Indholdsfortegnelse for March - April 2017 i Handwoven

A SUCCESSFUL SALE The Eugene Weavers’ Guild Annual Holiday Sale and Celebration was held November 25–26 at the Eugene Textile Center. In addition to the many towels, scarves, table runners, garments, hats, bags, and stuffed animals, guild members also sold thirty-six special-edition bread cloths. The bread cloths were designed, woven, and finished by members as a fundraiser for the guild. The guild celebration also included a raffle with proceeds going to the Egan Warming Center, a local organization that helps the homeless. The item raffled was a beautiful handspun, handwoven shawl created by Just Desserts, a local “sheep-to-shawl” group that includes several guild members. The shawl won first place at this year’s Black Sheep Gathering sheep to shawl contest. With weaving and spinning demonstrations that continued throughout both days, daily…

UNIVERSAL YARN CLASSIC SHADES Weave the rainbow with the scrumptious Classic Shades yarn line from Universal Yarn. The brilliant hues found in each skein of yarn from the twenty-nine different colorways seem to almost melt into one another as they change, making it the perfect yarn for colorobsessed weavers. Use it in the weft with a solid-colored warp to get a striking, striped effect. Made from a blend of acrylic and wool, this soft yarn is surprisingly strong and holds up well when washed. It’s available in 100-gram skeins of 197 yards. www.universalyarn.com LOST POND LOOMS Take on tapestry with these beautiful, handcrafted looms from Lost Pond Looms. Each hardwood loom is carefully handmade to order in western New York by the company’s founder and owner Craig Vogel. The looms…

NORDIC WEAVING IN THE 20TH CENTURY In Denmark at the turn of the 20th century, men wove everyday textiles in the villages, but when industrialization began, the male weavers were attracted to commercial mills and sewing sheds. At the same time, women were trained as tapestry weavers to produce designs by recognized artists using Nordic tapestry techniques that were also common in Norway and Sweden. During World War II, Denmark had a resurgence of production handweaving for everyday textiles, now with women at the looms. During the war, professional weaving workshops weren’t able to import yarn of sufficient quality to produce durable everyday textiles. So in 1946, they founded Væverlauget (Weavers’ Guild) to be able to import enough quality yarn to supply all the workshops. Aft er just one year,…

Since I’m now involved with Glimakra USA, I went to Sweden last year to learn more about Swedish weaves. I went to many museums and was able to see wonderful examples of traditional Swedish weaving. I was charmed by the dukagång textiles, with their images of dancing people, boats, and fanciful plants. Many of the dukagång pieces in the museums were very detailed, and the inlay technique takes time, so I can only imagine how long it took to weave those pieces from many years ago. For these towels, I chose simple, sunny designs that will look good in your home and serve as a fun introduction to this technique. Before I tackle a really detailed dukagång design, I plan to go to next year’s weaving conference in Växjö, Sweden,…

Many of my woven projects have pick-up and drop-down designs, so last summer I decided to take Susan Foulkes’s workshop at the Braids 2016 Conference in Tacoma, Washington. Its title? “Weaving Patterned Bands Using the Double-Slotted Heddle.” I’d used a similar threading before on my inkle loom, but working with this special heddle was a chance to acquire a new skill. Susan shared with us several exquisite bands, many typical of those woven by the Sámi, indigenous people originally living on the land in the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and western Russia. What these bands all had in common was the Baltic threading in which each dark pattern thread has a light background thread to its left and to its right (LDL repeat). Over two days, we wove…

I thought you might like to see how Handwoven magazine’s back issues continue to inspire me. This year’s annual Christmas kitchen towel design for family and friends was adapted from Elisabeth Hill’s deflected doubleweave Muted Mosaic Throw from the November/December 2015 issue and information from one of your Yarn Lab studies on the weave structure: ten towels in 8/2 unmercerized cotton, all with black and white warp and various colors for the weft. Soon I hope to learn how to create my own deflected doubleweave drafts!…

Whenever I teach a class on boundweave or krokbragd (a Scandinavian boundweave pattern), there are a few students who struggle with the technique—not because it’s difficult to understand or to weave but because these weft -faced weaves tend to produce an untidy-looking selvedge. Weavers who pride themselves on perfect selvedges will start to crumble at the way these edges look, but it’s not a matter of weaverly skill. Boundweave selvedges require a totally different mind-set and an acquired level of acceptance. “Relax and breathe. Become one with your rug,” I tell my students. Let me explain the challenge. Boundweave patterns, including krokbragd, are weft -faced twills. With many twill patterns, the weft thread sometime catches at the edge and sometimes not. I am sure all of you experienced this when…

Usually when I think handwoven towels I also think of 8/2 cotton, but lately I’ve wanted to weave towels that were a bit lighter. In particular, I wanted to weave some hand towels to match a small powder room. I started sampling using 16/2 unmercerized cotton from my stash and a half dräll draft from an old Swedish weaving book. (Half dräll, or halvdräll, is a Swedish block weave with weft floats). The draft was designed for wool curtains and it used a very slow color blending in the pattern weft. I decided to incorporate that idea in my design. The sampling went fine, but aft er I washed the sample, I wished the plain-weave areas were more interesting. My sample reminded me of some napkins I had woven using…

