Weaverly

Alice Schlein

recent posts

  • English Tabby

    First, a disclaimer. I am not a cat person. Never had a cat, probably never will.

    A few weeks ago I came upon a structure named English Tabby. It is certainly plain weave, with a twist.

    And it can be woven on as few as 2 shafts.

    The idea seems to be to add texture to plain weave, as if heavier threads were added randomly. Why this is understood as being distinctively English, I have no idea.

    When I tried to search for a little clarification about this weave structure, I found myself in a rabbit hole of cat references (to mix a few metaphors). Apparently the Internet is determined to tell me that all references to tabby are about cats. But going a little further, I found that the distinctive coat pattern on tabby cats is from a plain weave silk fabric with an irregular wavy finish. So the fabric defines the markings on the cats. We are in a loop.

    Be that as it may, I’ve got the urge to weave a little bit of English Tabby. A small sample. I can’t imagine that such a threading would be useful as a basis for weaving other structures. But you never know. Interesting structures arise from unexpected places. Meow.

  • Cutting Off Day

    The shawl is complete.

    After wet finishing, the lacy weave drapes nicely.

    I’ve chosen a short, plain fringe with no embellishment. My hands don’t’ want to do twisted fringe any more. Period.

    Department of Books. I have finished reading Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami.

  • Same Threading, New Warp

    The story continues. Straight threading on 8 shafts. Just wound on, the view from the back of the loom:

    And front view, after the hemstitching and the first few inches of weaving. 8/2 cotton warp and weft, 16 epi and ppi.

    A couple of close-ups of the weave structure:

    A reminder: this is draft #3012 from Handweaving.net.

    Department of Books: I have just read Butter by Asako Yuzuki, and Washington Square by Henry James..

  • Straight Talk

    There was a little bit of warp left on the loom after my brocade samples were finished. It was threaded in a straight draw on 8 shafts, and I was looking around for something new to try and came across this oddity on Handweaving.net: it was presented as weavable on 6 shafts but I really wanted to weave it on my existing straight threading on 8 shafts. Fortunately Handweaving.net has a nice feature to instantly convert it (View: Straight threading, View: Straight treadling). In the image below, the original draft #3012, as submitted by Ralph Griswold, is shown on the left and the converted version for 8 shafts on the right.

    Note: you can also do this conversion/simplification in TempoWeave. Go to Tools>Simplify Draft.

    Here is the woven sample after washing. I don’t know what you’d call the structure. It has a lacy appearance with a maximum float length of 3 in warp & weft. The face and reverse are slightly different. Is it a crepe? a lace weave? a twill variation?

    And the reverse side: 8/2 cotton @ 16 epi and p p i.

    Department of Books: I’ve just finished reading The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton. Loved it. The most despicable protagonist ever!

  • Boxed In

    The final challenge for this series was to weave a parallelogram within another parallelogram. This little critter kept me entertained for a whole day.

    Both samples on the current warp have now been cut off, washed, and hemmed. I flung them on the floor for a quick snapshot. Prettier pictures to follow, I hope.

    I don’t know which way they will ultimately be displayed. Not necessarily the way they were woven. Four choices!

  • From Outer Space

    On the loom. A few picks per day. It now looks like an invasion in the studio.

    Following: fabric beads from the previous post strung on a lucet-made cord, with overhand knots as spacers. A UFO completed.

    And I’d like to add a note about the fabric beads: a tutorial by Victoria Gertenbach is available on Etsy. I found it very helpful in guiding me through preliminary construction. of the beads.

    Department of Books: I’ve just read The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanazaki. An elegiac portrayal of a society in transition. Recommended. No, I haven’t seen the movie.

  • UFOs

    Some unfinished objects emerged from storage today. I made them during COVID, intending to do ??? with them. They are too pretty not to use. Those little bumps are not beads – they are French knots! Each bead is 3 cm long, or a little over an inch.

    For a necklace, a luceted cord might be a good idea. Let’s see if the muscle memory of knotting the cords comes back after a long hiatus.. Once you get flying with one of these gizmos, you can crank out miles of cord.

    Department of Books: I just finished reading Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd (highly recommended) and The Green Road by Anne Enright.

  • More Brocading Trials

    In my experiments with drafts for brocading, I wanted to explore new possibilities for combinations of ground and brocade. In the following picture, I have tried to force the twill lines to run in opposition to each other. In the lower blue lozenge, I used a single end of blue 8/2 cotton as the brocading weft on a ground of 8/2 cotton weft used singly. I felt there wasn’t enough contrast between brocade and ground, so I doubled the brocading weft in the upper lozenge.

    I like that effect better, and the opposing twills are more evident here.

    The next step was to improve the color choices. Although the natural ground weft in the above photo highlights the structure, I thought the color effect was too washed out; I redid the sample with an orange weft, which I think is more pleasing, even though structure takes a back seat here.

    The brocading weft is two strands of 8/2 cotton. I am happy with the colors, and I think the opposing twill lines show up really well here. For the curious, here is a screen shot of the draft I am using.

    Department of Books: I have just finished reading Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshanantan. Recommended.

