Marshfield Extended

I never sat down to write about my time at Marshfield School of Weaving in Vermont this past winter, but my birthday present to myself was a week off of work to warp up my blue counterbalance loom at home, which gave me some time to reflect again on that experience and all that I learned. This class felt like exactly the right next step that I needed, and the skills I picked up were techniques that I had been reaching for but didn’t know where to find on my own.

Justin Squizzero led the class and emphasized this tradition of weaving and the way it is passed down as experiential learning; you learn by watching someone who knows what they’re doing, with a focus on the doing itself rather than explaining how to do.

The process of weaving on an antique four poster loom also showed me how much better the movements of weaving flow when they’re done on a human scale. Using a big warping board, winding bobbins on an antique winder, and being able to step inside the loom left my body feeling rejuvenated rather than crunched.

I wove my wedding blanket with singles wool, which meant that we got to do a waulking with Norman Kennedy on the last day. This was another really special moment where we brought together hands, cloth, and heart as we sang songs while pounding the cloth on the table. Waulking the cloth after a long soapy soak allows the fibers to come together and finish it into a fabric with a really lovely hand.

I had a lot more to say about this right after the class but this blog function is a little cumbersome at the moment so maybe more will trickle out later. But the biggest takeaways for me from the whole experience were that people really had it figured out a couple hundred years ago, and now that I’m an experienced weaver who understands the process, it’s really worth it for me (and you! if you’re reading this) to take the time to delve deep into the ways folks used to weave. They knew what they were doing, and it has really helped me to understand better the cloth and the loom to spend the effort to get to know these machines.

All that said, setting up my little blue loom this past week was truly enlightening this go-round. Turns out I used to have no idea what I was doing! But after learning more about loom mechanics at Marshfield this little guy is weaving like a dream.

Happy fall!

It Still Lives Foxfire Interview

I had the honor of being interviewed for Foxfire’s It Still Lives podcast in last month and it has been release out into the world! I had a really lovely conversation with Kami Ahrens and Sharon Grist (resident weaver at Foxfire) about craft, community, and history. Click below to take a listen.

Sing Till the Work's All Done

Here’s a little recap of the truly delightful Folk School class I was lucky enough to be a part of this month. Taught by Martha Owen and Melissa Weaver Dunning, this class covered wool fiber processing, dyeing, spinning, and a bit of weaving. And singing of course!

We started off the week dyeing some scoured fleece grown by one of Martha’s sheep named Skeeter (who is a Cormo x Corriedale cross). We used only a few dye pots to get all 5 colors at left. First we did 2/5 of the fleece in the cochineal to get magenta and 3/5 of it in dyer’s chamomile to get yellow, then we took 1/3 of that yellow to a cochineal overdye bath to get the orange. Half of the original cochineal fleece and 1/3 of the yellow then went into an iron bath to give us purple from the cochineal and green from the chamomile. These became a fun jumping off point for carding & color blending experiments for me later in the week.

I was really excited to finally FINALLY learn the difference between processing for worsted yarn vs. for woolen yarn. First we covered using combs and how to spin a worsted yarn, and I used the worsted method to spin yarn for a sample warp—my first ever handspun warp! It was only 2.5 yards long and about 90 ends but it was enough to get me started. This was a single and it was super active, but I only had a few ends break during threading where the yarn had become really thin.

We also talked about carding wool to make rolags and methods for spinning woolen yarn. I ended up doing a lot of carding in order to sample blending together the different dyes—here are a few of my sample cards I created. I noted where the fiber started out (ie as scoured fleece), what it was mordanted & dyed with, and I saved a lock of fleece in addition to a sample of a single and 2-ply yarn, because I noticed that the color often looked different once the whole lock of fleece was carded together.

For my weaving project, I chose an eight-thread herringbone draft from Davison after seeing a really lovely natural & blue herringbone piece that Martha brought to class as a sample. I first sett the warp at 25 ends per inch, which gave me the fabric on the left. After fulling this sample I resleyed at 20 epi (right) to get something with a softer hand.

