dyed scarves

Well, I finally have something to show for all of the dyeing I've been doing in the past month. I did the first dyeing session in which I dyed all 20 of the scarves a light to medium color. It took most of a day, (probably 7-8 hours, ugh) and I had some very interesting problems arise. I haven't done any dyeing for at least 2 years, and so I may have been a little arrogant in my assumption that I knew what I was doing. Half of the first colors came out right, but my yellows were neon orange, my browns were really dead looking (not nice browns), my blues were neon blue, and my reds were neon pink. So after I figured out all the colors were neon, I adjusted by over-dyeing them in compliments to tone them down, and got some better results.


About 3 weeks later I found the time to start on the "top layer" or pattern color. I had a rough start because I couldn't remember how to make my pattern technique work. After I re-figured that out, things went better. My favorite result is the dark maroon one with orange underneath. I wish the others had turned out darker, but they do have a nice subtle effect.


I'll be selling 5 of these at a local handmade show next month. These 5 I tried a technique in which the scarf is sewn to itself on the bias, which creates a nice drape effect. I like it, but the scarves are skinnier and shorter than originally.

Creative Hand Show
sponsored by the Kansas City Weavers and Fiber Guilds
Friday, Nov. 21, 4-8 pm
Fashion Show at 7 pm
Saturday, Nov.22, 10-5 pm
@ Sylvester Powell Community Center
6200 Martway, Mission, KS

So if you're in KC the weekend before Thanksgiving, check it out! I always find cool stuff every year, especially for Christmas presents.

New Book

I got a book in the mail today: Clothing from the Hands That Weave by Anita Luvera Mayer. She's practically a legend in the weaving community, and yet I can't seem to find much about her on the web. I did find an interesting little article by her with some old pictures.



I made a version of this shirt a few years ago when I first learned to weave.



I just love the concept of this dress. The gores are crocheted and the strips are woven.

Fingerless Gloves

We are going camping this weekend! And it's just turned quite chilly out, so I had to finish my fingerless gloves to wear. The pattern I used is from ravelry, "twisted maiden". In the picture, the left glove was the first try in which I followed the given pattern for the placement of the thumb gusset. It came out that the cable pattern was off-center. So for the right one I moved the thumb gusset over 2 stitches and --hooray, it worked!-- the cable is centered now! I'll be remaking the left one, but for now I'm wearing them camping. We're going north of Kansas City to Wallace State Park, which I've never been to before. I'm pretty pumped about hiking, cooking over the fire, and trying out my new bow and arrows! Off I go...

Iridescence Workshop: Day 2

There's not as much to talk about today, just that I am very inspired and wanting to try out a few different ideas on my own. We continued weaving today and I finished my green-yellow green-yellow plaid with every other color. What I am wanting to do is weave some iridescent yardage in maybe a deep blue and brown together and then sew a dress from it. (we'll see how soon that happens...)

But we did learn one lesson: all of us who were using table looms (like the one in the picture) have sworn we'll never use one again. Take my advice, they're not worth the trouble and the weaving takes twice as long as on a floor loom. Everyone using a table loom had some sort of tension problem.


I did find a neat flicker account that had a ton of iridescent pictures that were both natural and unnatural sources. This ball was my favorite.

Color Iridescence Weaving Workshop: Day 1

One of the best things about being in the weaver's guild is that we get to have these awesome workshops a couple of times a year. Well this weekend we have weaver Bobbie Irwin giving us a workshop on creating iridescence in woven fabric by combining contrasting colors in the warp and weft.


Picture a room full of different kinds of looms all going at once. (It's pretty loud!) We've been weaving all day today after Bobbie lectured for about an hour. Each of us received a predetermined warp of 3-6 colors and everyone set up her loom beforehand. Then, we wove 3" bands of every color in the spectrum. Each two-color interaction is different. Some produce a lot of iridescence, others only a little.


Iridescence is defined by Bobbie as "a play of colors, where the apparent fabric color changes with the light and angle of view." There are also examples of this in nature, such as motor oil showing the rainbow from different angles (but really being black) or a peacock feather shimmering blue, purple and gold.


Unfortunately, I don't think my pictures show the iridescence very well, but you can get the idea of each square in our sampler being a different combination produced.


Here is Bobbie Irwin, wearing an iridescent shirt she wove. The warp is blue, the weft is fushia, and so the colors are constantly varying in the light between the two and the purple is also produced as a visual mixing.

I'll post more tomorrow. We'll be experimenting with different weave structures in one color combination. (Today we just did plain weave.)

felted cloche

Apologies for the lack of entries lately. I really have been busy making things though. The first one I'll post is my new winter hat! I've been meaning to get around to felting a hat since last winter and last Friday I finally did. I have a friend from the KC Weaver's Guild that is an expert felter and makes hats to sell locally. She invited me down to her studio and gave me some tips and information that I didn't know about felting. She also has a huge collection of old hat forms and she let me borrow this one in the picture.
As you can see, my hat is unadorned at this point. I'm still thinking about how I want to embellish it. I know I want some color along the edge, to make the flare stand out. But I'm thinking of doing some intricate embroidery around it as a sort of band. I can't wait until it's cold weather to wear it, I am so happy with how it came out. Cloches always make me think of the 20's and girls with bob haircuts.
Oh, some notes about the felting: This hat is made straight from the carded wool fiber, it's not knitted first. The wool I used is a grey New Zealand wool and you can see that it's quite a bit more fuzzy than most felted wools. (Merino is the most popular to use for felting.) The whole process probably took me about 4 hours from start to finish-a very short project actually. But the felting is all done by hand and so it's a quite strenuous activity.