Weaving Project 27

When I was in London in January I popped in to Waterstones and had a mooch around the craft books. Amongst them I found Weaving: Methods, Patterns & Traditions of an ancient art by Christina Martin a cute little book all about, unsurprisingly, weaving. As it was small, and cute, I decided I should have it, and so bought myself a copy.

It didn’t take much reading, in fact I’d read half of it by the time I got back to Brighton that evening. One of the things I liked was that in the back there were some simple drafts. And I thought I should give one of them a go.

So, whilst I was enjoying my craft weekend I made a start and did two small 6cm rectangles on my picture-frame loom. This was an experiment in terms of yarn as well. I used some of the Sublime Egyptian cotton DK that I’d bought to make the Little Miss Two bag. When I’d made the bag, it had held together really well, and hadn’t split, which made me optimistic that I could use it for weaving (unlike the last DK cotton I used).

I decided to nominate this weekend as a finishing weekend, where I made an effort to finish off a couple of longer-running projects to clear the decks for more things to do (after seeing the lovely work by the RSN last weekend I’ve bought a book and a small kit and am ready to give blackwork a go). So, yesterday morning, before sewing the last bit of the dog treat bag I wove the final rectangle (and actually, it’s a much nicer and straighter finish than the other two). As a further experiment I washed the three pieces and blocked them on a tea-towel on top of my blocking board. This was my first attempt at wet finishing. If I’d been sensible and my brain had been engaged, then I’d have wet finished only two of them, and I’d have had a piece to compare them against. But I wasn’t, and it wasn’t, so I didn’t.

Having taken them off the board this morning, I think that the wet finishing has made them a bit softer. They’re still pretty dense though and I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them, but I have in mind to use them as part fabric for lavender bags or something similar. We’ll see. A useful experiment regardless and good to know that some cottons work well for weaving and that I shouldn’t dismiss them all out of hand.

This afternoon, I got to use my newly finished hand-sewn dog treat bag and whilst not perfect, it did a good enough job of keeping treats (and poo bags) close to hand and out of snout reach. And it looked pretty good in the sunshine too!