My first encounter with rya, the loose Scandinavian pile weave used for blankets, rugs, and wall hangings, was not really rya weaving at all. In the 1970s, my mother and aunt bought “rya” kits at our local yarn store and enthusiastically knotted Scandinavian- looking pile designs into a prewoven mesh fabric. It wasn’t until an Interweave-led journey to Scandinavia in 1996 that I learned the rich history of woven rya (rye or the plural, ryer, in Norwegian), from a practical substitute for sheepskin to a modern art form. RYA BEGINNINGS According to researcher and weaver Inger Anne Utvåg, the oldest surviving rya blanket in Norway dates to 1681. The earliest surviving examples are båtrya (boat rya), which were used by fisherfolk on the northwest coast of Norway to keep them…

SUPPLIERS Blue Heron Knittery, 300 W Water Street, Decorah, IA 52101, (563) 517-1059, www.blueheronknittery.com (Osterhaug 61 –62). Cotton Clouds, 5176 S. 14th Ave., Safford, AZ 85546, (800) 322-7888, www.cottonclouds.com (Jackson 52–54). Eugene Textile Center, 1510 Jacobs Dr., Eugene, OR 97402, (541) 688-1565, www.eugenetextilecenter.com (Liles 48–50). Glimakra USA, 50 Hall Ln., Clancy, MT 59634, (866) 890-7314, (406) 442-0354, www.glimakrausa.com (Isenhower 44–46). Halcyon Yarn, 12 School St., Bath, ME 04530, (800) 341-0282, www.halcyonyarn.com (Isenhower 44–46; Jackson 52–54). Lone Star Loom Room, (888) 562- 7012, www.lonestarloomroom.com (Hagenbruch 36–38; Horton 40–42; Isenhower 44–46; Jackson 52-54). Vävstuga Swedish Weaving and Folk Arts, 16 Water St., Shelburne Falls, MA 01370-1119, (413) 625-8241, www.vavstuga.com (Hagenbruch 36–38). Venne-Colcoton Unikat, www.vennecolcoton.com, sales@vennecolcoton.com (Horton 40–42; Jackson 52-54). Yarn Barn of Kansas, 930 Massachusetts, Lawrence, KS 66044, (785) 842-4333, (800) 468-0035,…

T he weaving world lost one of its most colorful members when Randall Darwall died after a battle with cancer on January 13. Darwall was more than just a weaver or an artist: he was a master of color who was known to quip, “Why use five colors when fifty will do nicely?" Darwall used color like no one else; he once wrote, “I can’t hear all the subtleties in sound, but I can ‘hear‘ color.” While Darwall was renowned and respected as an artist, he was also well loved by his fellow weavers, who knew him as Randy. Along with his husband and business partner, Brian Murphy, Darwall leaves behind many friends and colleagues, a few of whom shared their memories of the man and his weaving. “I’m not…

In 1327, Tughlaq passed an order officially moving the his capital and all its inhabitants from Delhi to Daulatabad, and a great migration began. Merchants, artisans, and the general public followed the royal family and their entourage to Daulatabad. With them also came weavers, many of whom settled in the city of Aurangabad. Since that time, weavers in the city have passed down their knowledge of two exquisite fabrics: himroo, a favorite of royalty, and paithani, shimmering saree fabric intricately woven in threads of silver and gold. A HERITAGE OF HIMROO Traditionally, himroo fabric was woven using cotton and silk. Its origins date back to a time when people considered pure silk fabric to be overly feminine and thus off limits for men. Himroo combined silk and cotton, so it…

The threading for half dukagång is a simple straight draw on four shaft s. The plain-weave cloth is woven by alternating shaft s 1-3 vs 2-4. To insert the inlay weft , shaft s 2-3-4 are raised. The inlay is worked on the back of the cloth so that the turns from row to row of the inlay weft do not show on the face. When the cloth is turned over, the inlay weft shows as floats over the three warp ends on shaft s 2-3-4. The “tiedown” ends on shaft 1 form vertical stripes in the cloth; see Figure 1. If only one tie-down shaft is raised for each pattern pick in summer and winter, it is structurally the same as half dukagång; see Figure 2b. Both halfdukagång and…

What do you get when you mix three keenly curious weaving friends, three pounds of cottolin in four gorgeous colors, and three intriguing Finnish weaving draft s? In this case, an adventure in weaving new structures and three sets of table linens to treasure. Gayle Pace, Janet Giardina, and Marty Benson selected draft s from a collection of traditional Finnish patterns and wove napkins, table runners, and placemats in coordinating colors, creating a friendly grouping of patterns and textures for their tables. Gayle’s six napkins, woven on four shaft s, are crisp and cheerful. Combining gingham-like blocks of yellow lace with blocks of leaf green, she outlines the contrasting textures with single threads of brown. Janet’s three elegant table runners, woven on eight shaft s, echo Gayle’s lace and plain-weave…

READING DRAFTS Some drafts for weaving are very, very long if they are written out thread by thread. To save space, wherever any section of the threading or treadling is repeated, a bracket is placed above it with the number of times to do that section. For example, in the threading draft shown here, there are two levels of brackets, one marked 2x and one marked 10x. To thread: Start at the right side and thread (after the floating selvedge) 1-2-3-4. Since the 2x is directly above these threads, you will thread that two times. Then continue, 1-2-3-4-1-4-3-2-1-4. You are now at the end of the 10x bracket, so you’ll do everything under that bracket (including the 2x section) ten times. When the threading continues to another row, you also…