Latest set of Kitchen Towels on the ashford jack loom

 This is the most labourous pattern, the treadle sequence is so long but i am nearly at the end. Its an eight shaft pattern. 

Outdoor Cushions Finally Woven

 I have been planning these cushions for at least 2 years but life got in the way. I was determined to weave them this year and now they are finally finished. I am extremely happy with how they have turned out. 

I put on enough warp for 6 of them. I knew from my last cushions that the 5/2 cotton i have been using shrinks by about 3 inches after hot washing and running the fabric through the dryer, so I added about 2 more inches to my warp calculations .

The pattern that I picked is from somewhere on Pinterest and looked very busy on Paper but I put it into the iWeaveIt app and played around with the colours that i would be using and it ended up looking really nice. I chose Black and brown with a black weft.

Once again i used woven interfacing on the back of my fabric and finished with an invisible zip .

Here is my lovely new cushions.

Project notes

5/2 Mercerised Cotton.

22 in wide in reed

440 ends

20 ends per inch

4 Meter warp

Finished size before washing 19 1/2 inches

After washing 18 1/2

A Closeup of the design below.

2 special cushions for my newly renovated home

 I chose to do these cushions in a 4 shaft diamond design from the handweavers pattern directory book. I love how they turned out in 5/2 mercerised cotton. I used a woven interfacing on the back of the woven fabric to give it a nice stable finish. 

Lovely and plump and very soft to touch. What i was not happy with . was Ashfords cotton especially the white having so many knots in it . That really annoys me because i am having to cut so much length out of my thread that i have paid dearly for. The softness of the finished fabric on the other hand is beautiful. 

Here they are all finished, plump and sitting proud. This lounge isn’t the colour that i was making the cushions for, its for my upcoming lounge after our very long reno that is now completed.

Kitchen Towels completed

 I got 8 kitchen towels out of this warp. I love the way they turned out. Here they are in all their glory.

I used 8 different drafts in a straight 8 design and its so lovely to sample all the different drafts that this simple weaving produces on eight shafts. They were all made in 10/2 mercerised cotton and are very absorbent.

New Kitchen Towels project on Ashford Jack Loom

Straight Eights Draft from Ashfords Website.

I am documenting this project on my Ashford Jack Loom Page.

I love this draft. Update on my jack loom page.

Singer LK 150 Knitting machine

A few years back i inherited a Singer memomatic 324 punch card machine and in the past year have taught myself to use it.
My interest grew to a second machine another singer but this time one with a ribber. That took a lot of learning and stuff ups but I finally use it and it knits beautiful ribs. Both of these machine are standard gauge .

I longed to knit with the yarn I have so much of Australian 8 ply so I started searching again and came upon a 1980 Singer LK150 . I love it. It may not do all the special things that the punch card machines do nor ribbing but who cares I can make lace manually, rib manually and of course garter stitch is another story.
I have knit this summer top the  lace part done on the machine and the top part by hand.

 I really enjoy doing the lace.

My big wish is to be lucky enough to find another second hand one so I can knit slightly larger projects. If anyone has one please feel free to contact me.

I haven't given up on my weaving or spinning  i have just diverted for a while.

Weaving Summer and Winter Sheep

I found some time ago a summer and winter sheep pattern with inlay on weave away's blog. I believe it is from an old handwoven magazine and I don't have any copies so no instructions for me to go by. Handwoven’s magazine is not easy to get your hands on in Australia but you can get digital copies. 


 I have been wanting to try this technique out simply because I hadn't done it before.
I took a look at the draft again that was on her blog and started to plan. It has 12 treadles, nope I didn't have 12 treadles so I used my table loom .
Next step turn it into a lift plan, again something I had done before but it wasn't difficult at all. There is always a solution to a problem.


My table loom is an 8 shaft jack table loom , levers that raise the shafts , and I think it was made by a manual arts school down in N.S.W.
I have since seen one since on Gumtree called a Pagett loom which looks exactly the same as mine, but can't find any information on that.

 The built in removable raddle on the back beam.

 The levers are in the centre
and hanging shafts with springs on the bottom of every shaft 1 either side of each shaft.

It has metal heddle rods and metal heddles.
It has a 12 dent reed.















Okay I have enough shafts and I only have to worry about which shaft has to be lifted. So all is good there.
I put the draft into a weaving app but had trouble making it into a lift plan. I also tried the demo version of fibreworks and still it wasn't what I was after. So out with the pens and did it by hand.
I also drew up the threading plan for 1 whole repeat, counted how many heddles would be needed on each shaft and made sure i had enough and thankfully i did.

