Huck Lace

I finished the huck lace shawls last Sunday and have been frantically trying to find black sewing thread to sew on my labels, so while I searched I took the opportunity to photograph them.

This is the detail of the undulating pattern with dots! Sorry it's not to clear because of the black silk and cashmere. Not my choice, but what I was asked to weave for Shades of Cashmere.

Here is the finished shawl, it's very light.

This is the "Heart" shawl. I don't weave lace very often, as I said before, so am really pleased with the shawls.




This is the detail of the "Heart" shawl. I developed the designs myself, but found I was quite restricted by the fact that I only had 40 dobby bars. I had to reduce the size of the hearts quite a lot. I have made spread sheet to help prevent this happening again, though, which I'm very pleased with!




The yarn is machine washable, apparently, but being 90% silk it does crease, although they do drop out quite quickly. All in all a very pleasing project!

Oh, Dear

Well I've just looked at my last post and must apologise for the photography. I really don't think a black warp was a good idea to show you the way I warp my sectional warp beam, but it was what I was warping at the time! The warp is silk and cashmere and will be a couple of wraps, one for "Shades of Cashmere" and the other for me or to give away.

Shades of Cashmere is a mail order company which specialises in luxury yarns for machine knitters, but the yarns are really lovely and would serve hand weavers too. They can be found at:

Shades of Cashmere
Grove Farm, Wolvey, HINCKLEY, Leicestershire LEIO 3LL
Tel: 01455-220767
Email: shadesofcashmere@hotmail.com

Sectional Warping

Hi all,

At the end of last year someone on the Weave Tech Group was asking about sectional warping and I said I didn't use a bobbin rack, but made small warps on my warping mill. I thought it might be a good idea to show everyone how I do it.

First of all I make small 2" warps on my warping mill which a tie with freezer bag ties to secure the cross and keep the loop open at the beginning.

Bag ties are easy to attach and remove and are re-usable. I cut some of them into two before I start to make the warp as they can be too big.

I then have my loops ready at the back of the loom and attach one to the sectional warp beam and the other end to loop at the end of the warp near the cross. If your not sure how to do this post a comment and I will show you have it's done in another post.



Now I put this little devise into the cross and weight the warp at the front of the loom with a loop of loom cord, a butchers hook and a bottle of wash detergent!

Once the section of warp has been weighted I spread it over a small raddle, that came with my Louet Octado, which is secured to the back beam.

Move the cross to the front of the loom, near the cord and weight, and wind the warp onto the sectional beam until the cross is next to the raddle again. Continue winding the warp and moving the cross until the section is wound onto the beam.

On the left you will see the front cloth beam of my loom with all that is left of the warp where it is being weighted. Once the cord that is attached to the weight gets to this point, I remove the weight and cord then loop an elastic band round the warp end in it's place.

All I do now is wind this last section onto the sectional warp beam and loop the elastic band round the section separator next to the previously wound section.

I do hope this has been of help.

Done the wraps!

Well, I've managed to do some wraps. The images aren't brilliant, but I managed to get some nice effects.

On the left is my "mood board" with some of the wraps pinned to it.

The wrap on the right is in wool and cotton and seem to have captured the dull palette from the last post quite nicely. I might get some nice differential shrinkage with this!

The wrapping on the left has captured the coral colour from the vivid palette, which I liked, and again is in wool and a little cotton. But I have gone a little blue/grey rather than the green/brown in the Colour Palette Generator vivid palette.


These wrapping are too fussy for my liking so I might not pursue them.

In my sketchbook I have done several colour studies and lots of written notes, and have added the computer colour picks too. What's on my "mood board" are duplicates of the computer work that is in my sketchbook.

Jane Deane and I will be doing a Sketchbook Workshop with the Online Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers in February.