December 23, 2010

Weaving In Inches Part Two: The Finishing.

I cut my weaving off the loom around 3am Tuesday morning. It looked pretty good. The underside looked particularly woolly with the yarn bits hanging out. I hung it on my headboard and went to sleep. The following day I put Futurama on via netflix. It took me two movies, and 4 Episodes of season 4 to weave all my ends in. But it looked great. I Folded both sides under and hemmed them. It felt stiff...but I had never blocked anything before, and was afraid it would start fulling. So I did some reading online to find out the best approach. Finding little information (mostly due to the fact that I was most likely not putting the correct phrase into the search engine) so I decided to do it the 'safe' way first, and if that didn't work, the scary risky way.

The safe way involved using the steam from my iron directly on the scarf, then putting a towel over it and pressing it with the iron. Repeating for both sides. The risky way would have been without the towel. But the safe way worked fine. I pressed until my arms were sore. Hung it up as it was still damp. Once it dried it was soft, and flowed nicely. I wrapped it up and shipped it out. I was shocked to find that it would make it there on the 24th. In time for Xmas! Hurray! So here are some pictures I took before blocking, and after.

Before Blocking:

After:

And there it is, about to be wrapped up.Hopefully he likes it.
Happy Xmas everyone. : D

December 17, 2010

Weaving In Inches

My table loom has been warped and woven on for the last few days. It took some mental adjustments to get used to. I learned on a Schacht Baby Wolf. A really great floor loom. I'll have one someday. But To go from that to a vintage table loom (which is of course much smaller) wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. I'm there though. I have a fairly decent system worked out for using the hand levers.

The only downside is that with the end of the semester and the holidays, I haven't had as much time to weave as I needed. I'm working on an Xmas gift, that will not be able to arrive on time with shipping and all. But I'm still weaving an inch or two in between running around and studying. It'll get there. Just not on time. Even still, I'm hoping it will turn out and that the person it is intended for enjoys it. Of course, there will be a photo once it's finished. :)

December 11, 2010

End Of The Semester

Well, Monday is the official last day of weaving class for me. I will receive my projects (now graded) have my review/sit-down with the instructor and be on my way. I'm excited to take my pieces home and put them to use. Mainly as gifts. These two however, I am keeping for myself. They are Parts A and B of my final project. Initially they were meant to be one fabulous messenger bag, but I wove B too wide and now it is a scarf. My colors...are insanely bright. Which makes me appreciate the Black and White warp as they really help to break up the brightness. I would imagine someone who knows a great deal about color theory and color in general might have something to say about them. They do seem to scream at me. But enough babbling. Here they are:

Final Project A:
He has a face! I should name him Frank.

Project B:
This is my scarf, prior to the fringe...which took quite a few hours. So I will show an up close image of it.
Hours and hours of work...and probably Carpal Tunnel. It's much lovelier in person I assure you. :) I've already got my table loom partially set up with my next project.