Sofa Blanket

This is my sofa blanket made from Harrisville wool. I set the Shetland 2 ply at 8 epi, 46″. The tabby is Shetland and the pattern is Highland yarn. There are some warp threads that are Highland too. I wove one repeat at a time, which means it probably took a month to weave!
(The sofa is a dark blue.)
– Lucy DeFranco

Scarves

I shared this dyeing and weaving experiment on Facebook also. Please share your work here or on Facebook or both. I’m sure I’m not the only one missing seeing the beautiful work that our members create.

How to tame a bright warp? Using a technique that Cindy Fowler and Lucy DeFranco taught during a dye workshop a few summers ago, I wound a ball of 8/2 tencel with enough yarn for a 3 yard warp, kept it as a ball and dyed it yellow, then squirted it with leftover Procion MX dyes: orange, magenta and plum. I liked the variegation, but it was too orange for my liking. I thought that red would be a good weft but remembered that complementary colors tone down bright colors so used the red and blue wefts in a sample with two different treadlings and decided on the blue weft for an 8 shaft twill with a braided twill treadling and added blue to the fringe to tone it down also.

Kathy Fennell


Violet Protest

Handwoven squares for the “Violet Protest” , 5/2 perle cotton with a blue warp and red weft. Draft is a twill pattern from Handweaving.net  #33992. My biggest challenges  on this project were deciding to weave another piece to attach with fusible interfacing to create a more substantial square and then sewing on the seam binding without ruining the whole project. No matter how long you weave, there will always be challenges to overcome by learning something new.  Google “Violet Protest” if you want to learn more about this effort. They need more squares.

Kathy Fennell

Both scarves are 8 shaft deflected double weave mosaic drafts from Madelyn van der hoogt’s Deflected Double Weave DVD. I dyed the 20/2 silk for each scarf with three colors which merged into a dominant color. The green scarf was dyed turquoise, navy and bright green and the magenta scarf was magenta, purple and orange. You can see the other colors if you look closely. The green scarf alternates green and black silk so there is no shrinkage and results in a flat fabric. The magenta scarf alternates the silk with black merino wool. When washed and fulled it creates a collapse fabric. 
Kathy Fennell