July in Review

I have begun a set of small scale tapestry shapes to contribute to this totally awesome international project.

I had a dye day with a new friend, as my way of thanking her for a gift of yarns from her stash that she wanted to go to a good home.  I supplied the dye and process and she brought some cotton (she makes GORGEOUS quilts) She went home with a wide variety of fat quarters and I dyed a few cotton skirts, some cotton chenille, and size 30 crochet thread.

I got my mini cards from MOO. I am SO HAPPY with them.  I got 40 each of ten designs from photos I took of my tapestries.  ALL of them turned out with vivid colour and sharpness and the weight and finish of the stock is gorgeous.  I can't stop touching them. 

oh my yes!

A girlfriend of mine from high school just had her first baby and it's a girl!  I wanted to make her something simple yet unique as a shower gift.   I am so pleased with it I have decided to write out the pattern, and modify it to make pant legs as well. 

 

I made the  straps adjustable, flipped the long ends up and buttoned them twice to take care of the extra length and I like the way that looks!  It's a very simple pattern and quick to knit so I am going to get that written and make it available free to anyone who wants to try it. 

 The yarn is Eco-fil 75%cotton 25%acrylic (loosely spun) I found at Dollar Tree.  It was super soft (perfect for baby projects) and came in a range of colours not typically found in baby yarn so I stocked up!

In the land of inkle I have been pumping out the yardage to play with this autumn.  I am gong to try to make a vest, some more handbags and decorations, and possibly a hat.  I'm also kicking back into gear making guitar straps because I've had a few inquiries and nudges lately.  :)

 

This last one is 2.5" wide and 6 feet long.  I am going to weave one more similar one with another band of basketweave pick-up in a different colour and then stitch them together to a fabric base (my favorite technique) and make either a handbag or a vest.

 

One other announcement I forgot to make here in June was that "Bloom" was awarded the Gale Steck Memorial Award for Excellence in Craft by and Emerging Artist!!  It was an honor to receive this award (my first!) and I must confess it was the final fire under my bottom to get moving on the next big tapestry, which is currently threaded, tensioned, twined, border woven...just waiting for that first commitment of colour.  ;p  

Do you have something cast on, or otherwise begun that you would like to share?  I love discovering new art/craft blogs!  Link me!

Thank you for taking a peek!

♥

JQ

Bloom 2013

In this age of high speed and convenience, the rhythmic act of weaving speaks to my soul.  When I sit before the loom I choose to surrender to process, relishing textures of coarse wool, smooth cotton and glossy silk as inch by inch they pass through my fingertips into the warp. Emotions and concepts begin to surface and collide, connect or slip past each other in my mind.  I imagine these strands of subconscious are travelling alongside the threads as I twine, coax and beat them into place.  Tapestry commands discipline and constant deliberation; It challenges me to have faith in my instincts and give it Time.

Bloom is my celebration of the Time it took.

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I am overjoyed to announce that "Bloom" was one of 35 entries selected by the jury to travel with Dimensions 2013.  What an intensive learning experience!  I have my next warp ready to string onto the loom, and the new cartoon is already blown up to scale.  

Thank you to everyone who shared in this adventure with me especially my loving husband and family, my ever optimistic friends and the awesome ladies of the Saskatchewan Spinners and Weavers Guild. 

Happy creating everyone!

Sincerely,

♥

JQ

Tapestry Update!

Hello Hello!

Here is a shot of the rose tapestry at 138 Hours! You can click on the photos to get a larger view!


I got to wind the warp down a teensy bit further. That's always exciting! But my hips sure are bothering me. I am feeling a little deflated. I just hope I manage to get this one finished before I need to take a few months off and heal. But! Do you see the white area on the upper right hand side of the cartoon? That's totally the background! Eeee!


At this point I have so SO SO many butterflies and bobbins attached to the tapestry I can barely think straight and don't get me started on keeping things untangled. But until I start to close up the top of the rose I will have to keep moving across the entire piece, working up an inch at a time or so of each section. C'est la vie. Pun absolutely intended. :P


I can't wait to start in the center of the rose. The colours will be deeper and there will be some rich burgundy in with all that purple.

"Rest not. Life is sweeping by; go and dare before you die. Something mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time."

---Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I finished weaving the first Celtic knot guitar strap. This one has a home already plus I have 2 more requests!

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ PINK! ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I just threaded this bad girl up this morning. Looking sharp! This one is destined to pair up with a pretty wicked bubblegum pink electric guitar. HOT.

Thanks for popping in! Hope everyone had a nice weekend!
♥
JQ

128 Hours! My Deadline is Set!

Hi everyone!

