Summer and Winter the Mahotan Way

At Wokefield Park residential weekend, I tried out several different patterns in Margaret Roach Wheeler's class, 'The Mahotan Way'. This is the combination of patterns I liked best as a basis for designing a top. The warp was shown previously and is black, two shades of red and green warped up randomly. In the photo on the left, two colours of weft were used, black and cream. Both warp and weft are 2/12 cotton from William Hall.  I tried a number of other colour combinations  but they did not seem so effective. The design is done, in so far as I have measured me, adapted Margaret's pattern to my dimensions, and written down in detail what I have to weave. Weaving will start shortly!

I have spent some time this evening winding all my 2/8 ecru Tencel into skeins ready for dyeing. I also checked on what Procion MX I have in the garage. So we are ready for dyeing at the weekend. Tomorrow I am going to Mansfield for the day to look at the Association's Exhibition. Expect a report by Saturday.

My New Calladiums

Here are photos of my new calladiums, transported to me last weekend by Linda Scurr. The photos are not in scale with each other and one leaf (lower right) is all of 12 inches long. The red ones (upper right are at most four inches long. Two of last year's plants have made it through the winter. I see flower buds on the new plants. I have not seen any flowers yet so am looking forward to that.

Definitely inspiring and I must get on with my projected calladium leaf design in silk.

We have had visitors every night for the last ten days culminating in a surprise one last night. He came armed with the biggest box of chocolates I have ever seen!

There is a long list of jobs to be done, most of which require the washing machine. I have written a lot of letters and tidied/filed things away but have by no means finished the list. In fact as soon as one thing is done, I remember two more I must do. 

Tonight I am going to wind some skeins of Tencel to be dyed green at the weekend along with linen thread for the current Coptic book. I have signed up for a one-day course at the Tech on Orthodox book binding (Orthodox as in Greek Orthodox). This is  a bit like Coptic binding and should be fun. Also at yesterday's bookbinding class, the tutor showed me a method of getting a picture onto the front and back cover which I am sure will look excellent. So I have brought all the bits home and intend to do a trial run before next Wednesday. This is for 'Alice in Wonderland' which has been pressed and sewn together.

The only piece of textile work I have done is to design how my top made from Margaret Roach Wheeler's patterns will look and yes I do have enough warp.

Wokefield Park

I see it is a week since I last wrote something in this blog. I have been to our Guild residential weekend. We had four tutors Lorraine MacClean (Experimental Knitting), Pat Johns (Tapestry), Shirley Berlin (Braids) and Margaret Roach Wheeler (Weaving). I took the weaving class

Here you see some of the weaving class's samples. These are designs using Summer and Winter but with designs taken from Native American Quillwork and Beadwork. I got very tied up with a lovely one based on feathers. In the end I abandoned it! I may have another try in a few days but I have mentally designed a top with the rest of the warp and need to check how much material I need for that.

Wokefield Park is a Conference Centre, complete with swimming pool, sauna, jacuzzi and gym.  I know of no-one who used the gym but the pool was well paronised.

Everyone seemed very happy and all classes did a lot of work. We spent an hour last thing on Sunday afternoon going round the other classes to see what they had done. Which was a lot.

Margaret took the night sleeper from London to Aberdeen to visit a friend and the Aberdeen Museum which has holdings of Native American textiles. Then she has two days in the British Museum before flying home.

Being a glutton for punishment, I am attending a course with Gill Arnold on fitting dress patterns. On Friday 14th, I am going up to Mansfield with a friend to see the Association's Exhibition. I have seen two lots of photos and the standard looks very high.

But I admit to looking forward to next weekend when I propose to be a cabbage.

A Great Day Out

Margaret Wheeler and I went to Birmingham Museums Warehouse this morning and spent several hours being shown Native American artefacts by a curator. Margaret was only interested in clothing but there was still a lot to see. These moccasins are made of buckskin and decorated, not with beads but with dyed porcupine quills cut into short lengths (Hence 'Quillwork'). There were several pairs of moccasins which would be wearable today.

And here is a baby's bonnet decorated with beads which they got from the Europeans. Mostly the bead size size is 1mm but, to vary the pattern, there might be a section in still larger beads.

This is a purse made of very thin birch bark - you can see some vertical flecks on the bark. The rest is embroidery. The purse is about four inches wide and high. This is from NE America.

