Tag Archive | weaving

Finally finsihed!

The Tri top is done. I wove four 12″ squares and sewed them in pairs. Folded in the sleeve openings a couple times and fitted the sleeves in until they looked right. Pinned them in place and tried it on, adjusting until I had the look I needed.

Then I top stitched the sleeves in place.

After that I turned it inside out and cut the excess fabric and zigzaged the seam.

Here it is.

I tried to take my picture in it but the do-it-yourself-setting on my camera has quit doing it. All I get is a fuzzy one so will have to wait until Himself and do the photography with his big mulit-talented camera. But here’s the fuzzy view, for what it’s worth.

I think it turned out, in the end, okay if a less than flattering design for me. The color is nice and the texture of this soft cotton is very nice.

And, by the way, the beans are coming up! Hope things are springing up where you are!

Is it a blouse or is it a cat blanket?!

May12

That’s still up for grabs. I am working on the sleeves. I think the problem is that the shoulders are too wide. This is going to turn out to be one of those cut and sew projects after all. But meantime the weather has warmed up and we got the bean tower in and the beans planted. It’s 80 degrees on the deck. Yum!

Cotton top

May10

Got my extra yarn from Webs so am starting on the sleeves again. I’m kind of playing this by ear, so am not quite sure how it’s going to work. Or frankly, IF it’s going to work. I’m going to weave the four 12″ squares and see what it looks like and go from there. I’m thinking I might like set-in sleeves better than just square ones, which will mean some machine sewing- steeking- but I’m not sure how that will look with this design.

Meantime, I’ve been getting some gardening done, tho it’s still a bit early. In spite of warmer than normal temps, it’s still a bit chilly nights so I am rather pushing it. And now he’s getting going again in the shop, preparing stock for Black Sheep Gathering at the end of June, which means I’ll be out there more, too. Still, I have weaving time in the evenings while the games are on! The Giants are doing great so far.

Hope things are warming up where you are!

Sleeves

Apr28

I wove some 7″ triangles and made a sleeve. I think it’s going to work. I need to weave the other one and sew up the neckline a bit, it’s too wide as is. Then we’ll see.

Meantime I was playing with a little thing I found on a Brazilian Youtube. I did this experiment on the Tiny Weaver Square. It should have had 5 petals, but I wasn’t up to the math and just wanted to see how it would work. Kinda of cute. Takes a bit of time and my warp was, in this case, too thick to really work well. There’s a rather too thick lump in the center where all the warps cross, but I can see uses for this sort of thing.

Assembling

Apr27

Got the top pinned together and am sewing up the shoulders and sides. Fit is pretty good, near as I can tell but… same ole same ole… It needs sleeves. No, I need sleeves. I think this would be cute as a sleeveless top on someone with firm young arms. Mine need sleeves. Not sure how I’m going to go about that but will be working on it. Here it is so far.

The front I assembled using a slip stitch in the darker yarn. The back is just an overhand stitch in the same yarn. I decided that if I was going to be wearing a target, it should be on the front and not the center of my back! More later!

A hail of a spring day!

Apr25

Hail, rain, wind and all the while the sun shinning! lol Well, not all the while. It did gloom up now and then, too. And never did get very warm. Took my morning walk and then came back in and went back to weaving. Lookee there… it’s hailing again! I always feel sorry for the poor critters out there in that stuff. I remember many, many years ago walking home from school and got caught in a hail storm. Tried hiding under a hedge but finally ran to the nearest house and begged asylum. The lady let me come in until the storm passed. That was actually 60+ years ago and I remember it vividly! I hope all the critters can find a safe place to ride out these showers!

But back to weaving, the suns out again! lol I decided to make the center front yoke in the second color and weave it in a twill. I think it’s going to work.

Another project

Apr22

The white 6″ cotton squares are going to take a long time, if they ever do get done. The one I washed did soften up. Not a lot, it’ll still be a ‘crisp’ cotton, but mostly it’s going to take a long time to weave them. So meantime I have a new project started. Have some worsted weight cotton in my stash. It’s make by blue sky Alpaca, but it’s 100% cotton and very soft. I’m not sure how it will wear but decided to try it. I’m using the 14″ triangle for this one. I just finished weaving the first Tri. It took 30 minutes to weave this one, it’s woven plain. The yarn has a subtle variation with very light blue, a slightly darker blue, and just a tiny touch of a light green. It doesn’t photograph well. I might work a texture for the yoke tris. Haven’t decided about that yet. But here’s the sketch of what I have in mind and the fist tri.

Easter weekend

Apr20

No weaving going on this weekend. My hands are now too grubby to touch yarn! Gardening and spring type yard work instead. For instance, here’s Randy filling the new garden box with compost and dirt. He sifts all the rock and roots out first, lots of work but it makes a nice growing bed. The tomatoes will go here this year. He also put up the pea trellis, tho they haven’t quite reached that high yet. 😉 A bumper crop of rhubarb in the back there. The bed to the right will have summer squashes and cukes eventually, they’re still in the baby seed bed, but growing nicely, as are the onions in the left photo. I planted three kinds this year, the regular yellow, also some white and red which I haven’t tried before. The bushy plant is a perennial celery. Kind of a cross between celery and parsley, I guess. It has the celery leaf flavor, and that’s what I like. It’s in its third year now.

But I will show you the squares I wove last week from the stash picks. I am leaning heavily to the one on the right. It’s the easiest to weave and I rather like it’s texture. I think it’ll make a nice summer top. But it won’t be a fast one because even being easiest, it is still a slow yarn slow work with. I don’t seem to have the labels handy but if I haven’t said what it is, I will when I get back to it.

Meantime, I am enjoying a nice summer this spring. Hope it’s a warm sunny weekend where you are!

Looking for the next project!

Apr15

I liked my new top so much that I went out to Le Shed this morning and rummaged into the bins and found some potential yarns for summer tops. I bought this stash (most of an 8×10′ shed) from a knitting lady who retired and moved so there is a lot of stuff in there that I am not familiar with. I found these four that look like I may have enough for a project. There is one more, a thick and thin linen that looks nice but is heck to weave with on this type of loom. I’m not sure how these are going to do, either. I’ve started weaving a swatch of one. It’s pretty and very summery. It claims to be cotton, mohair, and poly something or other. The one at the bottom of the photo. It seems to be do-able but it will be slow going. Should be a lovely fabric if I can get them done. I am working on designs. We all know how well that worked this last time! But I have High Hopes! And even if the last one didn’t quite work out as originally planned it still worked out so this one probably will too. Check back now and then to see how it’s going. I’m still looking for ideas for that other pile of squares, too.

Almost done

Apr13

Okay, got it together, tried it on. It fits! so I wove a bunch of 2×6’s to add a little to the length, my calculations telling me I did not have enough to make it 4×6. But it may take awhile to get this strip added as I am trying to make it look like I had planned this all along so am attaching it with a kind of lacy looking stitch. I hope. I added the slide stitch pattern to the front neck and also to this bottom trim to give it a bit of interest. I don’t remember if I said but the neckline I had planned proved to be too low for my taste so I added another 6×6 there, as you can see.

Hazel Rose

My Life in the Country