A New Project

Last week was taken up with three lengthy visits to Worcester Royal Infirmary and two to our local GP. Lots of waiting time which can be used to think. I had an idea!! My husband has done some classes in enamelling and we have a number of his samples on square copper plates about 10 cm square.  I have been thinking about these for two years. Must be something I can do with them. My idea was triggered by a picture in Val Holmes' book on Machine Embroidery which I borrowed from my sister though I see it has my niece's name, Cally Booker, written on the flyleaf. I wonder if she knows I have it. I was reading this book while husband was having an MRI scan. Val Holmes showed some embroidery which was attached to squares of raku-fired tiles  with holes in them to which the cloth could be sewn.  Val Holmes attached her tiles together using metal wire. They were probably quite heavy. The enamelled tiles are also quite heavy. My thought was some form of double or multiple weave.
 

 
Some years ago, three of us did an entry for the Association of WSD's birthday, the Gold Challenge. It is about A4 size and is double cloth with 12 pockets, each pocket holding an example of textile treatment. There are knitting needles and a ball of wool, some tapestry, dyed fibre , a weaving, all in dolls house proportion. Chris Fletcher and Linda Scurr did all of these. All I did was the double cloth and tucking the miniatures in each pocket. Fine silk (60/2 NM) was used for the front cloth and 2/6 cotton for the back.














If I did a similar straight double cloth and put a tile in each pocket, I don't believe the weaving would stand the weight. So suppose I make it a chequerboard with a tile in every alternate pocket and use (say) a 30/2 silk as the front cloth over the tiles but have three cloths and bring one to the front in the non-tile squares. If I used warp and weft interchange, the cloth would be really strong. So I would have

Cloth A 30/2 silk set at about 20 to the inch - this will need experiment.
Cloth B 2/10 cotton
Cloth C 2/10 cotton.

The cloths go, in order from the front, Cloth A, Cloth B and Cloth C  under a tile
In the other squares, they go Cloth C, Cloth A and B

That should make it a stout cloth and secure the silk threads.

In addition, I could warp up in stripes of colour in Cloth C and have something like a colour gamp in the non-tile squares.  Or how about painting that warp on the loom? I don't know if cotton will take my SEKA silk paints. Cloth B would be white to show off the tiles - or black?
Experimentation is called. I only have a limited number of tiles so the first experiment will have to use squares of card. And can I get away with doing this on the 8-shaft Louet Kombo or do I need more shafts? I can't see why I need more than 6 shafts if each cloth is tabby.

I am still weaving the Vale of Evesham (up to number 4) on the Megado. Linda Scurr has suggested that I need some unripe plums among the leaves on Side 3, Summer. Thank you Linda. I will implement that idea. It has to be done this week.

I had thought I could not develop the Annuals any further but two versions have been staring at me in the sitting room. I do not like the Autumn side with falling petals so am going to replace it with a design of seedheads. To which end I went to the Autumn Quilt Show to get some more colours of machine embroidery thread. Pretty much a washout. The Spring one is twice as big and has people like ArtVanGo and Ario not to mention a fantastic stall selling Japanese fabrics. Nothing like that last week, and no nice glossy thread. Quilters apparently use only cotton. Bah!