The short-stack

They're done!  The orange and blue hand towels are finally done.  These were a request from my friend in Brazil, and while I was at it I decided to make myself a few also!  It seemed like this warp took awhile to get through because of all the interruptions in the last few weekends.  Luckily, they were awesome interruptions!  We were busy with the fair, and my in-laws came to say hello, and all the apples that needed canning, but here we are!

I have to admit, this is my most favorite design of them all!!  I just can't believe how it turned out.  WOW!!!  It really is exciting and colorful!! This will cheerfully push away anyone's winter blues!

 There are only one of these towels because I was running out of warp.  It is neat too.  I call it the "saw blades" pattern because they all look like little saw blades.  I really like how the orange and yellow mix together in your eye and then the blue and purple mix together and they all form the little designs, but with much more interest because of all the colors involved. 

 Here is the pattern for the saw blades:

 




This is the exact same pattern, but just the yellow and no purple.  I could only weave a very small piece because it was THE VERY END of  the warp!  It will probably be cut up and used in my Christmas cards this year.  I am thinking of using up all these really small pieces of warp that way.  Then everyone can share in my 2011 warps for the year!  I'm having difficulty in deciding between bookmarks or ornaments. 

 

They are just so colorful together!!

This is the original pattern, and it was a request by my friend in Brazil.  She will like these!  I will be sending these off to her today, but unfortunately it will take nearly 2 weeks for them to arrive.  

 

 These are so bright, chipper, and colorful!  

I can't wait to try one myself!

PS.  The rest will make GREAT Christmas gifts!

My own profile drafts

I have been playing so much with profile drafts that I decided to make some of my own.  After studying Bertha Gray Hayes' patterns so much, I feel like these are her done in her style. 

And now, my profile drafts:

Fancy Dancy

Frolic

Delightful

Tiles

Curvy

Snow Day

Square dance

My Name Draft

Donut star

I love to weave code draft

DNA (I'm such as science teacher!)

My Lego

"Lego" in summer and winter

 

 These are way too much fun to make!  I feel like I have so many in my head and want to get them all out onto paper.

Changing to profile drafts

I changed Lee's Surrender overshot pattern into a profile draft so I could weave it in the summer and winter weave.  However I didn't even take into consideration the fact that for every 2 overshot threads, it turns into 4 threads with summer and winter, so basically I double the width of my project.  Using my baby wolf loom with 10/2, I would need a loom twice as wide.  I don't think this big pattern will work so well.  So I started looking at some smaller overshot patterns, like Bertha Gray Hayes' miniature overshot drafts.

Here are a few of the profile drafts I "translated" from Bertha's patterns:

Balalaika:

Domino:

Estrellita:

The Olive:

 

Tangerine:

Linoleum:

 

Trellis:

After playing with these for a bit, I decided to turn my favorite draft, Trellis, into summer and winter weaves: 

Making this discovery is so cool!  I really like being able to turn these drafts from one into the other, and be able to use them in different ways!  I feel like I have really opened some doors here, and I'm excited to jump right through into the next level.  Now I just need to find the time to weave up a sample!

I just doubled my pattern collection by switching to Profile Drafts!

Yes, that is right folks!  Profile drafts are totally amazing, and you can go both ways with a profile draft.  You don't have to use a profile draft just to change it into something else.  Imagine taking a overshot pattern and turning it back into a profile draft!!  And then using it in something else like summer and winter, or M&O's, or lace weave!  It's totally amazing!  That is what I did for Lee's Surrender, just to see if I could!  This is how I did it:

1,2 =A
2,3 = B
3,4 = C
1,4 = D

Every combination has to be counted as a block, so take the middle part of Lee's surrender as a sample:

See at the bottom right edge?  Count all the 1,4 or 4,1 combinations:

There are 7 combinations, so in your profile draft you would fill in 7 squares for the D block.  Fill in the 7 blocks in both the threading and treadling sections.

Then, count the next section in the pattern.  I color-coordinated this one to make a little easier to see the pairs if you haven't caught on yet.

The 1,2 combination is block A.  So add 4 block A's to your profile draft in both the threading and treadling sections.

Again, go back to your main pattern and find the next combination.  It is 2 blocks of D.

Compare the two blocks at this point.  The left one is the profile draft and the right one is the original draft.  I color coded major sections so you can compare and see that they are the same. The profile draft is just missing the "overshot" parts (aka the half tones), but that is the whole point!

Keeping in mind the original "key" to transform this back, keep on going through the rest of the threading.

1,2 =A
2,3 = B
3,4 = C
1,4 = D


Now you can take this profile draft idea and transform any overshot pattern you want to into something else.  For example, I want to make Lee's Surrender in summer and winter, just because I can!  Maybe someday I will make a rug out of Lee's surrender, and summer and winter make a much better rug pattern than overshot because it doesn't have long floats of threads in the warp.


