Inkle Disaster!

A disaster on the inkle loom!

Do you see the very sad attempt at pick-up weaving?  There are patterns in the weaving. I found some wonderful blogs that focus on this kind of weaving.  I wanted to try it. I read the blogs, watched the videos and studied the pictures, but my attempts come no where close to the pictures I saw.  Why can't I get this right?

And another disaster!  This one looked so bad I quite after three inches.

If you want to see really beautiful weavings from an inkle loom, check out this web site called ASpinnerWeaver.

A tale of three scarves

Three difference scarves. 

Scarf #1 - RED

This scarf has two difference threads. The thread that makes up 10 inches on both ends of the scarf is a red cotton.  In the middle, making up about 40 inches, is a beautiful red and black yarn.  I believe it is called Electra, but I'm not 100% on the name.  It's soft and has a wonderful texture.  The two threads together don't make a nice combo.  I don't care for this scarf much.  It was just too expensive to get more of the nice Electra thread to make this any longer.

Scarf #2 - Blue and Red

This is made with a wonderful cotton chenille which is quite soft.  Unfortunately, it didn't turn out very soft at all.  It is extremely stiff and dense.  I was so frustrated with this thing.  I had warpped the loom to have a wonderful pattern in the scarf, but it didn't work out.  It was just extremely dense and showed zero of the pattern.  I think the warp I used was too thin for the cotton chenille weft and that was why it was so dense.

It's about 70 inches long and 8 inches wide.

Scarf #3 - Stripes

I'm sure this has to be some school's colors.

I made this scarf on my good ole Dorothy loom.  I haven't used the table loom in a while and I gave it a try again.  This scarf came out a little shorter than I would have liked.  I rad out of the blue thread.

The blue and white thread are a thin cotton thread.  The red you might recognize from scarf #2, it's that red cotton chenille.  The chenille is quite a bit thicker than the cotton and so it gives this scarf a wonderful texture.  It's quite thin, about 4 inches wide, but I love the way it looks and feels.  The pattern I set up in the warp shows up in the white and blue parts of the scarf.  They are the same kind of thread that was used for the warp.  The red, which is thicker, didn't show the pattern very well.

They were all fun to make, but I'm not producing the kind of product as I would like.  I'll keep working on that, I guess.

Weaving stoppers

It isn't easy to weave with Transformers on the warp and Polly Pockets on the treadles.

Latest shawl

This is a beautiful shawl I just finished on the tri-loom.  It's got fringe, too!

It's made with Lion's Brand Homespun yarn.  The color is blue, obviously, but it has strands of green running through it.  This is the second shawl I've made with this yarn.

This is me, modeling the shawl.  It is so soft and warm.  I love it!

Long Overshot Wrap

I finished!!!  It took me a while, but that's mostly because I'm busy these days and it sat on the loom with only about three inches done for two weeks.  Once I started weaving and had the treadle pattern memorized, it went pretty quickly. 

It's 8 feet long.  At first I thought that was way to long, but once I started playing with it and wearing it, I realized it was a very nice length.  It's 18.5 inches wide.

I used up all the thread - all 1400 yards of it!  The thread is thick, so it makes a wonderful cold weather wrap.  I'm looking forward to winter now!

Weaving away

The huge spool of thread I bought is going quickly.  I hope it lasts this project, but I'm starting to worry that it won't.  What will I do if I run out?  I can't afford more of that kind right now.  Well, I'll just keep going until I run out and that will be the end of this project. 

Pictures to come soon....

Overshot pictures

This neat-o pattern is the overshot pattern I mentioned.

Is it great?!?  I really like it, but I didn't do such a great job at it.  First of all, I've got it off center.  I didn't read the pattern right, so the main butterfly pattern is off to the side rather than in the middle.  Second, my selvages were terrible and I wound the thread very loosely.  I'm still working on getting my warp nice and tight.  Then, I realized I wouldn't have enough thread to finish the six feet I wanted.

So, I cut if off and re-threaded the entire loom.  This time the butterfly is in the center.  I bought the prettiest cotton/rayon thread called Astra.  This particular color combo is called Peacock.  I think it's beautiful.

It's green, blue, purple and a tiny bit of black.  The thing is with this thread, you don't see the overshot pattern very well.  Still, I think I'm going to finish this warp with this yarn.  I have a lot of this thread, so it should last me.  What slows me down the most is my bobbin.  It's four inches long and doesn't hold much thread at a time.  So, I don't make it far in the pattern before I run out of thread on the bobbin.   

Then there is the issue with my kids.  They don't let me work very long.

I want to have this ready for this fall.  That means I'll have to put a lot more time into it than I'm giving now.

It's going to look great!