IT'S ON! Marian Stubenitsky's 4 Colour Double Weave Workshop, Dordogne, France, May 2016

Workshop Participants are:
Margreet Ward
Jane Flanagan
Alison Daikin
Jane Deane
Kathryn Rudy
Sam Hayden
Gill Back
Lauren Back

Reserves;  Belinda Rose, Pat Griffiths

Multi colour double weave Echo Irridescence scarves based on Marian Stubenitsky's Dordogne workshop

 Two Tencel scarves based on the threading used in Marian Stubenitsky's workshop held here in my Studio May 6-9 this year

4 colour warp in 8/2 Tencel with two weft yarns - Tencel and colcolastic (cotton with a lycra thead)

The right hand one uses black Tencel and red colcolastic.

The one on the left is black tencel with light blue colcolastic





It weaves both pockets and integrated weave. Wet finishing produces block ribbing due to the contraction of the lycra - 40cm wide on the loom and 22cm finished.

The Drawdown in WeaveIt!

Echo and Irridescence Workshop by Marian Stubenitsky held here in my studio on 6-9 May 2015

The workshop was a great success and enjoyed by all.
Thanks to Marian for delivering such an interesting workshop and keeping us all on-task.
Thanks too to all the lovely new people I met (and the not-so-new  lol) and learned so much from.

Everyone except Agnes (behind the camera) on the last afternoon

Margreet in the spotlight!

As well as the weaving it was a great social occasion with everyone getting on so well; a good job really as we were together from breakfast until the wine ran out late at night!

A few images of the workshop

Agnes 

EVALUATION TIME

A Double Weave Wall Hanging is Next. Designed with Photoshop and WeavIt Based on Marian's 4 colour Double Weave.

Basic 4 colour drawdown

I have finished the design for the next piece - 70cm x 70cm panel. The design is called  'A Sea of Smiles'  and is based on a drawing of smiling lips I made in Photoshop.

It's going to be the decorative 3-part, centre piece wall hanging for the new studio room using the basic design, it's lift plan inversion and the inversion with an additional high-contrast weft colour to highlight a row of 'smiles'

It's inversion with the contrast  colour

Its a 24 shaft echo 2 double weave. The design line generated in Photoshop was networked to create the parallel threading - i.e echo 2 with an interval of 12.

Warp is Plum and White whilst weft is Black with White Gold. All in 8/2 Tencel,840 ends @ 13epcm.



Though designed on 24 shafts, ends 95-167 (which represents the second block from the right, a block using only shafts 1-4) are actually threaded onto shafts 25-28 and assigned their48 treadle tie up plus an extra 4 treadles of 3/1 twill.  
This allows me to choose to weave a third layer, using just this block, in a fourth weft colour - it produces a quasi-overshot block. The placing of this block will make one single focus point in the design (the weaving software doesn't allow me to show this)

Options for overall colour scheme.

Black with Burgundy and below it Black with Moss Green.

A Scarf Called 'Warped by Design' :-)

4 colour double weave Echo 2 interval 12. Plain weave
 and 3/1 twill with a heavily modified 6:6 lift ratio

From an uneasy first impression as a sample, I am so pleased with this design I am actually sad that it marks the end of the 10 metres of warp, as I still have so much more I can do with that particular tie up.

With all of the quirks designed into this pattern, I think this has to be the representative piece of "Warped By Design" 

As I had only 1.8m metres of useable warp left, I decided to make a scarf so I hemstitched the beginning and end, so had a finished scarf when cut off.

The curve effect is a break in the progression
of the treadling; the treadling is wrapped forward
by 10 treadles and it's direction reversed.

I love the illusion of the curve-lines cutting across, now that it's not just a single repeat of the diamond.

This approach to colour choices is also something I am going to use for the next double weave project: having just one colour in the warp (the second being white) and one colour in the weft (the second being a grey) produces a full range of shades with no chance that is subtle but still striking.

The final pattern repeat with its own echo.

I have a dislike of symmetry that borders on phobic!! And this is, after all, an echo weave; so I designed it with the last pattern repeat having it's own 'echo', by skipping back 150 picks on the treadling. When worn each end of the scarf is slightly different.







Close up of the final pattern repeat with the echo in the pattern

Warped By Design Products will be in Aubeterre for 2015

Great news! One of Gail's clients is opening a new shop in Aubeterre this Spring, wants to include woven items and art in her product line so has asked me to provide them!!!

It's a great opportunity as Aubeterre sur Dronne is a stunning place, second only to Brantome for tourist footfalls and her shop is in a prime area, right in the main square.

I think the end of course meal for The Echo Weave workshop will now be in Aubeterre at the restaurant opposite the shop :-)

Wet Finished Double Weave - Improved my Sample but Ruined my 6 metres of Upholstery Fabric!!

After Wet Finishing

Washed and pressed the sample and the changes to the structure afterwards has stopped it looking like an unintended glitch in the pattern. The relaxing of the threads has, as I expected, evened out interlacement so the change is softer. But the biggest effect is due to the definite pebbly texture it now has - a result of the differential behaviour between the pocket weave and integrated sections.

After Wet Finishing

The raised patches of plain weave pockets can be clearly seen in the wet finished photo of the earlier project from the same warp and threading.  I wet finished this too, BIG MISTAKE and don't know what I was thinking really, because I needed the crisp, stiff , upholstery-type 'as woven' finish for this because it was to be panels for a vanity screen. Now it's all springy, soft and elastic and not really suitable for this at all Duhhhhhh....IDIOT!!!!