That sample ended up being really lovely after fulling—I want to make myself a whole outfit out of it. I’ve never felt fabric quite like it, maybe because I know how much work went into it. I used up a lot of my tiny natural dyed skeins in this sample and played around with the treadling as well. Weaving with my handspun was a hurdle I had been intimidated to overcome for a long time, and I’m so glad I finally gave it a shot. This little piece of fabric is a sample I’m going to treasure forever! And hopefully look back on after a long time to see how far I’ve come with my spinning.

Another highlight was spinning on the walking wheel. In addition to its speed, I really enjoyed the motions of this type of spinning. I made a nice squishy 2-ply skein from some California Variegated Mutant fleece that I’ll hopefully find a good knitting project for in the future.

As a special treat Martha took us out to see her flock of sheep and meet the ones who grew all that fleece for us. These guys are wearing coats to protect their fleece through the winter and make the post-shearing processing less labor-intensive. Now I’m scheming on how to work sheep into my future too!

It was really special to be able to spend a week connecting with fiber and people together on a deep level and dipping into ancestral skills that I’ve been seeking out for a long time. I learned a lot, and it brought home that doing this work in a community is really what I want to be doing in the future. If this sounds like a dream come true for you like it did for me, Martha & Melissa will be teaching this class at the Folk School next year! And lastly to get a peek at the songs we were singing & stories we got to hear from Martha, their Morning Song performance is below for your viewing pleasure.

Sarah Nelson No. 1: Dimity Stripe and Honeycomb

I started out sampling Sarah’s drafts from Francis L. Goodrich’s Coverlets and Counterpanes (Miller & Schillo) with the first draft, titled “Dimity Stripe and Honeycomb.” I finally got my cone of 30/2 unmercerized cotton from Lunatic Fringe (truly the only place on the internet I managed to find unmercerized yarn in this size) and though it was too late to use it for class, I’ve been able to use it for the rest of my counterpane sampling.

I wound this warp to I think 6 yards to give myself enough room to sample all the drafts while cutting off and tying back on. I sett it at 40 to the inch which I think is the finest sett I’ve ever woven! I did the same as I mentioned in my previous blog post as far as sampling a bunch of different warps to find out which ones worked best. Although while using 20/2 thread I preferred using the same for weft, while using 30/2 I found that using that same thread doubled worked the best for weft in this case. In the picture below, my sample on the left uses 30/2 held double, and the right uses it held singly. Using doubled weft gives it a more full appearance which I liked a lot.

I also sampled a few options for honeycomb cord, and I liked an 8/2 unmercerized cotton best for that, although truth be told there wasn’t much difference between using that and using the 30/2 held double just as the cord in addition to the tabby thread. (You can see both on the left-hand sample above: the top section uses 30/2 doubled and the bottom section below the plain weave band uses 8/2.)

I wove this sample as I did the previous batch, working off of Sarah’s handwritten draft and her treadling patterns. To give you an idea of the treadling, here’s what she wrote for this draft:

“Tramp two on the right hand - throw in the cord as you see the dots,

Then two on the left hand and throw the cord again.

The two middle ones - one at a time till you get 8 threads, then put in the cord.

Then tramp the outside - one at a time till you get 8 threads.”

Luckily it seems that Sarah was working with a direct tie up so these directions were not nearly as inscrutable as I thought they would be at first glance. I did definitely forget to translate these to a jack loom treadling (which I’m working with) from what must have been a treadling written for counterbalance until I cut my first sample off the loom and flipped it over so it finally looked like the picture. :)

To finish up the sampling for this draft, I wove the same section of a pattern repeat twice, to have one sample for my book unwashed (below left) and one washed (above left). I’m planning to do this for each of Sarah’s drafts in this book. Not only does it show how the cloth changes during wet finishing, but it’s helpful to have a reference for how much shrinkage you get.

