The fabric is finished, washed, ironed and hung up at the end of the corridor. Lynn suggested I should use it as a table runner and keep looking at it till I think of something to do with it. This serves the same function.   Thank you, Lynn.

This weekend was spent tidying up the talks I am giving to the London Guild next Saturday. They did not need so much doing to them as I remembered. But I have to deal with the problems of the samples. Last time I did a talk on 'Silk', I went by car. London means train. And some of my samples are 15 yards of kimono silk wrapped on stout cardboard cylinders. Way too heavy to take by train. So am I going to cut a length off?  I flatly refuse to cut into the patola sari length or the red silk and gold sari length. And the Tunisian curtain material is firstly very heavy and secondly carefully patterned over the length so I will wreck it if I cut a piece off. I can see a halfday spent upstairs with the 'Collection'. I have made a list of desirable samples.

I have warped up the Voyager with the chained and space dyed warp from Mary Jarvis (thanks Mary). It looks good. Now to see if Tencel+ merino in the weft gives the effect I am looking for. I want to get a scarf out of 2.5 metres of warp. So I am intending to cut it off after weaving 10 inches and see what the devore procedure does. It is supposed to be autumn leaves.

No reason to think that it will work. There are a number of questions which Anne Field says can only be answered by sampling such as sett. Not to mention that weft wool is the same size as the warp but the Tencel is thicker. And I do wonder after doing wraps if sage green was the right colour to dye it. Maybe brown?

So I am making a dent in my Project list. Although I forgot two very important jobs. 'Frijoles Creek Remembered' has to be sent off to Convergence and I want to finish a coat of white silk (woven by me) by July 4th when various bits of the family are going to Glyndebourne to see 'Cosi Fan Tutte' . I had given up the coat because it wants a trim and thought I might weave one but this deadline is too good to miss so I trawled the web for nice ribbon. I finished up with 4 yards of Suzani flowers from Laura Foster Nicholson. I loved the Morning Glory but not the colour of the background and the poppies are wonderful but it looks like it is intended to be used horizontally whereas I want it vertical.

Quilting Show at Hanley Swan

Yesterday Ruth and I nipped out to Hanley Swan Village Hall where Region 11 of the Quilters Guild was having its annual exhibition. The standard was very high. There were a few sales tables including one who sold Tanzanian fabrics.  The saleslady said that the pieces should be washed to get rid of excess dye. Hence the above photo showing five 'fat quarters' hung up on the garage line. These are intended for covering books. I also washed the fan reed silk and inspected the drying bark - getting there but it will be another day or two. I intend to do some thicker bits next.

I found a video on the web showing how to paste paper to fabric for book covers. It looks good to me and I intend to have a big session in the garage doing just that.

Fan Reed (7)

The Fan Reed fabric is finished and off the loom. This is a scan showing that I can do it without errors. The secret is to ratchet up the tension until you feel that everything is going to go PING at any minute. The basic problem is that there is no guiding wooden rail at the bottom of the reed to help the shuttle stay on the straight and narrow.

I only have 45 inches in length and still have not decided what to do with the fabric. There has been a lot of family discussion on this. Suggestions are

- the front of a jacket. I don't like the idea.
- a cushion. There is enough fabric for that. No-one else likes that idea, only me.
- machine embroider over it or collage it and use it as a wall hanging. I am not enthusiastic.

So I have settled for washing and ironing it!

Since Ruth is here this weekend and can give me a hand with furniture removal, the Louet Kombo was dismantled, moved upstairs and rebuilt. The new table has been moved into place in Michael's room and looks very nice.

I have started on warping up the devore project on the Voyager. I will move it on to the new table tomorrow and work on it there.

Birch Bark (2)

I had a look at the birch bark after 24 hours of clamping. Quite nicely flattened but still very wet. I blotted the excess off with household tissue but don't like the idea of sandwiching that in the clamp for fear it sticks onto the bark when the bark dries out. I have reclamped the bark . It may be several days before it is completely dry. I will look at it every day. I don't know why I did not think of using this technique for bookbinding instead of four bricks. The pressure must be far higher.

My table came yesterday and is in the garage. So I spent some time weaving on the Fan reed. The result was 15 inches of impeccable cloth. I hope I can keep it up. The secret is to screw up the warp tension as hard as possible and to wind on after two inches of weaving. I am now hoping I can finish by Sunday and get Ruth to help me shift everything round. Some of today will have to be spent thinking about meals for the weekend and buying the ingredients. Since Michael has not been well, we have survived this week on what is in the house /freezer. It turns out it was all just a reaction to antibiotics.

I have ordered some smashing marbled paper through etsy from mymarbledpapers.

I am making up some ivory silk (woven by me) into a coat and decided I need some high class wide ribbon to trim it. A lot of the last two days has been spent searching the web - with no success. I remembered vaguely coming across an American weaver who did Jacquard ribbon. And sure enough there she was with a wonderful collection of ribbon. So I have ordered 4 yards of ribbon as well. Her name is Laura Foster Nicholson. Well worth gawping at.