Okay onto the warping I used Bendigo 2 ply Classic Wool at a sett of 15 ends per inch. I wanted it to be about 27 inches wide . I used a sett of 1-1-1-2 in the 12 dent reed.

I haven't worked with this wool before but am finding it sheds a lot. I wonder if this is what other people have found. It feels great whilst weaving and I haven't had any snapping at all.

Loom warped, heddles threaded lots of threading errors later, I proceeded to weave.

What the! 

First row of sheep back to front. Second row upside down but now changed to weaving on the right side so I can see them.

Where are the sheep ,oh thats right they are on the back side of my weaving, damn. Okay I want to see what I am weaving so back to the drawing board not only was I weaving them not facing me but those little sheep were upside down. Hence the original pink lift plan numbers changed to green

and finally here they are all in order right side up, on the right side of the fabric. Now they look really good.

A couple of skipped warps I see take more care is the message for me.

This is a fun pattern and rewarding to watch weave on my loom.
What I am going to make out of this fabric I have no idea at this point. Update i still have made nothing out of this fabric yet. I wonder what i could make and for what purpose would it end up being for.

Silkworms and coloured Silk

Here is a link to a new innovation about dyeing silk the most natural eco friendly way. It is fascinating and I really would love to give it a go.


This image is from australian geographic's site from the article I have added a link for.

Here is the video

http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2011/03/silkworms-made-to-spin-coloured-silk

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1002%2Fadma.201003860&attachmentId=184340639

Stash Reduction of Crochet Cotton

I wanted to use quite a few crochet cotton 4 ply up as I have so many, so decided to just weave in a rainbow warp . I had some leftover christmas metallic cotton as well so doubled that up with my normal weft and wove away. Here is the result of that crazy weaving just for the sake of it.

I think I will make a tote bag for my sample-it loom or a bid tote bag for me. 

I wove this on my 32 inch Ashford Rigid heddle loom and used 2 x 10 dent heddles to double the sett.  It actually is really soft and has heaps of body.

Pick up weave with long floats on Rigid Heddle Loom.

I started this little sampler on my Ashford Sample-it loom just to try it. I was on Kelly Cassonova's youtube channel and thought that looked really cute and something that I would like to try out.
Here is my attempt at it.

 A few trees, followed by a row snowman's then a snowflake that could have done with a thicker pattern weft then a row of reindeers. I used cross stitch or bead designs as there are plenty of freebies on the net.

The one thing you do have to do is centre the design and the count of that design , count your warp ends and do some math to get it all to fit.

I then followed it up with a window pane design that I have always been interested in.

And the end of the warp is plain weave.

Its not a bad sampler and I am glad that I gave these simple but beautiful weaves a go.

Thankyou to Kelly for the introduction to Branoe weaving.

Hearts baby blanket -Second Project Finished

I finished this at the beginning of the year but have had simply no time to post about it. I also forgot to take photo's myself when it was freshly pressed and ready to give.
My niece kindly sent me photo's of my baby blanket after it had been used and thats great..

I am extremely happy with the end result and once again the 10/2 cotton wove up beautifully and has a great drape to it.

Here it was on the loom and on my god what a bloody mess. I had  tension and  my count was out but only a few but enough to throw everything into chaos for me. I just couldn't stand it and had to rewind so to speak and god what a pain after threading 8 shafts and the tangles. I have never touched my hair and wondered why, why, oh why so much but once I slapped myself a few times and settled down it became quite apparent only you can fix this and I did.  It definitely was operator error and thats as simple as it was, I just wish the fix was as simple as me arriving at that epiphany.  It really was in simple terms are you kidding me.
I can't believe I am soooooooo human as to make such a stupid mistake but anyway.
This is the mess.

 before and after the mess

I also noticed that my beat on a part of it was not as consistent something I will have to keep an eye on and that really bothered me but once again that was noticed once off the loom and washed and I even considered not giving it because it was not good enough to be giving as a present for a new born child to carry on into their adult hood. I mean this is a legacy gift  to my godchild for her child, it really had to be perfect but alas I am not perfect it turns out. Oh what a surprise!!!!!!

