Finished and Washed

This strange object is the Small Newbury Coat. I dealt with all knots and ends last night and this morning I washed it in the bath. In the time-honoured fashion, I got in to trample on it and now have very clean feet. After getting out as much water as possible, I have wrapped it round the Foster Patent Drying Device. This is four stout lengths of 3 by 1 inch timber glued round three octagons of thick timber to form a wooden support hollow in the middle. Round this is wrapped a sandwich of large towels and the fabric. Tomorrow after 24 hours, I will unwrap it, discard the towels and put clean dry ones in and roll up from the other end. 24 hours after that it will be ready for pressing. It has shrunk more than I expected. It was 38 inches in the reed and 36 inches off the loom. It is now 31 inches. It has to be more than 30 inches so that's okay.

Enormous amounts of paperwork and tidying up happened this morning. I am having a discussion (euphemism for throwing chairs) with a credit card company. I have a PhD in Physics. I had to ask the man on the phone three times what he meant and even then I did not understand whether I owed him a lot of money or they owed me some money. So I gave in  and opted to go on-line. I do not owe anybody any money. So what was that all about? It certainly took up a lot of my time.

But mostly time was spent sorting out Convergence stuff, punching holes, filing it all away. I have done no textile work but I have thought about drafts. I was horrified to realise that my plans for using a draft based on Mackintosh chairs needed 2390 threads in the warp. So I need to think about that some more. Instead I am going to do the piece of hana-ori. I designed this in 2012 but ordered up some pale yellow 30/2 cotton which took nearly a year to come by which time I had moved on a bit. Time was spent this morning trying to find the yarn! Hana-ori = a thousand flowers or something like it and comes from Okinawa. I bought  a sample piece when I was there and what I am going to  do is a replica. Off to wind the warp. The draft is a point twill on 32 shafts and it may be 38 epi but it is only 12 inches wide.

A Happy (Bookbinding) Bunny

I have been to a bookbinding class all day - run by Anna Yevtuka who is highly organised. So we not only made a book using the Secret Belgian Binding but did a surprise at the end. First though the name. The binding is clearly a relative of Coptic binding and dates from the early Middle Ages. It was very popular in Flanders, hence the Belgian. The Secret is that the method got lost until someone recently decided to investigate and worked out how it was done. 

The cover is made in three pieces, front, back and spine. Holes, like a Coptic binding, are punched into the covers and the three parts sewn together. Note that there is no text block in the photo above. You then lace the text block into the covers.

 

The chief difference is that the spine is now protected which it is not in a Coptic Book. The covers are of paste paper made by the tutor but we started the day by making paste papers of our own. These were not dry enough to use for this binding but they were by what should have been the end of the day and I used one to cover a Reverse Stab Binding.

This is it with my paste paper on the covers.

And this shows the inside. The stab binding/Japanese style I have always used has the hinge near the spine but on the outside with the stitching showing. This Reverse Binding has the hinge actually on the spine and the stitching is inside. I can see that this will be a real asset. Don't be surprised to see samples very soon.

So as I said, a very happy bunny.



Finished!!

By weaving all day, I have finished the fabric for the small NC. 3.7 metres of it. And only five inches of waste at the end of it. I have hemmed it on the loom but not cut it off because I need to think of what I am going to do next just in case I want to do something which could use that threading. So I will sit on it till Sunday. Tomorrow I am going to a class where I will learn about the Secret Belgian Binding. I have heard one story about the name but will hear what the tutor has to say before I commit to print.

Have I said that the vegetable plot is providing veg, in particular some spectacular lettuces,radishes, spring onions. And the French beans are looking good.

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Festival of Quilts

I went to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham today. Now I have sore feet! It has got a lot bigger since I attended last which was two years ago. Lots more stands and lots more quilts on show. I bought very little, which is good, but inspected and had demoed several sergers. Ruth and I are thinking of buying one jointly so I was inspecting the market. The only thing I bought were some sewing machine needle packs at the Bernina stand! Oh and some lovely marshmallows covered with toasted coconut.