This first round of sampling helped me settle on which wefts I will use for the rest of the drafts and also helped me work through the more mysterious aspects of the way Sarah wrote out the patterns.

Project details:

• draft: Sarah Nelson No. 1: Dimity Strip and Honeycomb

• Warp: 30/2 unmercerized cotton from Lunatic Fringe

• Weft: samples various wefts, settled on 30/2 unmercerized cotton held double for tabby, and 8/2 unmercerized cotton for honeycomb cord

• 40 ends per inch

• 7” wide (I used up every heddle on this tiny loom lol)

• ~6 yards warped

Sarah Nelson Counterpane Sampling

I was lucky enough to assist Susan Leveille’s counterpane class at the Folk School at the end of September and it has sent me on a sampling journey, exploring the counterpane drafts of Sarah Nelson included in Francis L. Goodrich’s Coverlet and Counterpane Drafts by Barbara Miller and Deb Schillo. Before class, Susan asked us to wind a warp using UNmercerized cotton in white or natural, as fine as we could get it (I could only get my hands on 20/2 before class started), 15-18” wide. I wound my warp to be sett at 32 epi.

I chose to work from the No. 8 draft “Huckyback, Satin and Plain” for my class samples. I started sampling with various wefts of different thicknesses, and I found that using the same material as the warp (20/2 cotton) worked best with this configuration. Pictured below are those samples on the loom and after washing.

I worked up a few samples in honeycomb treadling as well, using the same tabby weft as above and a fluffier 5/3 cotton for the honeycomb cord. Sarah didn’t mention working it this way in her samples, but Susan brought an antique honeycomb counterpane to show us so I wanted to try it out while I had that to reference. Below left is Susan’s antique, my sample is on the right.

Just for fun I also tried it using blue cotton unmercerized weft—it really makes it easy to see the floats in the warp and weft and provides some interesting texture.

One small criticism I have of the layout of this book is that the computer drawdowns are sooooo tiny that it’s really hard to read them. This problem led me to trying something different, which was working from the drafts in the old notation as Sarah wrote them, as well as trying to follow her treadling patterns, which are written out in full sentences, instead of in a drawdown. This has proven really fun and has helped me be able to read the cloth itself better, instead of relying on the computer draft. It’s been so enlightening to weave these samples that I have started working through all of the Sarah Nelson drafts, this time using the 30/2 unmercerized cotton I wanted to use on the first batch. More to come on each of those samples!

Project details:

• Draft: Sarah Nelson’s No. 8 Huckyback, Satin and Plain from Frances Goodrich’s Coverlets & Counterpanes

• 32 epi

• 16.5” wide in reed

• Wound 4 yards of warp

• Warp and weft: 20/2 unmercerized cotton, honeycomb cord: 5/3 unmercerized cotton

Wedge Weave Workshop with Connie Lippert

I’m coming off a workshop (ok it was 2 weeks ago) with the wonderful Connie Lippert at John C. Campbell Folk School focused on wedge weave, a variation on pulled warp tapestry technique. I love tapestry studio time because it gives me the space to ask questions and weave samples to try to find the answers. Pictured at right is my first piece in progress. I had a whole slew of things to test out in this sample, including:

• turning back the weft after every thread vs. every other thread (changes the angle of the wedge)

• weaving a shape in “horizontal” tapestry (i.e. the way I normally do) in the middle of a wedge

• weaving wedges in 2 directions to meet with a slit in the middle

• navigating how to continue a color up the piece and working out where to start + end weft bundles to create the shapes I wanted

Above you can see the difference that wet finishing made in the way the warp moved. Top left image is with the piece still on the loom, top right is after cutting off, and bottom is after wet finishing. This sample I finished in my normal way which is a light spray with water and a gentle steam iron, but I didn’t pin it as I usually do when blocking to allow the warp to move.

