Seeing as the loom I am using is fairly small and fairly quick and easy to warp up I decided that rather than following the course notes and completing all of these experiments on one piece of weaving I would make several different samples. I have to admit that I may have become carried away a bit, I absolutely fell in love with weaving, it's so relaxing and it's been the most enjoyable part of the course so far for me. I even have my own proper table loom now, an old Weavemaster that a friend of my Mums' was giving away, I haven't quite mastered it yet but I definitely will in the near future.
I wanted to try out using a different fibre for the warp so I strung it with a pure wool yarn which gave it a much softer, more flexible feel to the finished product than the cotton warp that I'd used up until then. I also wanted to experiment with making a narrower piece so I only strung a middle section of the loom, the photo of this piece seems to have been another casualty of my laptops' death but there is a photograph of it mounted for assessment in another post.
I made a second narrow sample but this time using jute twine as the warp, this gave a much more solid weaving which I really like. I stuck with plain weaving this time because I wanted to focus on the way the yarns wove, first was a variegated wool/acrylic blend which gives a wonderful mottled effect, then a chunky wool yarn which leaves the jute warp somewhat exposed because of it's thickness, I enjoy this effect though. In the middle section my intention was to leave a section of warps exposed and create a shape of ghiordes knots in the middle of that space. I wrapped the two outer warps of each edge in white mohair to create a frame for the space and then tied some ghiordes knots in a circular shape in the centre of the empty warps. I then completed the other half of the piece to reflect the first half. By the time I had finished I didn't like the effect of the ghiordes knots, so, because the had been done in a wool yarn I decided to take a barbed needle to them and needle felt them. I don't know if this is a proper weaving technique, but I really liked the result, my children have christened it 'welting' :)
I realised that I hadn't tried out any different fabrics or any more advanced weaving techniques so I embarked on another sample to try out some of these. I strung the warp in a very dull blue acrylic to see what sort of effect a different coloured warp would add to the finished piece. from bottom to top this one goes:- crochet cotton with ghiordes knots, chain stitch in a chunky wool/acrylic yarn, plain, 2/2 direct, 2/2 broken and 3/1 direct all in hemp twine, recycled t-shirt strips in ghiordes knots, continuous Spanish knots and soumak in variegated acrylic, senna knots in chunky, plain weave and ghiordes knots in crochet cotton again. I am particularly interested in the effect of different weaving stitches that I used the hemp to show, it has a wonderful brickwork like effect and the feel of that section makes me think of table mats or basket work.
For the final part of Stage 3 I was asked to select ares from my experimental weavings to explore further. The parts that had really appealed to me were the boucle section from the first weaving, it gives a lovely tight textural effect, I loved using the ghiordes knots but wanted to try them out in a stiffer yarn to make them stand up more, also from the first piece I really liked the bead insertions, and the jute, I love the thick jute warp combined with a chunky yarn from my second sample, I also liked the white spots from the first sample but felt that they needed more uniformity. I wanted to incorporate all of these ideas and the combination of the natural fibres with a stronger accent colour from my first two experiments. What I didn't like was the softness that using wool for a warp gives the finished piece, so i decided that I'd go for something with more body and strength and settled on a sisal twine which I thought would also serve to lighten up the colour scheme a little. I began with some plain rows of boucle, I felt that any other pattern would become lost in the heavy texture of the yarn, then an insertion of the really chunky jute, I'd been meaning to try out using two yarns in the same pick so I worked it in here using a chunky wool combined with raffia and then some DK pure wool combined with paper twine. Next were some rows of ghiordes knots in paper twine which gave them the stiffness I was after, I really like this quality, it gives the piece a feeling of wheat fields. The spots from the first piece became reagular stripes in this version and I actually like them far more than the spots, and as I was already thinking of wheat fields these stripes became ploughed furrows. I tried out some wool roving as a yarn next as a substitute for the chunky yarns and it acted exactly as I wanted it too, leaving the warp exposed because of it's thickness. i remembered I hadn't added any beads at this point so they were shoved in at the last moment to act as stones in my woven field and then I finished the whole piece with a few more rows of the boucle.
I'm really pleased with this piece, particularly that despite using lots of different materials I managed to keep the edges straight and the tension was good. I think using such a firm weft helped immensely with this. The drawback to using the sisal, which I discovered only after cutting the piece of the loom, is that I can't tie a firm knot in it so I'm left worrying that the whole lot might fall apart any second, however the cut sisal ends just add to the effect of that wheat field in my head!
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