Lace Weave Workshop in September

After the success of the Block Weave workshop in June, the lovely Fibre East team have booked me for another workshop, this time Lace Weaves, in September.  This workshop explores up to five lace weaves in either cotton or wool (yes, wool!), so if you're interested in the beautiful Scandinavian textiles that use these structures then why not book on this course?

Yes, wool!  Most lace weave fabrics are woven in linen, cotton or a mix of them both, but it's equally beautiful in wool for soft draped scarves, striking cushions, blankets, etc.  Don't let your pre-conceived ideas prevent you from having a go at weaving them in wool, the UK's most versatile fibres.  The course is designed so that every student will pre-warp their own loom in one of the structures and in the workshop will share their looms with each other, in a "round robin", so that everyone goes home with swatches in each structure, some in cotton and some in wool.

Below are two shawls I was commissioned to make a few years ago, in Huck Lace.  Both are hand woven in silk and cashmere.

Marian Stubenitsky Workshop No. 2

I'm just back from a wonderful few days in France with Jane Deane.

The first three days were on the Marian Stubenitsky Workshop exploring double weave with Echo & Iris.

After designing our design line we started weaving but I had some threading mistakes, so after eventually sorting them out I had an interesting first sample.  The weft lifts are "drawn as threaded".

This swatch is an Echo & Iris double cloth, and the distinct square blocks are the true double cloth areas.

Double cloth can have varying ratio's of interlacement of the colour on the front and back and this swatch shows these ratio's and how it affects the amount of colour on the front of the swatch.

By selecting an area where the double cloth is most obvious and only weaving this area a crinkle effect can be achieved with cotton in one pick and Colcolastic in the other.  This is what it looks like before the Colcolastic is washed.

Weaving the design line in Turned Taquete gives the great effect!  This swatch uses a 4/4 twill lift interspersed with plain weave lifts.  I was worried that the purple in the weft was too dull, but against the orange in the weft it looks ok...

This Turned Taquete swatch gives a much more crisp pattern using 3/2/1/2 twill lifts interspersed with plain weave.  Again I used the orange weft and then the purple weft.

With the double weave sett a repp weave can be produced when using a thick and thin pick.  I only used a small section of the lifts based on the design line, but you can see the repp effect.

There is so much potential in these experiments, I'm really looking forward to exploring more.  Thanks to Marian for developing these ideas and passing them on to us.