There is a lot more stuff which I photographed but I can't show it all! I then drove the car into the middle of Birmingham and we walked over to the Museum through the Canal area, had lunch in the Museum and went straight up to the Native American exhibits.  Very oddly exhibited with all sorts of localities and cultures mixed up. The grandest of their holdings were here which included the  item shown below.

This is a hood for a woman. The fringe, formed of beads would have lain on her shoulders. Again probably NE American.

After that we looked at the Stafford hoard and marvelled at the intricate workmanship. Then at various other exhibits - not including the pre-Raphaelites whom I cannot stand. And finally across the street to a Bridget Riley show which was wonderful

I thought we had had enough of culture so I drove Margaret through the West Midlands countryside to Bewdley where she was very taken with the swans on the river and the black and white buildings. Home at 5 o'clock, having left before nine.

Odd Jobs

We have Margaret Wheeler arriving tomorrow to stay with us when we both go to Wokefield Park, Reading on Friday for a residential weekend. This is Kennet Valley Guild's biannual bunfight. We have four tutors of whom Margaret is one. Anyway I have a treat on Wednesday because she has an invitation to Birmingham Museum warehouse to view Native American artefacts in their stash and I am going along as chaffeur and security guard.

This is all an introduction to the fact that house needs tidying up and that is what I have been doing. Other people have half-finished projects. I have not-quite-started-yet projects. In the upstairs room, there were several such which are several months old. I had a huge tidy up - you can see the floor now and then sewed buttons on garments, sewed loops on to my waffle weave towels and did something about my sister Dorothy's journal quilt which was stuck on the wall with Blu-tak but started falling off. This involved

- finding the one inch wide white bias binding - a major exercise
- hand sewing a strip of it on the back of quilt at the top - the easy bit
- searching the cellar for something suitable to hang it from
- finding a piece of dowelling and cutting it to length, sanding the ends down
- hammering a picture hook into the wall
- inserting dowelling into quilt pocket, attaching brass wire to dowelling and hanging

The dimensions are A4.

All told, 45 minutes for the quilt. I think tea is called for and there are some Welsh cakes brought by a visitor this morning.

But more jobs remain to be done.

 Warping up has also been going on. The Jacob/Wensleydale is plied and very flecky. There is some black and white yarn to the right. The space-dyed yarn is much greener than I realised. This is going to be very interesting when woven up. 'Interesting' as in 'This could be unspeakable'.

Handspun Cushions(2)

I have designed this in a way novel to me. When I came to weigh out what handspun I had in the stash and discard the stuff that was the wrong colour or too fine, I realised that, while I had enough weight of yarn, I had no idea how long each colour was, given that the thickness could be different. So I weighed each colour, put half aside for the weft and prepared a warp or two identical warps, with the other half of the yarn. That way, I knew how many warp threads of each colour I had. I then used Fibreworks to design the colour scheme.

The colours are not true but representative, The yellow is turmeric coloured  and sort of boucle and the white is off-white. The red signifies the space dyed handspun which I have doubled up with up another darker yellow to give a thickness near to all the other yarn.

This will be the first cushion. The colour scheme in the weft will be altered for the second and third cushions.

Handspun Cushions

I woke up this morning very depressed. After a couple of hours I realised that the prospect of weaving the fan reed was the problem. It took me 90 minutes to weave 4 inches which is very slow. And I have only just got over weaving 12 yards of 90/2 silk!

So I decided that I would weave the handspun I have been given and make some cushion covers (at 6 epi!!). The idea is to weave them as double cloth which avoids any thick seams down the edges and finish the top and bottom with a fringe. The design is for a plain back and a 'fancy' front which is felted after weaving. The photo below shows all the handspun of the same thickness that I have and it ought to do three cushions. The two skeins hanging over the breast beam of the Megado are two warps for the cushion backs - Jacob mixed with Wensleydale. Goodness only knows how it will shrink. The advice I have been given (by Linda Scurr) is not to have wide stripes of any one lot of handspun because of differential shrinkage.

I have created a design of coloured stripes for the fronts and will weave with different wefts to get different but related patterns. I should have it up and running by tomorrow.

Camellia Lady McKinnon

My apple cordons. They were moved three feet backwards in January and look okay to me.