I wove the next sample to test out a few color gradient techniques, including hatching, pick & pick, and color blending in weft bundles.

In the top section, I sampled weaving a larger horizontally-woven rectangle with a shadow to test out sewing slits and see if the warp movement would affect that seam. Wet finishing didn’t have a huge impact on the shape of the rectangles or the sewn slit, but the edges of the wedges right next to the orange rectangle did move quite a bit, as you can see below.

I finished this piece using Connie’s method: soaking a few towels in warm water and laying them overnight on the tapestry, sitting on a piece of plastic sheeting, then removing the towels and letting the piece dry.

All in all it was such a treat to be a part of a tapestry workshop again! Connie is so knowledgeable on this topic and it was so great to finally get a chance to learn from her.

Project details:

• 12/6 cotton seine twine warp

• Vevgarn Frid wool weft, usually used held double, sometimes with cotton accent threads added

A&B Wedding Coverlet

Two of my dear friends got married this weekend. I wanted to weave them an heirloom they could treasure and that would keep them warm for the rest of their lives. It had also been about a year since I had woven a coverlet, and I was itching to get back into overshot. I spent a long time searching for a draft and eventually settled on “Double Compass Work” from Margeurite Davison’s A Handweaver’s Source Book (not the green book, but the one that’s entirely block drafts) because of its resemblance to Wedding Ring quilt patterns.

For warp / tabby weft, I chose an unmercerized 16/2 natural cotton from Yarn Barn. I picked it before settling on the draft and mostly because I could get enough of it quickly, but next time would choose a thinner yarn for this project. The wool is Harrisville Shetland in Evergreen.

I chose a sett of 28 epi — this is what worked out with a whole number of repeats across the width of each panel. It was a little close for my liking and made the tabby areas appear just a little bit warp faced. Each panel was 43” wide in the reed already at this sett, and I didn’t want to make the piece too big so I had to work with it.

I also didn’t spend enough time up front deciding what the border would look like; I just sent it off in one direction along a twill diagonal (left). I really didn’t like what this did to the bottom of the circles on the rest of the draft. I pulled out the border and rethreaded it (right). Much better.

My next trial came when I discovered, after weaving a whole sampler piece, cutting it off, and weaving a full 12” of the real coverlet, that I had made a threading error. I found it because I was following my diagonal line of pattern weft blocks and came upon a tabby square where there should have been a solid pattern square, shown inside the red outline above. Luckily because only this small section was misthreaded, I only had to correct a few threads. I snipped them out, made new string heddles for them, and tacked down the warp ends with a T pin to weave back in later.

You can see below the error on the right side vs. the correct threading on the left. The red arrows point to the same areas of the pattern, which should look identical. The yellow line shows where I made the repair, and the blue arrows point to the now-identical areas after the repair.

Most of the rest of the coverlet was chugging along in the weaving zone. I added my initials, the year, and the couple’s initials along the bottom of each panel using a traditional pickup method found in The Coverlet Book by Helene Bress. The letters are made of floats over a background box where every other thread is raised (in my case, harnesses 1 & 3) within the box. The rest of the panel is woven as normal.

And now it lives out west with its people! I cried a lot when I gave it to my friends. I’m really proud especially of how well I matched the seams and I hope it brings them joy for a long time to come.

Project details:

• “Double Compass” four harness overshot draft from Marguerite Davison’s Handweaver’s Source Book

• 28 epi, sleyed 2-2-3 in a 12 dent reed

• 43” wide panels in the reed, 37” wide after wet finishing

• each panel woven to 133.5” total length under tension

• 15 yard warp which gave me enough extra for about 1 yard of sampling

• final measurements: 110” x 115”

• tabby & warp: 16/2 unmercerized Natural cotton from Yarn Barn

• pattern weft: Harrisville Shetland in Evergreen

Inkle Shoelaces

My shoelaces broke so I wove some new ones on an inkle loom. It turns out making a tube is a pretty simple concept—insert the shuttle into the open shed from only one side rather than moving it back & forth, and pull tight to make a tube.

