Shadow Weave
Marcy Petrini
4/18/2016
Is Shadow Weave Color and Weave? It is generally considered so, but in my mind there are two types of shadow weave. How we obtain them is so closely related that we generally don’t make the distinction.
In the first type, shadow weave does what its name implies: a shadow follows the main structure. Look at the drawdown below: the weave is rosepath and you can see the diamond outline and its shadow. (Right click and open in a new tab to see a larger view.)
Some shadow weaves show even more pronounced shadows, but I have a reason for choosing this particular draft, which is the other type of shadow weave: the one that I consider a true color and weave. Look at the drawdown below:
The threading and the treadling are identical to the previous draft; the only thing that has changed is the color order! But gone are the rosepath and its shadow! The resulting motifs are unique, although in some parts the dark shadows the light, or a better way of saying is that the dark outlines the light, which in turn outlines the dark….
This draft comes from Marian Powell’s book 1000 (+) Patterns in 4, 6, and 8 Shadow Weaves which was published in 1976. She developed a method to look at shadow weave that is different than the previous way described by Mary Meigs Atwater. However, the two methods produce the same results. Powell follows the threading of the structure so it’s easier to thread, I believe.
This warp is going on the loom next, so soon I will have these two samples for show and tell. Stay tuned….
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Color and Weave
Marcy Petrini
4/11/2016
One of the seminars I am scheduled to teach at Convergence® is Color and Weave; summer is just around the corner and I am spending a lot of my time weaving samples and writing the handout – and thoroughly enjoying it!
Color and Weave motifs are optical illusions, we don’t see the underlying structure and we don’t realize the threading color order.
Here is a quiz about Color and Weave: what’s the difference between these two fabrics (besides the colors)?
Yes, the blocks are different sizes, but there is another striking difference; look at the drawdowns:
Both are the color and weave pattern called log cabin. As you can see from the drawdowns, only two shafts are needed. Sometimes log cabin is woven using basket weave, but still, two shafts are sufficient to obtain the horizontal and vertical stripes. Two colors alternate in the threading and the treadling; to switch the direction of the stripes, the colors are changed both in the threading and in the treadling.
And here is the difference: the red and black fabric and drawdown on the left have each block of stripes framed by the same color, in this case red. Note that at the end of the horizontal stripes, in the threading a red thread on shaft 1 is followed by a red thread on 2; similarly, to switch back from vertical stripes to horizontal stripes, the red thread on shaft 2 is followed by a red thread on shaft 1. We could have framed the blocks using black in the same manner.
In contrast, in the black and white fabric and drawdown on the right, the color changes vary. The first switch is like the black and red fabric: a white thread on shaft 1 is followed by a white thread on shaft 2, so the stripes change from vertical to horizontal. At the end of the vertical striped block, however, the switch occurs on the black: a black thread on 1 is followed by a black thread on 2. The blocks are no longer framed, and they seem a bit lopsided in the drawdown, but the fabric seems to move!
What do you prefer: framed blocks or moving blocks? The choice is yours, but now you know how to obtain whatever ones you prefer.
For more on color and weave, see my article in Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot, “Right from the Start: What Makes a Fabric Color-and-Weave?” in the summer 2015 issue. Or better yet, take my seminar at Convergence®!
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Sheep to Shawl
Marcy Petrini
4/4/2016
This past Saturday the Chimneyville Weavers and Spinners Guild held a Sheep to Shawl at the Mississippi Craft Center.
Ours is not the traditional Sheep to Shawl competition, where teams race against each other to determine who can finish first, going from fleece just shorn to a woven shawl (while maintaining good craftsmanship). Our guild is too small for that. But we set up stations for every step of fiber production so people can learn what it takes to go from animal to garment. Sheep are shorn outside on the front lawn, twice, at a preset time, for the benefit of the public and especially children who otherwise may not have the opportunity to see a shearing.
There are also outside stations for washing wool and dyeing; carding, spinning, weaving, knitting and crocheting are inside on the ground floor of the Great Hall. There are signs that explain each step in details for people to read; and we provide flyers that people can take, each describing spinning, weaving and knitting.
Still, I do wish we could show all of the steps in dressing the loom and weaving because some take away the wrong impression: they think that all there is to weaving is throwing the shuttle. I have had people being disappointed when taking our weaving class because they thought they would just weave, they didn’t wonder how those threads got to the loom. While demonstrating weaving in the past, I have had people actually ask me “where do you buy a machine with all those threads on it?” And I have had knitters say how much easier weaving is, since all I have to do is throw the shuttle for a complete row, while in knitting they have to work every stitch. Clearly more education is needed.
There is also a children’s art station where the little ones can make something to take with them. This year was Gods’ eyes. Some weavers are generous enough to allow children and adults to weave on their looms.