Well after tons of landscaping, company and a trip to my family reunion, I am back with an update! I hope you have had as much fun so far this summer as I have been having!

Here is the rose tapestry at 128 hours:


You can see the center of the rose now in the cartoon behind! I have set my deadline for the end of September 2011. I hope to have the warp for my next one threaded, tensioned and twined by mid October.

The image of my cartoon, with the past 18 hours worth of progress in blue:


Detail (left):


Detail (right):


A little closer...


And this is my not so itsy bitsy weaver friend:


She is a common Barn spider or Araneus cavaticus. Charlotte A. Cavatica from the book Charlotte's web is named after this bad girl. She made her summer home in my back porch doorway and has been hanging around for 2 months now.

♥ ♥ ♥ SHE IS ENORMOUS AND HIDEOUS AND I LOVE HER. ♥ ♥ ♥

A few other things I got up to before the family reunion. Would you believe I never took any pictures of the pretty blue and green hand spun, hand dyed, handwoven scarf I made for my auntie??? I have to get her to send me a picture.

Some inkle shoe laces I made for to match Miss Naomi's pretty new sneakers:


Two pretty mauve, plum and teal ruffled scarves for the November Sale:


A pretty red "kelp scarf", also for the November sale. I have several warps made for scarves like this. Some of them are asymmetrical! I'm excited!


Here's a few of the warps one pink and grey with a pink ruffled center as well as ruffles at the edge, and one gold and rust with the ruffle on one side over twice the width as the other side:


Thanks for taking a peek! It gets to this time of year and I just have to embrace the manic panic and ride it, tresses to the wind until Christmas.

Then FULL STOP and movie marathon my way through January and February. :P

Cheers!
♥
JQ

The Wheel Deal

Yesterday my husband found a listing for this Louet S10 spinning wheel on Kijiji and it was such a fabulous deal we couldn't say no! It's in really great condition and has seven spools and a rack that attaches to the bottom of the wheel so I can easily ply as many as four singles. :)



I just found out from my mother in law that there will be some wool fleece coming my way which is SO AWESOME! I will have to decided if it will be good for wet felting, because otherwise it will get spun on this bad boy!

A lovely friend gave me this amazing handwoven rug with an Asian dragon silhouette. Also it is TOTALLY in my wedding colours and thus matches a handwoven hand dyed/screened blanket that two of my college girlfriends made for me. I plan to hand stitch a little sleeve at the top so I can hang it on my wall instead of putting it on the floor. I just don't know if I can walk on it. :P


The coolest thing about the rug is that is is reversible! I adore it!


I have been busy weaving up scarves on my four harness jack loom in the basement. A-It is so much cooler down there and B-I need to start building up some stock for the Annual Sale in November.

This scarf in 100% wool, made with a peach and sage green space dyed wool, and a few stripes of peach and rust stuff I have on cones.


This scarf was a real learning experience for me. It is difficult to see but I wove a stripe of darker green above and below the horizontal orange stripes and that yarn didn't shrink at all when I wet the scarf out to finish it. So I had to cut it out and replace that with the paler green weft and re-wet it and hope for the best. Shown below is the scarf where the yarn has been replaced in the left side but not yet on the right. It looked a lot worse in reality, but if you click on it you can see the puckering that occurred when that section of weft did not shrink with the rest.


Below are close ups of the two sides. Now I got a much better result once the weft was replaced, but because I was sewing it in by hand the tension was different and so I did experience a bit of a pucker at the outside edge when the yarn I replaced shrunk, but over all it's much better than what I had before.


The other thing that happened was kind of a happy accident. The stripes of rust and peach were of a different wool than the rest of the warp, and it shrunk more. So it pulled up the ends of the scarf into a scallop. NEAT. I left a very long fringe, plying two warp threads together all the way across. (Sarah, I absolutely used that little doohickey you gave me. It worked like a charm and my fingers thank you). Below is the puckered scarf before I wove in the new weft.


And this scarf was a real quickie using some dishcloth cotton I had dyed. One side was pale brown, space dyed with navy, and the other side is peach. I used a peach acrylic faux-hair for weft. Not only is the scarf soft and fuzzy, but since it doesn't have any animal fiber in it it might appeal to a vegan, unless they are concerned about the dyes.


The peach faux-hair crosses the areas of pale brown in the navy warp and gives the scarf a mottled look.


And this is the Rose Tapestry at 114 hours:


I had warp threads break on me! So where you see the white cord wrapped in figure eights around t-pins that is a busted warp thread than I had to replace. I seriously have nightmares about this kind of thing and it was a bit trying when they started to fray, especially because it is supposed to be a high quality rug warp and I paid a hefty sum for it. GAR.


