Twills
Having used Fiberworks a bit in the gap between the 4 and 8 shaft workshops, I found myself creating the drafts for each of the tie-ups I tried. Later this would lead to me trying out tie-ups and treadlings before weaving when I felt there were too many options to explore in the warp we had.

Waffle weave
I had a bought of fatigue around this time and so wove only the one small section before moving on to the next subject. But I had some warp left at the end of the Brocade sampler and had regained some energy, so I wove another, more experimental waffle weave sampler.

Brocade
I worked out a way to easily design these in Excel, and while that was fun, I got my wired crossed on yarns suitable for the design and woven them all in cotton instead of wool. This was fine until I had multiple colours on the same row, as the cotton wouldn’t squish down and the designs elongated.

Damask
After Brocade, Damask seemed really fast! I’d done the Colour-and-Weave sampler at this point, for which I’d used Fiberworks to try out my ideas first because I had a limited amount of warp. I did the same with Damask, except for the pick-up sampler, which I designed in Excel.

Colour-and-Weave
The reason I did this sampler before the Damask one was because it was intended to be done on the floor looms in the Guild. But since I had the same brand of floor loom, and floor looms weren’t new to me, I offered to do my sampler at home so there was one less students seeking time on the Guild looms.

I added another metre and a half to the warp and wove a pinwheel scarf when the sampler was done.

Summer and Winter
By now I was really confident with Fiberworks, and came up with a couple more designs than what I wound up weaving. Using the program isn’t part of the course but it’s been a great opportunity to get more familiar with it.

The next subject is Doubleweave, which is one of my favourites. I need to have the warp on the loom by the end of January. We can start weaving if we want to. I’m looking forward to it!

If there’s a down side to refashioning and recycling it is the tendency to keep things because they might come in handy one day. I should have thrown these away two years ago:

They were from the wardrobe of Late Lucy, which had contained several of these folksy tent dresses. I can think of five off the top of my head, all hand made, of different weights from light summery fabric to warm winter wool. The white flecky one was probably a poly cotton mix, and the olive grey one 100% polyester, so while the prints looked nice I wasn’t going to be making clothes out of them. I guess I only kept them on the vague notion of weaving them into rag rugs.

When my new sewing machines arrived I wanted to get familiar with them by making something simple. Drawstring bags, maybe. When I was considering what fabric to use, these dresses happened to be in line of sight, and I had an epiphany. I’ve been wanting to make cloth bags to replace the plastic bags that organise clothing in my suitcase. Something that could be tossed in a hot wash when I got home to kill off any bed bugs or their eggs. The polyester of Lucy’s dresses was the perfect fabric for this.

Zippers were preferable to drawstrings for this purpose, so I hunted through my stash of habby harvested from old garments and op shops, and found that dress zips were the right size for the big bags. Skirt zips were perfect for the smaller bags. Soon I had a pile of them, and a good start on understanding my new Juki.

There’s still more familiarisation to gain before I’ll be fully confident with the new machines, but I did notice this on the packaging from the shop:

They know their customers well.

Grounds are a subject I’ve also been thinking about recently. What happens when an artist and photographer live together, accumulating not just our own work but work by friends and people we admire? And neither of us have the energy to try selling our work except to friends? No wall space left and unhung artwork stowed behind doors and on top of shelving.

Portraits are great in that you can just give them to the subject or their family. Pet portraits are similarly practical in that way. But I don’t want to only produce portraits and pets, so how do I work without this problem affecting what I paint and how often?

By changing what I’m painting on. Stretched canvasses are nice and sturdy, necessary when painting large, but they are bulky. Canvas boards take up less room. Even better, canvas ‘paper’ is no thicker than a thin card. If I’m going to get better at painting I need to paint more, and if I paint more I need to go for smaller and thinner grounds.

I remembered, then, that I had a bag full of raw canvas scraps from when I used to stretch my own canvasses. I’ve always meant to make my own boards out of them. After a bit of playing around I concluded that PVA is the best glue, wrapping the fabric around the card rather than trimming at the edges is better, and greyboard is less inclined to warp than mountboard.

Mum’s old flower press proved very useful for keeping the boards flat while the glue dried.

It was a bit of a shock to realise that she painted this at the same age I am now. Which means if I inherit the dementia she suffers I might have only 20 more years of healthy brain function left. And if that isn’t sobering enough, if I inherit her father’s early onset Alzheimers, I may only have 10.

Pa’s slow decline and death taught me to not wait to do anything in life. And I haven’t. And if it turns out I’ve inherit the brain of my Nana, who was pretty sharp into her 90s, all the better!

Two coats of gesso finished off the boards.

I now have a bunch of little canvasses to work on that cost me almost nothing. The unexpected advantage of this is I have some interesting non-standard rectangles.

The oils came out, and I painted this over a few weeks:

There’s plenty more fabric to use up, so I’ll be making more of these boards in future.