This year I spun. I keep several of my spinning wheels in the fiber studio for teaching, which is on the second floor of the Craft Center. So I took one of my wheels down for the event. At the end of the day, I brought it back up. As I was coming down the glass staircase back to the Great Hall, I stopped dead on my tracks at this sight:
This little girl was so wrapped up in her work, checking to make sure she had the right treadles, and then carefully throwing her shuttle, while weaving on Guild member Debbie Stringer’s loom.
I stood there and watched. It made the day worthwhile.
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Weaving Errors
Marcy Petrini
3/28/2016
The handout – monograph, really – for the Convergence™ seminar “Weaving Errors: How to Avoid them or Fix them” (S-FA067) is finally done – all 117 pages of it!
Are there really that many errors to make? Well, yes and in my nearly 40 years of weaving and over 30 in teaching, I either made them myself or one of my students did. I do wonder whether I covered them all in the monograph and I am counting on the Convergence™ participants in my seminar (33 to date) to let me know any that I missed.
I have talked about treadling errors in this blog before, but there are errors that can creep in at every step of the way: in winding the warp, dressing the loom, threading the heddles, sleying the reed, tying on, and treadling. There are strategies for minimizing errors and to avoid future issues. And some errors can be corrected more easily than others.
Poor tension on the warping board, for example, may come back to bite us when dressing the loom and we may have to make up for it when we tie on. Look at the discrepancy in length in the warp bouts in the picture below. All of that extra length adds up to loom waste.
Threading errors can sometimes be corrected, but sleying? We just have to re-sley, and hope that we don’t introduce a new error when fixing the old.
The most pernicious of sleying errors occurs when we skip a threaded warp end from the denting, as shown below:
The sleying will look just fine, and unless we check from the side of the loom as it was done in this picture, this error will appear as a threading error, since one of the threads won’t participate in the cloth – that will be after we start weaving, at which point everything will have to be undone…….
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Giving and Taking from Our Fiber Communities
Marcy Petrini
3/21/2016
It is my honor to chair the committee planning the luncheon that the Chimneyville Weavers and Spinners Guild is hosting to honor Marva Lee Goodman with a Life Membership. I actually nominated Marva for this honor because I think she is one of the unsung heroes of our fiber community. Here she is demonstrating in a photo just published in the CWSG March newsletter.
It would take many, many pages to even list the contributions that Marva has made to all the organizations she belongs: the CWSG, the Craftsmen’s Guild of Mississippi, Inc. of which she is a juried member, her various sewing guilds, and the Handweavers’ Guild of America, Inc., of which she has been an indefatigable supporter and promoter.
Thinking about Marva Lee, her leadership and the organizations we share, has made me consider the role that we play in these fiber communities, their importance in our lives, and the different ways that people respond to leadership roles.
Members of an organization or community rise to a leadership position in a variety of ways; ideally, it would be the person best fitted for the job, but that’s not always the case; sometimes there is a void that gets filled, other times it’s a matter of longevity, other times still an opportunity presents itself.
But the path to the leadership position doesn’t define how the person responds to the role. Broadly speaking, in organizations and in life, I can identify three kinds of responses. In the middle, we have the well-meaning, but ineffective person who has great ideas, but is either incapable or unwilling to bring the ideas to fruition. In some cases, these leaders think that, having reached that position, somebody else should follow what they dictate. Not a good formula for the success of an organization. As one of my graduate advisors used to say: Ideas are cheap, it’s the work that goes to implement them that counts.
Even more worrisome, and in some cases the cause of the demise of an institution, is the leader who sees this as a platform for self-promotion and self-benefitting. Unfortunately we read a lot about this in the news of government and business, but it happens in our fiber communities as well. In some cases, the person is so self-centered that s/he doesn’t even realize that s/he doing it and is not even aware of what true leadership means.
And then, thankfully, we have the Marvas of the world. The leaders who see their role as that of benefitting the organization, promoting its causes, and making sure that there is a future for generations to come. Marva’s latest endeavor is to teach children to sew with a sewing machine. She has been instrumental over the years to teach children to weave, spin, dye (with safe food coloring or food stuff) and to sew. Indeed, if our crafts are to survive, it will be because we have been successful in passing them on.
If we substitute organization for country, the inspiring words “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” embody what Marva’s work entails. The old saying that “you don’t have to have a title to be a leader, it’s what you do” is the axiom she follows. She can be a role model for us all.
So, think: how do you contribute to the fiber organizations to which you belong? The CWSG is going to have an exhibit soon; I will have two pieces in it. That certainly falls squarely in “what the Guild can do for me” and not the other way around. Teaching and writing fall somewhere in between, depending on the circumstances: they can benefit the organization and its members, but they also may benefit the individual providing the service. Doing the nitty gritty work of committees when people don’t even know how long it took to get to the success: that’s “what you can do for the organization”, that’s Marva’s way.
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