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I always love when I've been wondering or pondering something intensely (sometimes to the point of frustration) and God puts something small in my life to remind me to enjoy what I'm doing now.
Lately I have been feeling like my loom isn't good enough or that it was a mistake to buy a loom that only has 4 shafts. Today I was surfing my weaving sites and I read Syne Mitchell's blog about 4 shaft weaving. She talks about the beauty in simple 4 shaft structures and how just because you can weave something more complicated, doesn't mean you have to. This was just what I needed to hear. I'm glad that my Heavenly Father is in control and that He watches over every tiny detail of my life. Even something as silly as frustration over something that I should just be grateful for.
It was a great reminder of why I fell in love with weaving in the first place. I love the rhythm of it. How each movement develops into something like a dance. I love that all the calculations are logical and all make sense and fit together perfectly. I love the color and texture of yarn and how exciting it is to see what you get when you combine them. Isn't it wonderful how God gave man a desire to create? I never thought I could love or even remotely like something that was based on math. But I'm slowly discovering that if you're an artist of any type, math is important. I enjoy sitting down and thinking through the calculations for weaving because it's really just simple algebra and I've missed that. WEIRD!! I'm definitely NOT a math person so for those words to even go through my head is sort of a miracle.
Anyway, I just wanted to share this reminder. A reminder that simple things are beautiful and that our Creator is always watching and knows every aspect of our lives. What a comfort! :)
~JoAnna
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Friday, June 19, 2009
More Projects!!
And for my next trick....Double Weave!! I'm trying to do things slowly...But not too slow so that I'm not challenged by what I'm doing. That would be boring.
Since I'm trying to build up an inventory to sell this fall, I want to make things that people will want to buy. (Duh...ha ha :) Anyway, I got to thinking and I don't want to just make scarves, towels, table runners, etc. but I know my sewing skills are limited and that handwoven fabric can be difficult to sew for a beginner. So I might have a few pieces that I've sewn, but I don't want to depend on that.
I'm planning double weave bags. I've done double weave, but I need a refresher so it's a good way to remind myself of how it works. They're pretty simple, it's just a big concept to wrap your head around. I think it'll be good though. I will have to do some minor sewing. I'll put liner fabric in them and handles, but nothing too complicated.
My problem is that I tend to romanticize everything in my mind. Like in a movie when someone is thinking about how a conversation or event will go any everyone's smiling and all the gestures and motions they make are over dramatized....Yeah. That's how I think about projects. I'll have the crazy, giddy smile on my face as I dress the loom and sew the liners in each bag. It's like a bad infomurcial...(sp?) I just have to remember to remain calm. "DON'T PANIC." as the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says. :)
-JoAnna
P.S. I'm a sci-fi nerd. I play video games with my husband and read sci-fi books, watch sci-fi TV shows...you get the idea. I decided a long time ago that being a nerd is fun and it's totally okay. :)
Since I'm trying to build up an inventory to sell this fall, I want to make things that people will want to buy. (Duh...ha ha :) Anyway, I got to thinking and I don't want to just make scarves, towels, table runners, etc. but I know my sewing skills are limited and that handwoven fabric can be difficult to sew for a beginner. So I might have a few pieces that I've sewn, but I don't want to depend on that.
I'm planning double weave bags. I've done double weave, but I need a refresher so it's a good way to remind myself of how it works. They're pretty simple, it's just a big concept to wrap your head around. I think it'll be good though. I will have to do some minor sewing. I'll put liner fabric in them and handles, but nothing too complicated.
My problem is that I tend to romanticize everything in my mind. Like in a movie when someone is thinking about how a conversation or event will go any everyone's smiling and all the gestures and motions they make are over dramatized....Yeah. That's how I think about projects. I'll have the crazy, giddy smile on my face as I dress the loom and sew the liners in each bag. It's like a bad infomurcial...(sp?) I just have to remember to remain calm. "DON'T PANIC." as the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says. :)
-JoAnna
P.S. I'm a sci-fi nerd. I play video games with my husband and read sci-fi books, watch sci-fi TV shows...you get the idea. I decided a long time ago that being a nerd is fun and it's totally okay. :)
No more problems
My most recent project was some yardage for...something...It was really more to just get used to my loom. I decided that weaving an overshot sampler using a fiber I'd never used before might not have been the best idea on a brand new loom that I'd never used before. Everything was completely unknown.
So I stepped back a little and wove a simple, plain weave plaid to get used to dressing the loom, and how the whole thing works. I experimented with using a reed sequence that would give me a different Sett than 15 or 30 on my 15 dent reed.
This yielded double the width I had calculated and very thin fabric. I wanted something that I could cut up and sew into something...(Not sure what yet...Maybe it will just be a table runner...) Thin fabric wasn't was I had planned. I cut the 4 inches that I had woven off and pulled all the yarns out of the reed, re-dented and re-tied.
Now, the important factor here is that I had the "wonderful" idea of using two different sizes of yarn in the warp. This wouldn't be a problem if they were spaced evenly and regularly. I had large stripes. One color was one size, the other color was another size...Beginner's mistake...I'm still learning. But I'm discovering that trial and error is part of learning to weave.
My instructor at school is always telling us that weavers are very resourceful. Reminding myself of this gave me confidence and helped calm my frustration long enough to think about how to fix the problem. I was using 3/2 and 5/2 perle cotton. After looking at the yarns for a few moments next to each other I decided the best thing to do would be to set them at different EPI. I set the 5/2 at 30 (Double dented) and the 3/2 at 15 (Single dented). The 3/2 cotton was almost twice the size as the 5/2 so it ended up working out well. I triple dented the selvege on 5/2 and double dented the selvege on the 3/2 and that also helped fix the problems that I was having with my selveges before.
Once I had taken the time to fix all of these problems, the yardage wove up very quickly. It only took a few hours. I have one weaving mistake, but I'm not concerned about it. I'll just have to be more careful next time.
So I stepped back a little and wove a simple, plain weave plaid to get used to dressing the loom, and how the whole thing works. I experimented with using a reed sequence that would give me a different Sett than 15 or 30 on my 15 dent reed.
This yielded double the width I had calculated and very thin fabric. I wanted something that I could cut up and sew into something...(Not sure what yet...Maybe it will just be a table runner...) Thin fabric wasn't was I had planned. I cut the 4 inches that I had woven off and pulled all the yarns out of the reed, re-dented and re-tied.
Now, the important factor here is that I had the "wonderful" idea of using two different sizes of yarn in the warp. This wouldn't be a problem if they were spaced evenly and regularly. I had large stripes. One color was one size, the other color was another size...Beginner's mistake...I'm still learning. But I'm discovering that trial and error is part of learning to weave.
My instructor at school is always telling us that weavers are very resourceful. Reminding myself of this gave me confidence and helped calm my frustration long enough to think about how to fix the problem. I was using 3/2 and 5/2 perle cotton. After looking at the yarns for a few moments next to each other I decided the best thing to do would be to set them at different EPI. I set the 5/2 at 30 (Double dented) and the 3/2 at 15 (Single dented). The 3/2 cotton was almost twice the size as the 5/2 so it ended up working out well. I triple dented the selvege on 5/2 and double dented the selvege on the 3/2 and that also helped fix the problems that I was having with my selveges before.
Once I had taken the time to fix all of these problems, the yardage wove up very quickly. It only took a few hours. I have one weaving mistake, but I'm not concerned about it. I'll just have to be more careful next time.
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