Slowly Getting Back to Weaving Again

I can't believe I haven't written anything since the beginning of January.  I think the bears took a lot out of me, so I haven't been doing any weaving since Christmas.

On January 30th, I had a mild heart attack, but even a mild one has affected me quite a bit.  I was too tired to do much of anything for at least a week, and after I started back to work, I didn't have any energy once I got home.  I think my brain finally kicked in to where I can actually concentrate on something for more than a few minutes.

I finished winding the linen warp that I was working on when I had the attack, and got it onto the loom a couple days ago.  I did a little weaving yesterday, checking for threading errors (I found two) and was thankful that my Leclerc Fanny came with a few snap-in repair heddles.  They are so easy to use.

The linen I am working on is for some cloths to use at church for communion.  I threaded an Atwater-Bronson lace, and then designed a cross to weave in the center, using a pick-up technique.  It took a bit of thinking, but finally figured out the treadling sequence for the pick-up.  I have to push two treadles to get a single shaft to rise on my counterbalance loom.  I could have done a direct tie-up, but I didn't feel like crawling under the loom to change the treadles, so what I figured out works for me.

Anyway, here is a photo of the cross, with as much as I could do tonight.  I have about 12 more pattern rows to finish.  It went faster than I anticipated, so maybe I can finish it tomorrow if I'm not too tired after work.

The x's on the design weave plain weave, and the lace is all around the cross and in the center of it.  It will show up much better after the cloth has been wet finished.  The lace threads will migrate toward each other, and leave larger lacy holes.

Here is a larger photo of my design, and a close-up of the bottom of the cross.  Clicking on the photos will enlarge them.

It feels good to be weaving again!

Atwater-Bronson Lace Pick-up

Along with finishing weaving the rag rug last night, I also finished the hems (by machine) on the Atwater-Bronson lace towel I was working on.  This towel is a sampler of designs I drew on graph paper, when I was playing around with the possibilities for this lace pick-up technique.  There are twelve squares, each with a different design.  Each square consists of 10 x 10 lace blocks.  Each lace block consists of eight warp threads and eight weft picks.

I divided the designs into groups depending on how many blocks each required.  I just kept drawing until I had enough designs for what I wanted to do.  Since my squares were 10 x 10 blocks, I needed to use an even number design, or the design wouldn't be centered.  If I used the designs that are 7 or 9 blocks wide, I would thread an uneven number of lace blocks.  The x part of the design turns out as plain weave when woven.

This is one half of the towel.  The designs from my graph are:
Top row: 8-G, 6-E, 8-F
Bottom row: 6-I, 8-E, 6-B

This is the other end of the towel.  The patterns are:   Top row:  6-A, 8-H, 6-B (minus 4 x's).  Bottom row:  8-L (minus 4 x's), 6-C, 8-I

This is a very easy weave structure, and the treadling sequence is very easy to memorize.  My grandson Davey (age 8) was over last weekend, and he was able to weave some of it, and understood the pickup on this simple pattern, which is only 4 blocks wide by 3 blocks high:

As I mentioned in a previous post, this pickup idea came from an article by Bob Owen in the March/April 1992 issue of Handwoven, pg. 56-57.

If I was going to change anything the next time, I would have more lace, and less plain weave divisions.  But then, the possibilities are just about endless.  Unfortunately, I will probably not have enough time to ever weave all my ideas.

I'm going out to get that rag rug off the loom now.