Back Blogging at Last!!

Oh dear, I have had so many "life" things to deal with, not least a leak from our immersion heater, that I've not had time to do much work. I am supposed to be putting a couple of portfolio's together, one for my apparel textiles and one for interior textiles.

Finally sat down today to work on the Donnington Le Heath picture I posted way back in January!
I have got a number of pictures and sketches in my sketch book and have done a few wrappings, but decided to run the picture through Colour Palette Generator and got some nice colours. The beauty of the CPG is how it narrows down the colours. When looking at colour on your own, there is a tendency to choose too many colours which can makes a weave look too busy.

Color Palette Generator

Enter the URL of an image to get a color palette that matches the image. This is useful for coming up with a website color palette that matches a key image a client wants to work with.

URL of image:

dull #445533 #998877 #ffffff #bbaa99 #887766

vibrant #556611 #bb9966 #ffffff #eecc99 #aa9944

These colours are lovely, I particularly like the coral colour in the vibrant palette.

I think it would be a good idea to isolate a section of the building:

this is the section and it's interesting to see what colours the CPG has generated!

dull #998877 #aaaa99 #eeddcc #ddbbaa #777766

vibrant #bbaa66 #ccccaa #ffffdd #ffddaa #888866

I love the dull palate again, I think it's the greys and pinks, but I also love the coral in the vibrant palette. I can't make my mind up which palette I prefer, so I will have to have a play with my yarns and do some wrappings, the actual yarn will give me a better feel.

So off to do some wrappings and have a think about what kind of weave to use!

See you later, have a lovely Christmas.

Rigid Heddle Loom Week-end

Back in October I tutored a week-end course for Skylark Holidays. The subject was an introduction to using a rigid heddle loom or Knitter Loom.

I had a great time teaching 3 lovely ladies who were really enthusiastic about learning to weave. They didn't want to learn on 4 shaft looms which they perceived to be less portable and more complicated. One had been told by members of her guild that "a rigid heddle loom wasn't a real loom". What sad narrow minded people they are! As I pointed out to her Thailand, Guatamala, Mexico, to name but a few countries, all have traditions of weaving on "back-strap" looms which are little more that rigid heddles with extra sticks and look what fabulous textiles come from them! All I can say is they are "loom" or "shaft" snobs".

Anyway, they had a thoroughly enjoyable time and produced two lovely pieces of weaving, each. Alas, I had planned to photograph them with their work, but we suddenly realised what time it was and they had to rush off to get home in a reasonable time. I have my work to show you, a scarf in Colinetter Prism and a table runner in Colinette Wigwam and Giotto.


For those of you who are new to weaving I thought I would show you how to mend weaving "skips", those annoying little mistakes which occur when one or two warp threads stick together and instead of going under one and over one you end up with a section where you go under one, over three or over one and under three as in the case on the left!



Thread a large eyed needle with your weft yarn and, starting about 8 or so warps threads away from the skips, follow the path of the weft thread with your needle, leaving a tail.







When you get to the skips, follow the correct path, over one and under one, weaving in the skipped warps. Continue past the now woven in skips following the path of the weft thread until you are 8 or so warps past where the skips were, again leave a tail.





When you have mended all the skips wash your piece of weaving and when it's dry cut the tails. Press your work and you won't know where the skips had been!