I suppose that if I hadn't included the blue in my first red warp, I'd have been able to use up all of the 2/18 red cotton in one warp, but I did so I had lots of red left over. Since stash reduction is one of my primary goals right now, and I'd decided I really wanted to use up something, I did another red/blue warp, but this time put stripes on either edge instead of one in the middle.
The bad news is that even after winding a 40 yard warp, there was still over half a pound of red cotton left - too much to throw away, too little to do another warp on the big loom. So, even though I'd thought to only weave shawls on this warp, I'm weaving more tea towels, using up the last of the red cotton as weft!
One of the things I like to do is weave curves into my fabric. Weaving is mostly about perpendicular crossings of the thread, with deflections of those threads generally pretty minimal. Some weave structures depend on deflections - waffle weave, lace weaves, deflected warps and/or wefts, etc. But you can also get curves as pattern. The weave structure in this photo is actually twill blocks, but woven so that curves are created.
Sandra Rude plays with this sort of patterning a lot although she takes a different approach - a link to her website is in my links list. Her water series and fire series are especially appealing to me.
The tubes you can see at the bottom of the picture are hoses for the air assist on my loom. Several years ago I added air assist for the fly shuttle, which I haven't used in ages because recently I've been weaving fairly narrow warps where the fly shuttle doesn't work particularly well. I figured I might as well finance air for the treadle at the same time. I'm really glad now I did, even though I can't weave as quickly with the air assist treadle as I could without it because I realized that my right knee had been giving me problems. I have also developed arthritis in my right foot comparable to the sort of arthritis long distance runners develop (although they usually get it in both feet) so the air assist in the treadle has really allowed me to keep weaving.
1 comment:
The ability to weave curves is a great attraction of having a loom with many shafts! I too very much admire what Sandra does, especially with her dyeing. You are eager to get rid of the red?!?! Red is wonderful. Who knows how else you might use it with some of your other stash yarns.
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