Weaving in the Studio

I've been thinking about my looms a bit, particularly as I am moving things, opening up boxes (and finding tools and parts to one loom or another), and it seemed suddenly very important to do something with the Tapestry Loom. I have so much wool yarn, roving for felting, and a cabinet full of cone threads, that coming up with a project would be no trouble at all. In fact, as I think about life past and future, if I don't use up a lot of these materials, they will end up in a landfill one day. Time to pull out all the stops and go for the big, over-the-top piece of hand-woven something-or-other.

So, with nothing to lose, I dragged the Tapestry Loom from its corner yesterday afternoon. "This will be a walk in the park," I thought as I set in on the floor beside my chair. Hmmmm . . . I couldn't remember how to warp it. Actually, I will confess to having had a hard time telling the front from the back. Then I remembered that this loom warps vertically, not horizontally. My first reaction was to glance back at the place it had come from and to think of how little trouble it would be to put it back there. But the challenge of how to warp this loom was too good to pass up.

By dinner, I had the warp on it (a narrow warp of only 20 threads, about eight or nine inches wide) and had started working out how to draw out the roving to make my weft. My intent was to create pieces that would be felted, that I would throw in the wash with jeans, so I was more concerned with color placement than good technique. It would shrink unevenly, as I am using merino wool, silk tussa and silk throwster's waste, merino/wool combinations, corriedale, goat batts . . . This made my job of re-learning how to weave a little easier. This photo shows the loom up on a work table (with attendant clutter).



Of course, you can't just cut a piece off the loom and rush to felt it, because you have all that remaining warp left that is under tension (and getting an even tension on each thread can be tedious, most particularly since I used wool for the warp, which is stretchier than cotton or linen). Best to put on yards of warp and use it for several projects, making it best to keep on weaving until you get to the end of your warp. I went from blue/green roving to spring pink/green/coral batt, to orange and yellow combinations of things. With each piece I became more adventurous. It is the last one, the orange and yellow, that is most texturally interesting.



And here is a detail of the yummy colors and texture:



Since I used curly locks here along with throwster's waste, I know I will not felt this. I have no idea now what it will be. If I had it off the loom, I could turn it upside down and see how well it speaks to me-- maybe those curly locks that are hanging down are really trees in a parched landscape?

I need to devote more thought to this one, and do some more weaving. There is an awfully lot more of roving in the yellow/orange drawer! And I will have Bethy and Ethan this afternoon, so I will ask them what it looks like. Have you ever noticed how intersting a child's view of the world can be?