Anyways in the long run it should be no big deal. I think it was just the idea that freaked me out (angst to the max) in the beginning. It's a pain in the bottom but not The End of Days. :P

And hey, speaking of pains in the bottom I have learned something new. The lady who gave me the rug told me that the pain I have been experiencing deep in my hips is likely Weaver's Bottom. I laughed but she was dead serious, so I looked it up:

Weaver's bottom: Inflammation of the bursa that separates the gluteus maximus muscle of the buttocks from the underlying bony prominence of the bone that we sit on, the ischial tuberosity. Weaver's bottom is a form of bursitis that is usually caused by prolonged sitting on hard surfaces that press against the bones of the bottom or mid-buttocks. In proper medical parlance, Weaver's bottom is called ischial bursitis.

Thanks MedicineNet. com!

Thanks for popping by!

♥
JQ

Tapestry update and a few side projects...

Greetings fellow earthlings!

This is what my tapestry looks like at 85 hours!


I know it seems to be progressing at a snail's pace. I've been finding it difficult to designate even 1 or 2 hours a day with my 2 year old operating at full throttle, especially since summer has hit. We are undertaking fencing and landscaping our yard. I can't believe it's been almost 2 years since we moved in! I'm hoping to have a small vegetable garden and some flower beds as well as actual GRASS! :D

On a completely separate note I just have to gush for a moment, about my super awesome hubby. He's like, the KING of thrift store bargains and has been finding the most amazing stuff at great prices! Take a look at all the yarn and crochet thread!


Not just the amazing deals but the colours he's been able to find are fabulous! I'm especially in love with the Skeins of lime green size 30. All those skeins are Daisy brand and are 400 yards per skein.

He found a whole bunch of Daisy skeins in the Pansy colourway, so I think I might save that for a big bedspread or table cloth project:


I use crochet thread in so many of my projects. I like to use it for more traditional uses like doilies and lace, but it is also what I use to make my colourful inkle bands, and inkle jewelry, and it comprises about 75% of my current tapestry, the rest being random bits of wool, silk and linen. The white and off white will be perfect for blending or for dying.

Three big cheers for a fabulous husband who is so very supportive of my vocation! ♥ ♥ ♥


Speaking of crochet thread and doilies, I made these 2 matching hot pads using caramel and chocolate brown with a bit of black. I plan to make a set of 8 matching coasters, but I need to adjust the pattern. I copied this from an old hot pad my grandma purchased at a thrift shop:


I puzzled out the pattern for this set of rainbow flower coasters as well. Big thanks to my mum in law for thinking of me when she picked them up at a yard sale! And another big thanks to her for finding me some cool colours of crochet thread recently. I am so lucky to have such a supportive family! ♥


They are two-toned. The backs are darker and bits of that dark colour show up behind the lighter colour because of a slight variation in the patterns from back to front. Now I want to find a clear glass bowl--like a candle cup-- to keep them in!


Thanks everyone for stopping in. Hope you are all having a good summer!
♥
JQ

The Rose Tapestry at 64 Hours

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.
--Georgia O'Keeffe


This is 64 hours. Total weave time includes everything I do for the tapestry once the warp is strung, tensioned and twined. That took me about a week of evenings.


It's probably about 60% weaving, 20% yarn prep (dying, skeining and winding butterflies/bobbins), and 20% visualizing. That last one actually happens the whole time I am weaving and prepping yarn as well. I do pause for contemplation. I sit with my work and survey it; I imagine it unfurling. I roll colours in my hands, twining them together to get an idea of how they will mingle. How I weave each section is more important to me than how fast I can do it, so I never feel guilty about taking time to think. If I spend 6 hours weaving a section and then decide it really doesn't work I have to un weave it.


I'll be moving to the left side to complete the green petal or at least weave it as high as I need in order to weave the dark squiggly section just to the right of it. Once those two pieces are done I'll be able to start on the petal that is unfurling above it all. Another small section to the right is ready to be woven so if I get bored of green I might skip over there and weave the section of orange/yellow with black lines.


And this little guy is the product of another delightful workshop I was able to participate in through my local spinners and weavers guild. There's a bit of pop culture reference here. Can anyone guess?


He's made with wool fleece and special tools called felting needles. I REALLY had fun making him. Actually I'm feeling as little distracted by it! I just want to buy up a bunch of coloured fleeces and needle felt my own army of cute.


Thanks for stopping by!
♥
JQ