Weaverly

Zigzag Seam

There are several choices to be made in assembling the two panels of the baby blanket. Here are two of them: which selvedges to butt together (I'd like the stripes to have bilateral symmetry).

I chose the second arrangement. First I butted the two panels together and joined them invisibly on the sewing machine. Then I chose one of the warp yarns and handstitched a decorative join over the machine stitching.

I've used this triple zigzag seam many times, and I know I've seen it described in several ethnic embroidery books, but after an hour searching through my badly organized library, I'm unable to unearth a single reference. If you recognize it, I'd appreciate hearing from you. Meanwhile, here's my own crude stitch diagram. The blue line represents the seam where the two panels come together. The red line is the stitching.

The needle comes up at A, goes down through the crack and up at B, down through the crack and up at A, down through the crack and up at B, down through the crack and up at C, down through the crack and up at B, down through the crack and up at C, down through the crack and up at D, down through the crack and up at C, down through the crack and up at D, down through the crack and up at E, down through the crack and up at D, down through the crack and up at E, and so on.

That's a lot of words, but after a few passes it becomes automatic. The seam looks the same on both sides, and is a nice adjunct to handwoven fabric.

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Dark and Light

Two aggregations, of similar scale; one dark, one light.

Dark. A stack of bobbins all wound and ready for weaving. In weaving, always expect the unexpected. A loom malfunction, followed by an email, a phone call, and a solution—all in 24 hours! The service provided by Louet is legendary. Back in business! Very happy.

With the loom functioning perfectly again, the weaving of the fabric for the two panels of the baby blanket is finished. I wove a couple of inches of dummy yarn, inserted a stick with ties attached, commenced weaving with another yarn for the next piece. Now I can cut on the red line, remove the fabric already woven, retie the new web onto the cloth apron with only three inches of warp sacrificed, and away we go.

Light. The eggs boiled for this morning's breakfast, with a few left over. They look so serene nestled in this Wedgewood bowl, gift of a special weaver houseguest a few years ago. 

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Yes, it's cold here too. Relatively cold. In honor of the Polar Vortex, I did this little study in granite weaves based on a 16-shaft satin. Click to enlarge. I don't plan to weave it; that would be inviting bad luck. I'm waiting for spring.

In other news, I've settled on a dark green weft for the green warp. It looks purple-y in this picture, but it is indeed green. I think this will be a baby blanket in two panels. The baby isn't due until March, so there's time.

Still the same granite-&-plain threading on 8 shafts.

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Now wouldn't that be a great place to store yarn…

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It's 1200 picks, and should repeat seamlessly. Each of the three sub-repeats is slightly different, which I think adds more interest to this fabric. It will eventually wind up on the back (?) of a garment. Samitum, y'all. 

I know I've quoted this statement from Maira Kalman before, but on this gray day it might be helpful to revisit it:

Washing dishes is the antitdote to confusion. I know that for a fact.

Here's the original post. Very funny picture of me, I must say.

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The original idea was to use up partial cones of cotton and other cellulosic yarns on the shelf and free up space for some newer full cones standing about on the floor. Fancy term: stash reduction. First it looked like this:

So far so good. I wanted a random-looking warp arrangement, firmly anchored in blues & greens. Next it looked like this:

To whom it may concern: do not even think of vacuuming under there!

After a couple of days it looked like this, as I slowly completed the tying on of the new warp to the old, in front of the reed. This is when it looked the scariest, but as I've been through this brand of chaos before, I had hope.

Last night, just before I went to bed, it looked like this, and I was able to fall asleep without worries.

This morning, after a bit of tugging, tieing, and tweaking (The Three T's), the back of the loom looked as follows, a beautiful sight to a weaver:

And in front, after I wove a few picks to get things started, it looked like this:

Now here's the weird part. There's a great sale for the next few days on green cottolin that would be a nice weft yarn with this warp…

Did someone say stash reduction?

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