Speed Blocking

Afternoon Tea Shawl

I finished my second Afternoon Tea Shawl and forgot it was soaking in the sink... DH noted it was there and I had 30 minutes before I had to leave for an appointment; how long does it take to block a shawl anyways?

The answer is, longer than you expect. I worked through that shawl VERY QUICKLY, called it speed blocking and got fine results. I barely made it to my appointment on time.

I also finished the piece from the Inge Dam CNCH class; I showed photos of it on the loom and it looks about the same off the loom, so no additional photos of that at this time.

Wheely handy

With the Mac cleared off, I folded it up to take glamour shots of the loom "skateboard". It's basically 4 castors on an old shelf, with some stops to keep the loom from moving while wheeling it about. I used a strap on it when I move it at CNCH.  

Finally, I believe I've made it clear that there will be some cat photos on this blog... Owl has found a new place to nap, when I took out a bag of blocking tiles and left the cabinet open. 

A new source of fiber?

CNCH recap

There's the cards, right in
the middle of a piece of twill

I took Inge Dam's class on weaving a card woven band inside a twill at CNCH last weekend... it was fabulous! Her weaving is amazing, her card weaving is amazing, her dyeing is amazing... And the class, of course, was amazing.

Inge doesn't usually do threaded in patterns for her card woven bands, and they're a pain in the ass to set up... getting the card warp on the loom was a little frustrating but the magic was in what happened once both warps were ready...

Her handouts suggest how to space the card warp in the reed; it's wider than card weaving on it's own, so the usually invisible weft showed through in spots; Inge's told us that wet finishing will solve that. The sparser set makes the hand of the card weaving closer to the hand of the background fabric.

And on the fabric side of the reed

Some notes from when I got home; this may not mean a lot to you but it's good reminders for me.

• Adjusted water in the weight bottles so that the fell line was better; ended up being about a liter for 7 cards. I weighed the filled bottles so they were all the same. AM had recommended I put less water in to fix my fell line and it did. My weaving is more even, too. 
• Keep the card warps in line off the back so they don't tangle with adjacent heddles.
• Use a extra card on the table next to you and turn it front (roll forward) or back (roll backward) to remember which way I'm going
• JN said to trim the ends every time you adjust the warps as she finds it reduces tangling. 
• I'm sure I'll think of something else to note...

I did have some issues getting Baby Mac up and running again; some of the lamms had skipped their track and gone into other tracks, and they were hard to relocate. Also, all of the jacks had fallen out of the frames. I mentioned this to a new-to-me group of weavers and one sent me her detailed how-to-pack-up-a-baby-mac instructions and one thing I think could help would be to relocate the wires at the top of the castle to their bottom position. I have no more trips in the near future, but it's good to know :)

The new weaving sequence (turn cards, treadle, throw shuttle) has started sinking in and it's going faster. Also, I'm finding it easier to detect and fix mistakes I've made with the card warp, so feeling pretty good about this!

My paper shirt made its debut at the conference as well. The bulky underarms were a little uncomfortable at first but either I got used to them or they softened a bit with wear. I feel that the shirt was well received.

Foggy Evening in Morro Bay

All the Paper Shirt deets, all in one place.

In the Fall of 2021, I attended SOAR at the Boulder Colorado Chautauqua; one of my classes was on how to spin paper, taught by Judith Mackenzie. It took a bit of work to get the hang of it but I left the class with a firm resolution to spin some yarn and make something out of it.

Mulberry paper has been spun into thread and woven into cloth in Japan (shifu) for centuries; there are a number of descriptions on the internet of how it’s done.  We used a similar but not identical method to cut continuous strips of tissue paper and of old tissue paper sewing patterns and spin them into yarn! 

For my project, I used some of the old sewing patterns in my closet, and received some from friends. When I discovered I needed more, I went to Fabmo, a local “Non-profit that finds & sells reclaimed fabric” and found a bunch of intact patterns; I choose 1980’s patterns with large shoulder as they were unlikely to be reused.  Here are steps I took to spin the paper:

• Crumple the paper to make it more pliable.
• Check paper grain by tearing a strip or test spinning a strip; make sure you’re cutting with the grain or it will not be spinnable!
• Cut into 1/4” strips with a rotary cutter, then separate into continuous strands similar to shifu cut, then spin.
• I chose to ply with a very thin silk single for strength. 

Close up of finished fabric! 

I spun a 10 yard sample and wet finished it; the yarn was stiff and unappealing until I wet finished it by gently agitating it in a sink full of cold water.  It held together, and softened up enough to be used in a garment, so I kept spinning, 

My yarn was not suitable for warp but looked like it would work well for weft. My yarn turned out to be approximately the same grist  as my 8/2 cotton. I also tried knitting a bit but decided I’d rather weave with it.

I decided to weave the fabric in plain weave for the maximum number of interlacements so that the paper would be well supported. I sampled with a 8/2 cotton warp set at 16 EPI (because that’s what I had on my loom). I tried all paper weft, pick and pick with 8/2 cotton, pick on pick with a thin cotton boucle, and every third pick in paper. The fabric was stiff and unpleasant. I then machine washed the sample in cold water, to make sure it would hold together; it did; I line dried and ironed the sample and decided the pick on pick suited my purposes best. 

 

I had not yet picked out a sewing pattern so I guessed at the width I’d need for a camp shirt and warped up 5 yards of 8/2 cotton (natural color), 14.5 inches in the reed, and started weaving.  Meanwhile I started working on a pattern.

I ended up choosing the Natalie pattern by Seamworks, which unfortunately has a dart; I decided I didn’t want a dart in this bulky fabric… I redrafted the pattern without the dart and made a muslin, then a test garment from linen, and a second test garment from a Malay Batik my husband brought back from a business trip.  By this time the 5 yards of fabric was off the loom so I was almost ready to sew!

Sewing the shirt

There were a few sewing design decisions to make. My fabric had drawn-in/shrunk 13% down to 12.5 inches, so was not wide enough for my pattern pieces.  Also, I didn’t want to put button holes in this fabric, so I solved the problems with the front by making the button bands of unbleached muslin. To complement the look and so that I didn't use the bulkier paper in the collar, I made the collar from muslin as well. The two pieces that would make up the back were also not wide enough, so I put a stripe of double thick muslin down the back (to approximate the same weight as the paper fabric). I followed Daryl Lancaster’s suggestion of using a Hong Kong finish on all the pieces to stabilize the seams before  sewing them together; this worked very well except I had to fuss with the underarm seams to eliminate some bulk.

My biggest surprise was that the plain wood buttons I’d bought for the garment simply did not work. I dug through my mother’s button jar and found 5 silver toned buttons which were perfect!

I wore the shirt open with a tank top underneath to the CNCH 2023 Barbecue and Fashion Show and to my delight it was comfortable and perfect for a summer evening.

Many thanks to Judith and to the folks in that spinning class for the inspiration and to my Sewing with Handwovens Study Group for their suggestions and encouragement!

So happy it's done!

Big swath of muslin in the back