Project details: I didn’t write these down (shame) but I used 2 shades of blue perle cotton, maybe an 8/2? And I think there were 13 warp threads. Super simple

18th c. Handwoven Apron

I have sewn a few garments from my handwoven fabric before, but since delving into the world of historical costuming last winter I’ve been dreaming about sewing some practical clothes from my handwovens. I was inspired first by an instagram post from Elisabeth Hill (@plainweave) sampling 10/2 cotton at different setts to get an idea of the hand of the fabric each sett would produce.

check sett samples in 8, 10, & 12 ends/cm

I wove the above samples with unmercerized 10/2 cotton, resleying the same 8 end check to 8, 10, & 12 ends/cm. I found that the 10 ends/cm (which is about the same as 24 epi) was my favorite for clothing fabric. I knew also that I wanted to weave a blue & white check pattern for my apron fabric. This article from 18th Century Notebook provided a lot of contemporary images for checked aprons and was really helpful for deciding on the length I needed as well. I wound up perusing sample books in the online collections of Winterthur, where I found this sample book of fabrics from 1767 from Henry Remsen Jr. & Co., an importer of goods based in New York City in the 18th century. This book includes many fabric samplers including a ton of check variations. I decided on the following warp stripe pattern, which I wove in the same order with the weft colors in order to produce a check:

4 blue / 8 white / 2 blue / 2 white / 2 blue / 8 white, repeated 26 times in straight draw sett at 10 ends/cm

(So I know the teal-y blue I used isn’t exactly period appropriate but it was leftover from the check samples & what I had, so I used it.)

fabric on the loom

I wove this fabric with the intention of following the apron sew along from Burnley & Trowbridge for the construction of the piece, so I used the info they provided to settle on a width. The fabric was about 44cm wide in the reed, which was how it worked out with my weaving width & diving evenly (3 panels) into the average apron width of 114-127cm. I wove each panel to be about 1 yard long; giving myself room to sample I wound a 5.5 yd warp. Also I because I wove this on my counterbalance loom which I have not taken the time to get set up really properly, there are a couple of spots where the weft runs over some warp threads it isn’t meant to which you can see in the above pic.

My checks didn’t end up matching perfectly but that didn’t bother me & I wasn’t going to waste fabric trying to line everything up perfectly. I felled the 3 panels together and hemmed all around 3 edges, leaving the top edge raw. I took this piece of fabric with me to a month-long weaving mentorship program at the John C Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC. While I brought some commercially woven twill tape with me, I picked up inkle loom weaving and decided to weave some tape of my own to use for the apron strings.

tape bundle & apron fabric

I pulled the draft for the tape from Handwoven Tape: Understanding and Weaving Early American and Contemporary Tape by Susan Faulkner Weaver. The blue & white are the same threads I used for the rest of the fabric, and the red is a 2-ply hemp that I have used before for tapestry warp. This tape pattern is based on a tape sewn to grain bag from Pennsylvania. I modified the draft slightly to make it compatible with an inkle loom.

weaving fabric to cover binding

I also realized that I neglected to bring extra fabric for the binding, but luckily I had room at the end of a sample warp to weave up a small piece of plain weave for this. While I used the same blue weft from the apron, the warp was a mercerized natural 20/2 cotton.

I didn’t take any pics of the sewing process, but I did do it all by hand which I love & was very soothing. For the last step I had to monogram it in reversible cross stitch of course. And the goats have already tried to eat the ends of the apron ties.

project details:

• straight draw, 4 harness

• 10 ends/cm, sleyed 2-3-2-3 in 4 dents/cm reed

• 42 cm wide

• 5.5 yd warp

• check: (4 blue / 8 white / 2 blue / 2 white / 2 blue / 8 white) x 26, 4 blue