  • A Fiberfull Weekend

    Anyone who loves cloth will be stirred by the following:

    She is Dar Młodzieży, the first Polish-built, ocean-going sailing vessel to circumnavigate the globe (1987–88). All those billowing yards of cloth in various pale neutrals. Yes, that’s how I spent most of my Fourth, in front of the TV, watching the Tall Ships in NY Harbor.

    Of course I did a lot of this too: a scarf in progress on my rigid heddle loom. All handpun wool and silk combinations, warp and weft.

    Department of Books. I just finished reading Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer (recommended) and A Big Storm Knocked It Over by Laurie Colwin.

  • On the Fly, Ad Hoc, Impromptu

    It’s not my usual way of working. I’m accustomed to days of planning before starting a project, sometimes too much planning. This time I’m just diving in, letting the warp tell me where to go as it unwinds.

    After a section is woven and wrapped on the cloth beam, it’s out of my line of sight and I have to rely on memory for placement of the next brocaded element.

    Which way to meander? What color to pick? Spur of the moment decisions. Left? Right?

    Or both.

    Spots, perhaps.

    The end of the warp is in sight.

    The pieces have now been cut off, machine washed, and laid out to dry. They look so different when viewed from other angles. A 90° or 180° turn makes an entirely different statement. It’s a fun surprise.

    In the Department of Books: I have just finished reading John of John by Douglas Stuart.

  • Change of Direction

    On the new red warp, a continued exploration of diagonal brocading.

    But boredom set in and I needed to do rectangles for a change. I worked out a draft with a plain weave ground and ties that will allow rectangular brocading shapes.

    Here are the first samples. As usual, I’m expecting everything to tighten up after wet finishing.

    Department of Books: Have finished reading A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh and The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman. Publication dates 1934 and 2022 respectively, 88 years apart. .

    That might be enough murder for a while. I would call it my beach reading, except I haven’t been near the beach in a good while…

  • Brocading Samples

    Here are the latest samples, cut off the loom and wet finished. They’ve tightened up, and the ground cloth which looked somewhat sleazy on the loom is now closer to what I was looking for.

    From right to left in the above picture, I tried plain weave grounds in fine silk, then several in cotton, with various brocading wefts, and finally my favorite, shown below, with an 8/2 cotton weft in twill ground with doubled 8/2 cotton as the brocading weft.

    I am happy to see the diagonals of ground and brocade slanting in opposite directions. So happy, in fact, that I’ve put on another warp, this time with a mixture of 8/2 cotton and tencel in random order, and will repeat this structure, this time trying more color combinations (draft for this in previous post, if you’re interested.)

  • An Original (?) Brocading Setup

    I’ve never seen this particular arrangement for brocading, so I think it’s original, but in weaving you never know…

    Straight threading on 8 shafts. In the weft, the brocade picks are shown in yellow and the plain weave ground picks in black. One complete weft repeat is 16 picks.

    Above: Screenshot of draft in TempoWeave Studio

    Following are some photos of today’s brocading samples, with doubled strands of 8/2cotton as the brocading wefts and 10/2 cotton as the plain weave ground.

    And here’s the best friend that keeps the 16-pick sequence organized for me, my TempoTreadle from LoftyFiber.

  • Small Brocading Samples

    On my interim warp I’ve taken some time to give my head a rest and weave samples of inlay. This patterning technique is hand-manipulated and slow. Inlay is sometimes referred to as brocading. I use the terms interchangeably here.

    Small areas of supplementary weft that do not extend to the selvedges are woven on a ground of selvedge-to-selvedge cloth, in this instance plain weave.

    These first few pictures show a red 60/2 silk as the ground weft and a heavy silk noil as the brocade weft. The warp is a mixture of yarns at 16 epi.

    The brocading picks alternate with the ground picks.

    For the next few samples I worked on a ground weft of 10/2 black cotton, with 2 strands of 8/2 cotton as the brocading weft.

    Did I say this is very slow?

    The brocading picks are laid in an 8-end sequence based on a satin weave, alternating with the plain weave ground. This brings the total weft sequence to 16 picks in my liftplan.

    I’m having an awful lot of fun with this.

    Department of Books. I’ve just read A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh. Pub. 1934. English Country House Murder, the first in a very long series by this author. Elaborately plotted, a fun read if you can temporarily ignore the racism, antisemitism, and other tropes of the time.

  • An Interim Warp

    There’s some studio reorganization going on around here, and I had to pause the basket/plainweave experiments.

    In the interim, I made three small “garbage warps” of mixed odds and ends, as a sort of palette cleanser. This was a good opportunity to polish up my warping skills, which have gotten a bit sloppy lately.

    First picture is the back of the loom after beaming and threading…

    …and a bit closer if you like…

    …and now the first few inches of plain old plainweave, just to see what would happen. This is a mixture of cottons of various sizes, tencel, cottolin, and a few mystery fibers.

    Well, that was fun, and a real stash-buster besides. Now back to work.

    Department of Books: I have just finished reading True Color by Kory Stamper and In the Woods by Tana French.