No photos of quilts because the camera battery needs charging.

This morning I wrote a review of the Designer Bookbinder Exhibition and I have woven more than a yard of the small Newbury Coat. I might be finished tomorrow.

Designer Bookbinders Exhibition

I went up to London yesterday (Tuesday) to visit the Designer Bookbinders annual exhibition in  St Bride's Foundation off Fleet Street. Stunning but not easy to photograph because everything was behind glass.

The under layer is vellum painted with watercolours and the red leather on  top has been cut away.

 

In this one, the leather has been coloured and painted.



The orangey coloured stuff is a painted underlayer of leather. There were 59 bindings and 40% of them were from the USA. Quite amazing. I feel I should go away and not mention my bookbinding ever again.

I walked back to Waterloo Station over Blackfriars bridge with life bustling up and down the river. Note the London eye.

In the afternoon we walked round to the Savile Gardens - about 45 minutes and here we are having a posh tea in the café. Shown are Ruth, my daughter, and her daughter, Charlotte, who has just got a good degree from Reading University and is going to work for BP in September. We are all very proud of her. Note the scones with clotted cream and jam. None of us wanted any supper.

The Small Newbury Coat

I tried to answer a comment or query yesterday but Google swallowed it. This only happens on the iPad so I guess I have something set up wrong .

In 1811 a millowner in Newbury bet a local squire a thousand guineas that his workers could start with fleece at sunrise and have a fitted coat finished by Sunset. He won his bet and the original is in Caughton Court, a local stately home. In 2011, Kennet Valley Guild was prevailed upon to do a reenactment which was pure unadulterated hell. But we did complete it and the local MP wore it at the end of the day. 

There was a lot of yarn and fleece left over at the end and someone decided the Guild should make a coat for a ten year old with these leftovers. The idea was to take it into schools. However I  ended up with weaving and I laid down conditions. The most important was that the fleece should be spun and plied. The 2011 exercise used singles because it would have taken too long to ply it. And of course that made the weaving murder. We had two looms and between three and five people at the back of each, mending breaks as fast as they could.

So first we got someone ( Jean McVeigh) to work out a new pattern. I believe she made a toile from it and tried it on her grandson who is the right age. I was given the dimensions of fabric needed last February and a spinning team under Sue. Davies and Yvonne Withers and Janet Dunbar was created. They spun lots of yarn and plied it to the size requested. This has all been delivered to me and dyed and wound up and tied on a dis now a warp on my Megado. I am using the leftover yarn from 2011 for the weft as that does not matter being singles.

Hence the Small Newbury Coat. And I have woven 1.5 metres of it.

I am in Ruth's house today. I have been into London today to see a bookbinding exhibition of which more tomorrow  when I can unload my photos. I walked back to Waterloo station over Blackfriars and stopped to admire the Thames. Lots of boats. Lots of people. Who needs the Åland Islands when they have London and the Thames?

Megado Weaving

I spent Sunday morning dyeing yarn for the weft of the small Newbury Coat. 4 lots each of 200 gms.

Here they all are hanging up to dry. The shading from right to left is a function of the light from the window. I managed to get these pretty indistinguishable except for oen skein which looks totally different from the others anyway. Must have been a different breed of sheep.

And here is a close-up of the weaving. Now the weft yarn is dry, I can get ahead. I have 1.5 metres so far. There are 4 metres in all.
I have been playing with drafts based on Charles Rennie Mackintosh chairbacks.

And the back view is

Unless I weave this in 90/2 silk, this is going to be way too big.

 This is cut down and would appear as isolated motifs supposedly on a fine worsted. But still awfully large. I need to get this printed out lifesize. I might cut down the size of each square and see what that looked like. I fancy the multi-coloured draft  but I would a motif size of a couple of inches. Time for revision.