Malvern Common in Summer

The hills from Malvern Common on June 2nd at about 1930 hours. Long shadows.

Looking away from the hills across the Vale of Evesham towards the Cotswolds (upper right). What you see is the shadow of the hills (Worcester Beacon to be precise) leaving the clumps of trees in sun shine. My road runs up the hill behind the trees. We live much further up the hill.

This is what the Common itself is like. Vegetation flourishing! And rabbits too. They come out morning and evening in the copse by the stream. I am told that a polecat lives there which is good. I am against rabbits anywhere near my garden. But they are on the other side of the Common and there are too many dogs on the Common for them to venture far from the copse. 

The birch bark was nicely softened by 2000 hours so I clamped it between two old shelves clad in melamine, using 4 G-clamps. I think I shall leave it until tomorrow to inspect. I might leave it clamped up until it is completely dry.

Went into Worcester yesterday (halfterm for bookbinding class) to have a hair cut and investigate 'The Cotton Reel'. It used to be a tiny shop crammed full of quilting stuff with the owner sitting in the middle quilting! They have moved two doors up to an old bank. It is larger, still crammed with goodies (and customers). And the owner is still quilting between looking after the customers. She has cut off the back half of the shop, put in 8 or 10 tables and classes are run there. There was one on when I was there and there seem to be 3 or 4 day classes each week. A sensible way to use the space. The owner strikes me as quite shrewd. There is nothing like a busy shop to bring in yet more customers.

Ruth is back from Kuala Lumpur today and comes to us for the weekend tomorrow.

Birch Bark

I asked if anyone knew of a website selling birch bark. Kirsten replied with a Swedish website who sell in lots of one kilo. It is quite expensive and a kilo is a lot. So I asked my sister who walks her dog in a forest near Longforgan (Dundee) if there were any decayed birches there and she said yes some had come down in the winter gales. So this morning a box arrived - see photo for contents. This varies between small pieces two inches or so across and quite thin to some large pieces which are at least 0.25 inch thick. The ideal thickness should be an eighth to a sixteenth of an inch although a quarter should be usable

Here are some small pieces of bark soaking in warm water. I will look at them in eight hours and, if they are soft enough, I will press them between two  old melamine shelves clamped together with G-clamps.

The box also contained a lot of pieces of Dorothy's dyed cotton. Each is multiple colours and I was looking to machine embroider or possibly collage some and use it on book covers.

I started out by thinking I might entitle this blog 'Screams of Rage'. All my fine plans for installing a table and getting on with sewing and bookbinding soon have been upended by my forgetting something quite trivial - that the Louet Kombo came into that room in bits and will not go out assembled. So after half an hour's toying with various impossible plans, I have decided that I need to finish the Fan Reed weaving where it is now, then dismantle it. So I tied the warp up again yesterday and started weaving. 

The handspun is also tied on but I must not be deflected from the Fan Reed weaving.

New Projects (4)

I have made progress on two projects This is a photo of the handspun warp for cushions. The tying on at the breast beam has to be finished but that will be done today.

I have also finished the Margaret Roach Wheeler weaving, cut it off, washed it and ironed it dry. It has come up well although there is a glaring error in the section intended for the back which ought to be repairable. There was not enough warp left to weave any extra samples and I used the last bit of warp to weave tabby as I think this  cloth would look good as a book cover.

I have also wound off the skeins of dyed Tencel and dyed 60/2 silk onto spools. I think I need to wind the lemon dyed merino into balls if I am to weave Tencel + merino. I have re-read Anne Field's book on Devore and find I am quite safe to use a wool only warp with a Tencel and wool weft. She talks about sett but not for the case when the yarn in the warp will not be affected by the devore process. Myself, I think it will have to be set at less ends per inch than I would use for a just-wool fabric. I think I will do some wraps just to check.

On the subject of cloth book covers, the procedure is to paste the cloth to paper and use that as the cover. The paper should be fairly thin. I was taught to use newsprint (before printing of course). Using the paper has the advantage that you can square up the fabric nicely and then treat it as one for the book binding. I was told to use paste for this and i have done up to now but last week I used PVA and a thin paper. It was a serious mistake. The PVA has come through the cloth and stained it badly. Fortunately, this was intended as a trial and I have not lost too much cloth.  But, when the table comes, I will try another piece of the same cloth (printed cotton) with paste. I was given a recipe for paste which involved boiling up flour and water. This keeps for 2 weeks in the fridge but the problem is that you have to make a minimum quantity and remember you need it 24 hours in advance so I have bought some paste in powder form and can make this up in very small quantities. It only needs a few minutes before it is ready. I can't wait for this table to arrive. I will move the Louet Kombo plus Fan Reed out tomorrow.