What I made, by Sharon

This weekend I wove the sampler for my placemats. In most ways I'm happy with how it came out, and I learnt a lot, which is the point of making a sampler. I love the colours, and I love the pattern - I think it's called a point twill. I was going to try out all the different patterns because the final set is going to be all these colours, but in different weaves - but then I fell in love with this and couldn't stop. I need to work on keeping the edges even and I machine sewed the ends, and, well, why does so much of my crafting lead to sewing, which really is one of my crafting weaknesses. Something the work on. The only thing I still have to decide is if it is big enough. If I decide it's not, I can weave them the other way, which means that, instead of sewing the edges under I can leave a little fringe. Either way, it will be a few days before I've got time to be at the loom, so it will give me something to think about during boring work meetings.

I've spent the last couple of days warping my loom for my next project, which is going to be table mats. When I wound the warp I was planning to make pillows, as per the Crafty weaving class  , but I decided that I didn't really need pillows. Also that the class is hard to navigate, and I'd rather take what I've learnt and make what I want. So here it is, warped up and ready to go. 

Fabric! This is my first fabric off the weaving loom. I'm pretty happy with it. It's made from handspun, both warp and weft and I definitely enjoyed weaving with my handspun more than I like knitting with it. I'm hoping to make a Doni's Deli Bag    The way the fabric evolves from quite loose to dense might make this look a bit odd, but it's what I had in mind when I wove it  so I'm likely to go ahead. The fabric also came out a little narrower than I thought it would, due to a basic counting error on my part. I also have to actually sew by handknit hand woven fabric, which takes a bit of courage for a reluctant sewer like I am. I haven't decided if I should pull out the old sewing machine, or just hand stitch it. For the moment though, I'm happy to keep running it through my hands, feeling clever and saying to myself, Wow, fabric.

Today was the last day of the weaving course , and I have to say, I'm exhausted. Doing something like weaving for a full day is surprisingly tiring. I learnt a great deal on this course, and am really glad I did it. I now feel confident to go actually use my loom, and have a couple of projects planned for the future, but now here's a photo of the fabric I've nearly finished making, using my handspun as both warp and weft:   Still I'm a little bit glad it's over, because I found going to Richmond Knitters on Mondays and weaving class on Tuesdays exhausting, so it's been weeks since I went to my usual Monday night Richmond Knitters , and I'm really lookinng forward to seeing everyone tomorrow.

As you may recall in March I brought my loom home . It's taken me a while to get it working. First I had to do some repairs, then I had to understand how to warp it. For some reason I found all the instructions as to how to warp esoteric and incomprehensible. But the Guild course sorted me out. So, on Wednesday I started to warp my loom! I finished this morning and am super excited, because it looks like it's all properly done. Unfortunately I have to leave the house, so i can't start actually weaving until tomorrow, but for now I just happy that it's all threaded up and ready to weave.

Today I attended my first weaving class, and I loved it. The instructor is great, and the other members of the group are lovely. Today we learnt about looms and how to warp them, and started warping our (borrowed Guild) looms. My warp on the warping board. love the colours It took all day, and we didn't get it finished, but apparently when we know what we are doing it will only take a couple of hours. I love the colours I am very excited to understand how to warp, which seems to me to be thye trickiest part of the whole weaving process. i'm so looking forward to going back on Tueaday to finish warping and, I guess, to start weaving. My half warped loom

The Guild weaving classess were announced for term three and I decided to go for it! You may recall I was doing a Craftsy class , but I got lost around the warping stage - which is the thing you do to set everything up. So that wasn't the best success. I think that once someone shows me how to set everything up the Craftsy class will be great, but sometimes I just need to sit down and be shown something, and this is one of those times.

I was listening to the Knit Wits podcast a couple of weeks ago and Karen mentioned that she has been weaving, which reminded me that I own a table loom. In fact, it was given to me as a birthday present, perhaps for my 16th birthday, and has been sitting at my parents place, waiting for the right time I've thought about weaving before and even discussed doing the Guilds weaving cour se but essentially I'm too lazy to actually attend a class across town. But I did find a Crafty course that I'm watching that seems to explain things quite well. So, on Tuesday my loom came home to me! I THINK it's in working order, although it's hard to tell, what with my lack of knowledge and all. I think I'll have to buy a warping board, because I can't work out how to warp without one, but other than that I hope it's good to go. I'm pretty excited. The Craftsy class shows how to make cushion covers, and after that I want to make some table mats. ...