After more than a year of using our washable masks, they were getting a bit tired. Paul has fewer of them than I, and is not as ‘inclined’ to think of washing them, so he tends to run out. So when a friend friend and I went op shopping to celebrate the easing of restrictions, and we found some quilting cotton, I decided it was time to make more.

That fabric print that alluded to weaving was so serendipitous. And the watermelon print was too amusing to resist. Paul got two more masks – both in the same fabrics as two of mine so we now have His and Hers mask sets. I have three new masks. And I replaced the straps on some of Paul’s older masks that had lost their stretch.

I can’t help wondering if one day these will just be souvenirs of a strange, scary time in our past. Or if they’ll become historic objects. Or maybe one day I’ll be refashioning them into something else.

Lately I’ve been thinking I may have my sewing mojo back. At least, I seem to be getting the bug more often these days. I doubt I’ll ever be as obsessed as I was in my 20s, or that it will take over from weaving, but it is nice to be enjoying it more.

It helps to have good, reliable patterns. As the long weekend approached and knowing I had a wait before the skivvy pattern arrived, I set myself the goal of sewing a ‘filler’ project. During a recent trip to Spotlight to buy something I needed I bought something I didn’t: navy corduroy with a floral print for another corduroy shirt.

Now that’s a familiar problem – the using up of stash leading to the acquiring more stash. But there was a sale on!

In a couple of days it was all done. It sewed up so fast, I may need to choose another filler project… this time from the stash!

I picked a rainbow of colours for the rug that would use up the rosepath warp, but decided on the fly to choose two warm analogous followed by two cool analogous colours, putting the darker shades at the ends.

I didn’t have enough of the grey warp yarn left to weave a hem, so I did a braided fringe – which took 1 1/2 times longer.

That makes nine flannelette rugs woven. I’ve kept the first test rug, and one spectrum rug was a birthday present. That leaves seven to sell. I have four batches of rag left to weave: light blue, multicoloured strips, plaids and leftovers. I’d like to use up the warp I have rather than buy more. There’s one and a half cones of black, over half each of the red, orange, green, blue and purple, and a small amount of yellow left.

The light blue batch was supposed to be a rosepath rug. I don’t think the warp I use for it is going to work for any other batches of rag, so it could be a single rug warp in maybe orange or blue, or both.

The multicoloured strips are going to make for a chaotic, bright rug, and it doesn’t need a busy warp adding to the complexity. I have some white rug warp I bought for other kinds of rugs that would suit better than the warp colours I have left. I could do the light blue rug on this warp too.

The plaids are red, black and grey so it’ll have black warp with maybe some added red stripes. Another single rug warp. A colour scheme that’d go in our kitchen, so I may keep it.

And the leftovers… I suspect there’s more than one rug coming out of that. I could split both rags and warp into warm and cool colours and do two rugs, though that would mean two single rug warps.

So five rugs to weave. Though I have been thinking that I could sew the light blue strips together into a quilt. Light colours show dirt more than dark ones, after all, so not as suitable for floor rugs.

They’re off the loom, hemmed and washed.

The graduated one contains the strips I’d sewn, and it wove up fast and made a good, solid rug.

The mixed one I wove without fussing with the strips. What tended to happen was I’d untwist them so that the front of the fabric faced up, then beat. The strips mostly squished down with the face showing on both sides, probably due to me having ironed them with the bias tape maker so the edges folded that way. There are more unfinished edges of fabric and threads visible, as you’d expect, but it’s not that bad. You really have to look to see that the rug has a (less thready) front and back.

Because of the high contrast of the mix of colours, it’s much harder to see the rosepath structure. But I like the randomness of it.

I worked out a better way to mark where to separate the rugs, too. Weaving in two lengths of a very heavy cotton made it really easy to cut in a straight line.

There were supposed to be three flannellette rugs woven on this warp. But I hadn’t anticipated that changing the sett from 5 epi to 6 epi would have quite an effect on how much the rags beat in, so the pink rugs turned out longer than calculated. I had only enough warp left to weave a square rug. So rather than weave the batch of light blue flannelette I’d prepared, I decided to do another t-shirt rag rug.

Lately I’ve had a string of dreams where I’m trying to get organised for something and just can’t seem to manage it. Firstly it was a trip to somewhere – I couldn’t seem to get my back packed. Then it was a house move where no matter how many times I returned, even after the new people had moved in, I kept find more things to take with me. Finally it was a public speaking engagement, which wasn’t the source of stress – choosing an outfit and remembering to put on make up was the problem. I vividly remember trying to polish my shoes only to have my fingers covered in black goo and the soles fall off.

What’s up, brain?

Well, it’s kinda obvious, really. I have Christmas gatherings to cook and/or arrange gifts for, then a New Year event, a weaving workshop to prepare for, another one I’m teaching, then the next 4 shaft class. There’s a work trip happening a few months later, and the parties involved are being frustratingly vague.

