Placemats ready to go

After a couple of nights of sewing - with help - the placemats were all done and with a quick wash, some time in the freezer, and then a good long iron (repeated again when they were almost dry), they are all boxed up and ready to go.

All lined up on display together for the last time

 We made 'product' cards with some background info and basic care, along with a copy of the Connell painting that supplied the colours. There is also a sheet with guidance on removing stains from linen - should that ever happen.

Boxed ready to go

All three, ready for wrapping.

And now back to the CF spinning...

Marathon completed

A later start today (7:30) and 5 placemats completed.  The warp was 'just' enough for the last one - although I'll note for future that with a non-elastic warp you can't really push the loom waste.  As the warp gets shorter all minor variations in tension start really showing up, luckily, I think, I was able to squeeze the last out of this one.

In what is now a tradition (or does it have to happen three times) - at the end of weaving I was presented with a glass of wine.  I could, of course, now start a whole series of very short projects to earn more wine - but probably not!

Rachel presented me with a glass of wine at 'the end'

The Colours of Ireland Placemats (CoIP) have hand coloured weft stripes based on a picture painted by Connell Byrne (http://www.pbase.com/connellart) after he took a trip to Ireland a few years back.  The photo shows a copy of the painting with the stripe, and also noting this was one of two 'alternative' woven patterns I tried - by reversing the start directions a different pattern appears.

Colours of Ireland origin

So all up there are 15 placemats - I had planned 14 (6 plus 4 plus 4) and a small sample.  The weaving today went fairly smoothly - no broken warp threads and even the selvedges behaved.  I went faster today - with the best time being 1 hour and 5 minutes for the first placemat.  Coincidentally - enough time to ensure your forgotten coffee is stone cold!

Off the loom

With a sewing machine borrowed from our friend Robynne I was able to quickly run some stitching either side of the cut line before separating the placemats.  After that I will do a trial run at wet finishing (washing/rinsing/freezing/ironing) on the sample piece.

Separated placemats

I have a few ends to darn in and then trim where I joined the weft threads - then hand stitching the ends.

We should make the deadline after all.

Post Olympic Marathon

As I may have mentioned - the placemats I am weaving are for 3 weddings that are only a week away now!!  The back order linen arrived and so the first job was to dye enough yarn for all the stripes.  A fairly straight forward task, but very time consuming.  Over two days we prepared and painted the yarn needed for the remaining stripes.

Wound bobbin of 'stripe' yarn

In parallel I began weaving - with one more completed last night and then this morning the marathon began.  It will take me two days to weave all the placemats - I had estimated about an hour a placemat (16+ inches), but of course that doesn't take into account broken threads, coffe breaks and getting up to stretch regularly (I had to).  So averaged out over the day it took about an hour and a half for each placemat, although I suspect the earlier ones took longer as once I had backed off the tension a little bit the warp threads stopped breaking - which isn't rocket science.  Higher tension made keeping the selvedge neater easier, so the sacrifice is that the selvedge is now a little less 'straight', but still within a reasonable tolerance :-)

6 placemats done today, with the already woven 3, leaves 5 to do tomorrow, unless I get motivated and do one more tonight.  We'll see.

9 placemats done.

The plan for tomorrow is: weave, remove from loom, sew ends (either side of the blue cut mark in the above photo), cut, 'finish' (wet), hem, relax (!).

Piles of sliver

Back in the production mode today.  The next set of Right Side of the Bed Rugs that will go on the Macomber after I finish the placmats require about 500 yards of 2ply.  Allowing a little extra.  We did not have a figure when we started the first set, rather I just spun more wool when needed.  Now by counting back using the two completed rugs we can work it out a lot more precisely.

All up, to make the yarn, I need 6.0 oz of wool, so this morning I stretched out a number of batts into sliver ready to spin.

All 6.0 oz of sliver ready to spin

The advantage in making sliver is it removes almost every bit of left over vegetable matter that didn't come out in either the flick opening or the drum carding.  The picture looks like a lot of wool, but the bulk is ALL air.

I've also done all the calculations for the alpaca scarves - that will be in a later blog.

Finished (times 2.5)

I've completed quite a few outstanding projects in this past week.

The first was the final spinning of the Alpaca roving that I had bought in Taupo New Zealand back in 2011.  642 grams in two 'colours': Cairo and Chocolate - I'm guessing that was the names of the Alpacas.  That has spun into just under 2000 yards of 2 ply equalling 636 grams - I lost a little :-)

12 skeins ready for weaving

The second was to finish off the scarves on the Leclerc Dorothy.  These are now being knotted to completely finish them.

3 scarves

The one to the far right (single colour) is for Isabel - she's already seen it via Skype and likes it.  We'll post it home shortly. The other two (striped) will end up as gifts.

The third 'finish' is in the wool washing department. Anne ran a who bag through the wash and has done the final sort of the last bag of Clun Forest.  Once that is done it is all washed and can be stored away until such time as we need it for the next project.

Drying on the rack above the dining room table

We ate off the coffee table for a night while the wool dried.  The locks were sorted into the longest (for combing) and the rest (for drum carding).

Indigo workshop

Anne was able to attend a two day workshop indigo, from preparation to actual dyeing techniques.  Needless to say we took the opportunity to dye some Clun Forest wool (batts and skeins of two ply).  Anne also used cloth ranging from samples to pillow cases to socks to experiment with different resist/tying techniques.

As it comes out of the dye pot (green) then reacts with oxygen to turn deep blue

Batts hanging to dry after washing

Results of various experiments (note the socks :-)

We'll have to find a use for the collection of blue wool - not sure what, but it could certainly go into more 'Right Side of the Bed Rugs' or be combined/blended into more yarn.

Batts and yarn ready to go...

Placemat progress

I finished the first two placemats fairly quickly - it really only takes about an hour to complete one, but on each placemat I managed to 'skip' one or two weft shots and didn't notice for an inch or so (it typically off-sets the pattern by about a thread or two!). No choice but to 'un-weave' back to the mistake and then re-weave.  That added another 30 minutes each time.  I'm certainly learning to take more care to a) track the treadling a little more carefully and b) stop (when I do stop) at the same place in the pattern so I know where to start again.

Placemat #2

The thread in the photo is the end of 'fixing' a broken warp thread - the first time it has happened to me, but given that this is the first time I have woven with linen, not really surprising!  It will have to be sewn in and trimmed, but did work out painless in the end (after a little research).

I'm now just doing some stripes and awaiting the arrival of the rest of the linen so I can get stuck into the next 14! Current task is to finish the spinning of the Alpaca ready for the scarves on the Leclerc Dorothy.