A Project in 24 hours!!

On Thursday, I had finished the weavings for the set of Castlemorton Common  and they are pinned up on the design board. I have added some very small flowers to the Spring one but am waiting until next Thursday when my sister, Dorothy, is here for a week. She is bringing some colours of Permaset for stencilling on fabric which I have not got and I will do the stencilling then. Besides Dorothy is good at telling when an idea will work and when it won't.

 

Well, the Megado was sitting there with the ghost warp still functional. I really need to weave samples for the Complex Weavers Fine Threads Study Group but I was still mulling over possible projects to weave.

 

The weaving class improvers are all doing Double Weave in lots of different projects. When I discussed things with the other tutor, Rosie Price, we decided to set them all the same project in double weave  to be done entirely by themselves. The project was to weave a tubular bag, that is, weave a tube where, after an inch or two, you swop the back and front cloths to make a base for the bag. The sting is that it has to have a striped warp and the stripes must be quite different on front and back. I had been feeling slightly guilty because I had never actually done this. So ghost warp threaded on four shafts? What could be better? I put on enough warp for two bags. The photo shows both bags on both sides before cutting up. What I have done is wevae them head to head with eight inches of weaving between them which is two separate cloths. The idea is to cut each of these cloths on the colour change line and then one side can have an inch turned in (probably using bias binding) and the other side turns into a closure flap. The rest of the warp has been woven with a nice pale blue boucle cotton (not in the photo) which I intend to cut up for handles. The timetable was Thursday evening, wind two warps, resley ghost warp, separate the ghost warps into Shafts 1+3 and 2+4 using cross sticks, tie one of the warps on to the lower set of ghost threads. Friday morning, tie on other warp to top set of threads and wind on warp. Tie on, weave two inches, take it all out and resley at 15 epi. This worked. Weave happily (one shuttle = happiness after five shuttles simultaneously). Finish by 5 pm. Put Fraystop on various places and cut off.   The yarn is all bits and pieces from the stash as I am having a major stash assault.

 

And what has made me very cheerful is deciding that the moment in life has come to weave some donsu. Not purple though but sage green in the warp. Last night I spent some time checking the drafts I have created and even more time trying to find enough 90/2 silk in the stash. I have a choice of colours, bright red, various shades of grey, white and the sage green. I have a huge range of colours but I need enough yarn  to put 10 metres, 24 inches wide on as warp and i had enough of all of these. So the Megado has been dusted (see - dusting does happen in this house) and this afternoon, I will move the warping wheel into place. I am so excited. It is a long time since I set about a project of this magnitude. I bought some Japanese gold paper thread some years ago and might even try it out!!