The end of the warp just before cutting off

It was worth all the drama

Yes and what a relief.  Actually I really enjoyed weaving this 8 shaft 10 treadle pattern for the first time in my life.  My selvages were even as well as my width throughout. I used my glimakra raddle as I found it was very helpful in maintaining my width , as it was the full width of this loom, as well as using  my form of a measuring tape for the stripes.
I ended up getting enough for 2 baby blankets out of this warp . I really was so happy with the finished result and so was my niece which ultimately was the best feeling in the world . It has been used over and over and I have been told another child didn't want to hand it back stating that it felt so cuddly and she wanted it and cried. Oh the poor sweetie if only i had known????

Done and delivered and now I am stagnating. What to produce next. Thought more tea towels , i really am in need or maybe something I have never done like krokbragd on my table loom or the sheep draft I have so longed to do. I don't know I am having a weaving blank big time with too many life drama's in the background. Centre myself is my motto at the moment.

Solo Warping-Weaving on the ashford jack floor loom second project

I have decided to weave a baby blanket or wrap.
I am using 10/2 mercerised cotton for the warp and weft as our summers are very hot here in Australia.
I have put some notes down on my Ashford Floor Loom page about the project.
What I am wanting to document here is some helpful things that I have read recently about solo warping.
The actual article pdf is free to download and is called Warping the loom alone by Teresa Folts and David Mathieson. It is a revelation and is 48 pages long of the most helpful information I have come across. It just makes perfect sense to me.
Here is a little something about the solo warping using a door knob that we all have access to in our homes and some very strong cord called the tension cord.

The weaver stands to the side to wind that warp on and holds the tension cord firm as you wind on.
You have to line your centre of your loom up with the door knob and the warp that is on the loom for it to be a success the article suggest. I admit I only found this article this morning after I struggled with this warp.
The photo below another tip given for threading the heddles. I call it organising yourself.

This is the back of my loom and the groups of 28 ends on my cross sticks.

 This is a pic of heddles I have threaded so far with half bow knots tied after 28 ends have been threaded. I always do that step , so thats no revelation.

This is the step that I found really helpful. Counting out the amount of heddles needed for those 28 ends and then slipping your warp that has 28 ends after those heddles, so you've only got a thin amount of heddles in between those warp ends and the cross stick. The article states that done in this way  any threading errors will be confined to those 28 ends anywhere on the warp. It reduces those threading errors. I loved the article it is so helpful

This is looking from the back of the loom again. Notice only a few heddles to see around and once you have run out of heddles and ends you know you have done the threading right and you can move on to the next 28 ends.

Still at the back of the loom I tied my bundles into epi  and they stay neatly out of the way until i need them.

I have yet to try the tension cord solo warping yet but i will definitely be trying it as I don't want anymore large object in my room and I can't see myself screwing anything to my ceiling such as a warping valet.
Hopefully if anyone other than myself is reading my blog this may help you solo warp as well.
Okay back to threading the heddles.

Knitted Bib

I have just finished this little baby bib for my niece who is expecting her first baby. I have also knitted booties but have yet to sew them up. I am happy with how it turned out with this colour way.
I have previously knitted bibs for my grandson and they really stop the dribble from wetting their clothes .

Below is the booties that stay on that I knitted for my grandson. In lots of colours to match his little outfits.

Blanket Finished.

The Finished Blanket

I didn't  have any joined together problems but quite a few skipped . No matter how careful you are with sticky wool you have to be more careful. I think it will work out better on the big floor loom now that I understand the principle behind it a bit better. I wanted short fringing and so twisted as usual and then soaked in hot water and then gently washed in a wool cycle then I cut the fringing down and got rid of the knots. It is holding the twist. 

 I love it to death. It is warm comfortable and just pretty.

Anyway here it is 

A sneak peak of my double wide blanket

I think it looks quite pretty. 

Also in between all this and before I started this project, I am going to New Zealand soon on a one weeks holiday first time to new zealand. So because its going to be so bloody freezing and I am a Queenslander through and through I thought I better weave that alpaca scarf and knit that beanie I have been putting off .
Here is the scarf and beanie all knitted and woven in handspun natural colours of Alpaca.

This yarn was made from my first spinning experience and so is a little let me say textured but still beautiful and unique.

I used Patons Dreamtime merino for the warp and all handspun alpaca for the weft. It is 

simply done in plain weave on the rigid heddle.

All Knitted in the same alpaca used for weaving. 

I used a Noro knitting pattern but modified it to suit me and my handspun alpaca.