Here is 1/4 of Lee's surrender in profile form.  This would have to be repeated over several sections to get the entire draft.  But profile drafts are usually written a bit more compact anyway!

Also, now that we have the profile draft, we could change sections of it to be bigger or smaller.  That is the beauty of the profile draft!

Baa Baa Black Sheep...

... Have you any wool?

Yes, sir!  Yes, sir!  Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots  and lots and lots of bags full!

Our LYS is always getting some cool deals but... they sometimes they are one time deals, and that is my weakness.  Once the stuff is gone, it's gone!!  So, I end up stocking up on lots, probably too much.  But at least I have a lot of wool to keep me out of trouble!

That's what happens when you're self taught!

When I got my stuff back from the fair, I received some great comments from the judge.  For example: "Excellent job!  Great selvedges!  Nicely presented!  Composition good!  Color works well for design!" and other encouraging things like that.  But I also got a lot of this, "Hemstitching on wrong side."  And this, "Slant on hem should be on back."

Whoops!!  I suddenly felt really embarrassed!  All this time I thought that side looked better so it was the top side!  How wrong, but I can't help to chuckle at my mistake!  I was so embarrassed that I spent a few days thinking about if I should say something on here, but then I figured that maybe someone else has made this mistake, too.  I wish I would have known, but I do know how to fix it for the future!

Here are some great tutorials:
http://www.weaving.cc/leasesticks/aug08tip.html
http://www.weavingtoday.com/media/g/how-to-instructions/tags/Hemstitching/default.aspx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHBKqG2Do2I

Just for fun...

Here's an inspiring and exciting file photo from 2007 when I dyed a bunch of wool with kool-aide!  I think I want to try that again!  It was so much fun!

Onward and upward!  

Keep those shuttles and wheels moving!

There's a party on my loom!

And I was invited!

Isn't this bright and exciting!  I couldn't wait to share with you!

 I know there's been a lot going on with this blog, but do you remember these pinwheels?

With all that's going on, I amazingly have found time to work on them!  In this post, I said I was going to try these colors:

This is the same warp, but the weft changes to dark purple and golden yellow.  I was hoping that the purple and blue would kind of work together and the yellow and orange would kind of work together.  I had no idea what I was doing, just an idea I wanted to try!

And I'm so glad that I did!  It is amazing!

It now seems to have WAY more depth and it's just more interesting!  I like the old way too, but this is just visually something different and neat!



 I love experimenting with things on my loom!  Especially when it all turns out!









It's such a loud and exciting weave!  It looks like a party is going on!

Pink Lemonade

Just playing a little bit more with the lace-weave hearts!  This is just a little sample piece.  I wanted to see what a few hearts together would weave up to look like.  It's a 4 yard warp, and the pieces are going to be twice as long as the width, so just a little lace-piece for a small table or something decorative.  This time I have yellow as the warp and I'm switching between pink, green, purple, and yellow for the weft.  This is the pink set.

There are a few threading errors, but I think they can be corrected later and then washed out.  As you can see in both of the right sets of hearts, I accidentally have two threads together in the plain weave.  But if I remove that thread and then wash them, I think it will be unnoticeable.

Otherwise, it's a pretty little sample project PLUS it's fun and quick to weave!

Skeleton tie-up

I was trying to work on the free weavingtoday.com draft for the huck lace heart.

I love this draft and think it's so dainty and cute, way more girly than my usual tastes, however it requires 12 pedals.  I tried to figure out a skeleton tie-up on my own but just couldn't figure out anything that would work.  Then I did a Google search and came up with this website.  At this site, they will figure out your skeleton tie-ups for you!  What's really interesting to note is this designer isn't a weaver, instead he used mathematical calculations to figure out the skeleton tie-ups.  How smart!!









So here is a sample of the website.  The site has spaces to plug in what you want:

And then out pops your solution for the skeleton tie-up.  I just keep this in a notebook next to my draft.  My heart draft is so easy to follow that I didn't bother trying to draw it all out again.  I just work my way from bottom to top with the substitutions.

This is such a time saver!  I hope you find it as useful as I did!

Samples are cool!

Now that I've finished up some major projects like P2P2 and the fair projects, I feel like I am bogged down with quite a few things that I want to try.  My to-do list is huge!  So I decided to start doing a few samples.  And now I'm totally sold on samples!  They are so quick and easy and fun!

This is a sample of Powell's shadow weave.  Remember this draft I was investigating?

Well, here it is all woven up in 12/2 cotton set at 20 epi.  I might need a slight closer set, because I had to add 2 more rows to each rotation.  I warped 96 threads at 2 yards. 

It might be small, but at least now we know it works! 

By the way, I will find something to use it for, trust me!

Next on my sampling list is some lace weaves and then M&O's.  I have been wanting to try a project again with each, but just haven't had the time to get through all that I want to do before adding more stuff!!  It's crazy... there is ALWAYS something to weave and experiment with!!  This hobby is going to drive me crazy!