Sheep to Shawl - 2010

This will be the second year students from Capilano University - Textile Arts program will be participating in the "Sheep to Shawl". This is a yearly event for the guilds of Greater Vancouver to compete against each one another to make the best shawl, by hand of course.

Blurb:

Cheer on local spinners and weavers as they participate in this traditional competition. Watch as they card, spin, and ply raw sheep’s wool into yarn, then weave a shawl - all in four hours! See demonstrations of sheep shearing, view wool displays, and try weaving on heritage looms or spinning on real spinning wheels. Kids can try weaving, or make sheep crafts and pictures while they watch the show.

Saturday, May 22, 2010
11:00am-4:00pm
All ages
By Donation

Entrance to exhibit gallery by admission fee.

at Surrey Museum
17710 - 56A Avenue
For information, call 604-592-6956

Jacquard Weaving

The jacquard loom was invented in the early 1800's controlled by punch cards. It was used as an example for the first computer. Today's jacquard looms are now controlled by computers. You load an image (which has been edited on photoshop) on to the jacquard software and the loom will weave that picture for you.

One of the tech's at school has a jacquard loom and we were lucky enough to weave on it this semester. I chose to do an anatomical heart. I just have some progress shots so far, but they are still really interesting.


At the top of the picture you can see the heart starting to show in the weaving. All of the threads on the left are controlled individually by the computer. (you can see the heddles, where the threads are attached to the computer, in the next picture)


In the above picture, all of the vertical metal pieces (behind the two girls) are heddles which are about 1/4" thick and are threaded with yarn one by one to control the pattern. As you press the foot peddle the computer tells the jacquard loom which ones to lift up to create the pattern. The operator, ie. the weaver, then "throws" a bobbin of yarn through the lifted yarn to weave the cloth.

(a lot to explain in such a little post, I hope it's coming across alright)

Checkerboard Rug - in progress

I'm weaving a rug for a project at school. I took some in progress shots today. I'm very excited for this to be finished but it's taking forEVER! It's due Wednesday, but most likely won't be done in time. Anyways, on to the pics!
The shag will be cut down to about half it's length. Each knot, that you can see in the above photo, has 2 pieces of yarn, and is 4 wide, and 8 high. This makes for approx. 64 pieces of yarn per square. Each row has 10 (I think lol) shag squares, that's a whole lot of yarn! hehe So, needless to say, it's taking me a lot longer than I thought it would have.

I'll post pictures of the rug when it's completely finished.

Finally finished!

I have finally finished warping up my loom! This has been a long and arduous process because when the loom was brought to my house the warp strings were still on the back beam. Being a novice weaver (at this point I have never woven in my life, at least not on a loom, but definitely when I was a kid, with paper, to make a place mat) I just unrolled the back beam, and this created a big mess of yarn tangled amongst itself.

(This is only a fraction of the warp mess)

But, I finally stopped procrastinating and finished warping up! I am sooo happy that it is finally over and I have learned that unrolling the back beam with all that yarn on it was a bad idea.

Weaving project Color Teaser

something new!

Caution: May contain TOO many pictures


Last friday, we learned how to weave! I finally remembered to bring my camera this friday, so that I could take pictures of my progress.

We started on a Woolhouse Tools (Canadian company!) table loom and next semester we will be on floor looms. (We do have the option of switching to a floor loom half way through this class for our final project, which I might do because I have a loom at home. Then I would only have to go to class in the mornings)

(my loom)

So, yesterday (friday) I got quite a bit of weaving done. I really liked doing patterns, and I think that will be where my main focus is. A lot of my classmates where using different weft objects, such as plastic bags, cloth, leather, fishing line, raffia, etc. Some of it looked ok, but I'm more of a fan of "traditional" weaving. Just plain 'ol yarn on yarn! lol But I did get a little "crazy" with the weft.

(click on the picture to enlarge it)

I used pipe cleaner and ribbon! (check this out, I found it while searching for a picture of pipe cleaners! lol)

(close up of pipe cleaner. so cute!)

I really liked how the pipe cleaner turned out, except the sharp little ends. If I were to use it in the future, I don't know how I could keep the ends from poking me. Maybe fold it back and wrap it around it's self? Please leave suggestions in the comment box. :)

While playing around I also developed my own pattern. I'm sure it's been done somewhere or at some point in the history of weaving (considering weaving dates back to at least 5000 B.C.) BUT, I drafted it on graph paper and wove it myself. So I'm calling it mine, until further notice. :)

Here is a close up

When I was drawing (writing/drafting?) up the pattern I originally wanted large circles, but I think I needed to take in consideration that I was working on a 10 e.p.i. (ends per inch)

I should have created something that was more spaced out or wove it on a bigger e.p.i. OR developed a pattern that had a different heedle set up (I think I'm getting too ahead of myself now! lol)

Next week we are finishing our samplers and moving on to color! I can't wait! I think we are also going to learn how to do more complicated patterns. I'm pretty excited about that too! So I'll try my best to remember my camera so I can overload another post with pictures.

Side note: I'm going to Maiwa today for school supplies, and also some acid dyes so I can dye more fleece (the Shetland I have coming in the mail!) and yarn.