Weaverly

Point of View

Which of these is not like the others?

 

Pause

A break after the frenetic activity of the last few days. A walk in the cool morning. I was observed.

A picnic lunch in the rain. A visit to a real camera store in a neighboring city. My new Gorillapod. They come in six colors. I chose green.

 

A Miscellany

Casual Friday is finished, cut off, and hemmed. Unfortunately one of my floodlamps burned out, so the lighting is a bit off. But you get the general idea.

 

Pattern follows me everywhere. This morning the sun's rays falling on the carpet of the waiting room at my early appointment looked like this:

…and yesterday the magnolia blossoms on a neighborhood tree were in their end stages, but still gorgeous.

 

Now on to the Department of Drama. My favorite second grader was the narrator in his school play, a compendium of folk tales from around the world. Here he is in African garb.

Now, folks, in case you don't recognize it, here is a virtual spinning wheel, operated by Rumpelstiltskin. The princess looks totally bored.

 

The entire second grade cast took a well deserved curtain call.

 
 

Construction Details and Finished Book

The book ("Letters From My Uncle") is finished.

I drew the template for the spine stitching so that the holes line up on a slant. This will help avoid the risk of blowout from having the holes too close together. 

 

The template was taped to the spine and the holes were punched with my Japanese screw punch, maybe the best tool ever.

Here's the spine with completed holes.

This is the template for marking the folios.

 

I dotted the stitching location on each folio with a black marker pen; I didn't want to punch holes in the weaving, for fear of the cloth unraveling. 

 

The finished spine stitching; notice the diagonals.

 

A detail of the colophon.

 

And here is a video, taken outdoors with real live birds supplying the soundtrack.

Cover Details

Just a bit of work on the book today. I machine embroidered a title on a piece of black broadcloth and stitched it to the front cover. The title will be hidden by the flap until the reader unties the band.

 

For a band, I cut a long strip of the cover fabric along the selvedge. This was easy to sew because using the selvedge on the outside eliminated the need for a bulky seam allowance. The band will wrap around the finished book twice before being tucked in.

I also wrote a short colophon and printed it in my ink-jet printer on a piece of muslin. This will get stitched to the inside of the back cover. Still to go: the actual longstitch binding.
 

4 Folios & a Cover

Monday's share of weaving on Casual Friday is finished. There was one error in the file which had to be corrected; afterwards the weaving went quickly.

As usual, the reverse side held a few surprises.

Then back to the woven book. The binding of the head and tail edges of the folios is done. The pages flip just the way I anticipated. There is no real right or wrong side. 

Here's a stack of all four folios (8 pages, or 16 sides) seen from the front…

 

…and from the rear.

For the last few days I've been debating whether to use a stiff cover and coptic binding, or a limp cover and longstitch variation. I finally decided on a limp cover. This is a remnant of a lampas jacquard I wove a few years ago (with handspun pattern weft). I fused it to heavyweight interfacing and machine stitched around the design areas. The spine is a fused strip of heavy black tailor's interfacing.

 

The lining, fused to the other side of the fabric sandwich, is a remnant of turned taqueté woven on an 8-shaft dobby loom. I've machine stitched three times around the edges (1 row straight, 2 rows zig-zag). I haven't yet decided whether to do further finishing on the edges, or leave them as they are. 

Tomorrow: the spine stitching and attachment of a wrapper band. 

Bound Edges

The double-woven pages for a book project have been on interminable hold. Yesterday I got them out again and steam pressed them. 

It's time to think about how to finish the head and tail edges of the pages (the fore-edges need no further finishing, as they are selvedges). I bought some black chiffon and cut it into strips, and test-bound a sample.

Once I perfect my technique (practice, practice) I think these will be OK. They don't add any appreciable bulk to the edges, which is good because there will be a stack of eight pages total.

Taking a break from sewing, I put in my daily stint on the Casual Friday project on the loom.

I'm especially pleased with the green-on-green polkadots; they're kind of subtle compared to their showier neighbors, but they're fun to look at up close.

  

I finally had a chance to get up to the Focus Gallery to see Tommye's beautiful nature-inspired tapestries. No photography permitted, but you can read about her work here. Be sure to scroll down to the bottom of the post. If you're within driving distance of the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway, don't miss it. I've enjoyed Tommye's daily accounts of her progress on these weavings, and it was a treat to see the gorgeous work in person. 

After the Folk Art Center (where I bought a hand-made broom for Ampersand House), we drove to Craggy Gardens on the Blue Ridge for a short hike, even though the weather was looking a bit threatening.

We were about a month early for the annual showy display of native rhododendron. The rhodos are just now in bud. But we saw plenty of the very scary thickets known as "rhododendron hells." They are virtually impenetrable. There's an interesting article by George Ellison about  balds, thickets, and hells in the North Carolina mountains here, if you're curious.

 

On the way up to Craggy Pinnacle (or craggy pineapple as we've always affectionately referred to it), we met a man hiking with his ukulele; he stopped and played us a couple of verses of "Are You Lonely Tonight." 

Here's a view of Craggy Bald with some not-yet-bloomed rhodos in the foreground. You can just imagine how sensational this mountain looks when the bushes are in bloom. Once in a great while we time our visit just right; usually we're too early or too late. This year we were too early.

But we did see lots of wildflowers. Spring was still in its early stages at this elevation.

Just as we got to the end of our walk, the skies opened up with a warm hard rain. I managed to take one last root picture before dashing to the car.

 

And just to ensure some weaving content in this post, here's the jacquard upholstery in the restaurant where we stopped for lunch.

An Art Opening

Not just another art event. This one was special.

Catalina had four pieces in the show. She was especially proud of her self-portrait, seen at the top of the following picture.

The CAT studio, where all this art was created, looks like a fun place to work.

Of course the best part of any opening is the food. Shirley Temples served in wine goblets are a nice touch.

   

Oddities

There's a magnolia tree I pass most days on my walk. I particularly like this tree because the branches are low enough for me to reach the blossoms. The blooming season is far enough along so that some of the blossoms are spent. I'm not the first person to enjoy photographing dead or dying flowers. Look here or here. From the sublime to the everyday, here's one of mine:

 

This one's even further along. Did you ever see such complex browns?

 

I saw other oddities on my Thursday walk, but this birdbath must be the oddest. The statue is painted shocking pink, and it fairly glows in the beam of morning light that catches it just so. Be sure to read the sign on the door (click to enlarge). 

 
Meanwhile, back at the loom, this is happening (I'm a little over 1/3 done):