Yesterday I finished preparing the Jane for the next 4 shaft weaving class, to that’s ticked off the list. I also wound the warp for the rug weaving workshop. The most pressing deadline is Mum’s tea towels. I should get them off the loom this week at least, ready to sew and wash on Monday.

This week… that’s what I need to focus on. The last rigid heddle sampler and warping for the rug workshop can wait until after Christmas. Trip planning is mentally slotted in for January. That leaves tea towel making and shortbread baking by Friday, and salad making for the weekend.

I got this, brain. Stop with the nagging.

I’ve had a slowly growing pile of items to dye for maybe two years now, and it’s been large enough to tackle for a few months. Last Sunday I decided it was time to tackle it.

The majority of dye-able items were to be indigo dyed with the leftovers of the kit used at the Kay Plus Fun workshop I organised at the beginning of last year. Part of the reason it’s taken me so long is I’d assumed the kit was one of those overnight fermentation deals, and I tend to dye spontaneously. In fact it was a ‘mix up and wait 20-30 minutes” one. So I set it going and wet down all the pieces I wanted to dye. That included the last bit of shibori sampler I wove on the leftover warp from the workshop. There were definitely a lot of fond memories of Kay as well as wistful, sad thoughts about not being able to tell her I was finally getting that last bit of shibori done.

Other pieces to be dyed included a tshirt, two long-sleeved tops and the chenille scarf I wove earlier this year. I tie-dyed the tshirt and tried for uneven coverage with one of the long-sleeved tops. I dip-dyed the scarf, but it came out so dark that contrast was too severe, so I dipped the rest laster when the pot was growing weaker.

When everything to be indigo dyed was done I still had plenty of liquid left, so I grabbed some ripped hemp/cotton sheets and sopped up the rest to use in rag weaving.

After a break for lunch I tackled the Procion dye lot. I had four other cotton items: one of Lucy’s jumpers and three factory-produced lace table cloths. The jumper was white with colourful embroidered flowers around the front… that had bled when I washed it. The table cloths were too stained to give to the op shop and I had a vague idea of dyeing them black and making something goth-y out of them.

The jumper came out great. The dye didn’t produce a proper black – more a dark indigo blue, ironically! It took aaaaages to wash out the dye, so it clearly didn’t set well. Which meant the flowers, as I hoped, retained some colour.

The table cloths came out a disappointing grey-blue, even lighter when dry than this photo shows:

Oh well, that’s dyeing for you! I’m chuffed that nearly everything came out well, and maybe I’ll still find a purpose for the table cloths.

My friend and I have taken to calling my Dad’s deceased neighbour “Late Lucy”, as we know a couple of living Lucys and it prevents confusion. Anyway… Late Lucy had a LOT of candles. KRin managed to give away most of them, but discovered one forgotten box later. We put them in our local market stall, but they didn’t look that appealing all piled together and nobody bought any.

I got to wondering if, for our next market, they would appeal more if we bundled them into matching sets and tied them with Christmas ribbon. I messaged my friend to suggest it. Turns out the bag they were in had busted and some were now broken. We tossed ideas back and forth, and next thing we knew we were in my laundry hovering over saucepans on the portable stove top I use for dyeing.

I do love a spontaneous craft day!

We melted down the broken candles and saved the wicks. I found some old candle-making supplies and we used the wax dye and powdered food colouring to colour the melted wax.

The first thing I tried was dribbling wax down an old tapered candle. It produced a nice ombre effect. I used the same method on a fatter candle and the hot wax adhered and solidified differently, creating more of a dribbled coating. Next I tried coating three candles in hot wax then quickly rolling them in sand. I quite like the way they look, and reckon they’d be even better with shells pressed into them. Only I didn’t have any shells.

Why did I even think of sand? Well, when I was a child I made sand mold candles at school, or Brownies, or something, and I loved it. I’ve wanted to try it again for a while now. I’ve had a bucket of play sand sitting in the kitchen garden for a few years, waiting for me to get around to it. So I sieved out the dead leaves that had blown in, found some yoghurt containers to hold it, and once I had work out how damp to make the sand I began pressing objects into it. The results were varied. The blue and green candles came out a bit too rustic, but I rather like the yellow one.

I decided to try dipping short pieces of wick to make little fat candles, but it was taking ages for the wax to build up. I settled on making rustic birthday cake candles instead. I think these are hilarious!

My friend and I then joined forces, me dribbling green and her wielding red wax to coat two sets of candles with a Christmassy colour scheme.

Then she used up most of the remainder of the wax making red and green striped sand candles. Curiously, the sand stuck to the green but not the red.

We were pretty chuffed with our efforts overall, and had a fun afternoon of playing around with melted wax.

The next day I decided to package up the candles, making half boxes out of card covered in paper and wrapped in some florists cellophane.

I decided to keep the roughest two sand candles. The rest went into our market stall. Did anybody buy them? Yes! The matching six red and green ones, and the three blue with sands ones. I gave the long tapered one away as a gift yesterday.