes, thinking it would all match up, but nooooooooo.  It didn't match very well at all.  After a few days of stewing over it, I put it away for a few days, thinking I now had yardage for some future project.  I finally decided to get over myself, set it together and use it, unmatched though it is.  And I'm really glad I did.  It's a lovely piece and looks nice on the bed.  Next time I do a small overshot, I'll keep careful track of repeat sizes, though.  Lesson learned.



The photo above shows the 3/1 twill I just finished.  You can see the drastic difference between the two sides.  3/1 twill basically makes a cloth that is very weft faced on one side and warp faced on the other.  This was fun to do, but I'll think twice before threading 20/2 used doubled for warp for a 48 inch wide piece. 


This photo shows the 3/1 twill on the bed, warp faced side up. 

I have a couple towels finished on the blue striped warp (10/2 cotton) I just put on.  I like making something like tea towels after I finish a big project.  They fly off the loom, they're pretty, and they're functional.

I find myself thumbing through the overshot patterns, though.  I'm not sure how many blankets my family can use, but I sure like making them. 

Trying out an app

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Please forgive the crappy photo.  I've spent a good hour learning how to use this new BlogPress app, and I feel like any photo, at this point, is a success.

One of the problems I saw right away with my Ipad2 is the difficulty posting photos.  I got a free photo app for Facebook, but that one wouldn't let me post to my blog.  So, I finally coughed up five bucks for this app, and glory be, it appears to work.  So, future photos will be better, I promise.

The blanket is off the loom.  I wet finished it in the washer and dryer on hot (both of them) to get maximum shrinkage.  The edges, though, were a bit curled here and there, as they will do with a 3/1 twill.  However, also since it's a 3/1 twill, when I ironed an edge, it put a wave in it, because I was flattening down the pillow-y effect, but not over the entire piece, just the edge. 

I took it to the cleaner yesterday for pressing.  I know it may seem odd that I will wait two months to spend $5.00  on an app so I can use a nifty Ipad, which makes photos on my blog so easy,  but right away haul the blanket yardage to the cleaners.  I can't explain it other than to say the thought of hard pressing the entirety of those 3 blanket pieces didn't even rate an argument.  I'll pick those up tomorrow, and hopefully get them sewn together over the weekend sometime.

Here I am at summer's door, with plans to paint the kitchen, at least, this summer.  This is not a simple job.  It has that nasty popcorn finish on it, which has to be wet down with a garden sprayer and then scraped off, carefully.  Last summer's experience with the bathroom wasn't good. (A pox on the person who invented it).  I found a tool on Amazon that is SUPPOSED to make the job a lot easier.  It had only good reviews, so I ordered one.  That will be summer home improvement project one, and there are several on the list.

So, I opted for a tea towel warp for the next weaving project.   See photo above ;-)   I designed using wraps on a piece of mini-blind, and wound my colors accordingly.  I love to weave tea towels, people like to buy them, and they're a reasonable price.   These are plain weave - good to have on the loom when I may have only 30 minutes here and there to weave. 

A new development is I think I broke a tooth on a popcorn kernel last night and have a dental appt. tomorrow.  NOT in the plan.

May is good for planning

After a month of visiting with my kids, all got back to normal last week.  In between work and yardwork, I wound warp for the side portions of the blanket I'm working on.  I finished tying it on and got it beamed this weekend - and actually got about a foot woven this evening.  The 20/2 used double makes a really nice soft piece, which is what I want for this blanket, but tying on and beaming was a bit tedious.  Got it done, though, and that's what counts.

Now that there is just the weaving and finish work left to do, I'm starting to think about my next warp(s).  I never thought I'd say it, but I'm feeling like I have some warp painting ahead of me this summer.  I'd like to do a complete tencel shawl in painted warp, and maybe a couple scarf warps, too.  So, that means I need to order the Tencel, and start thinking hard about dye colors. 

Color work is difficult for me.  I have a hard time visualizing how colors will meld and work together.  So, I get out my dye color chart, and my color wheel, and we have sit-down discussions.   It will take several before I'm certain enough to order.

I also found a couple 10/2 cotton warps which I had base dyed in preparation for painting, so those can be worked into the dye schedule, too.

And, a new rug project is cycling through my brain.  I need to start gathering for that, too. 

Lots to think about!  Lots to look forward to.  And in the meantime, I have 9 yards of blanket side pieces to work off.