KMA weaving and my rugs!

These first two pictures are of the warp on the loom at the Knoxville Museum of Art. We wove on Thursday. LouAnn started, then Pat continued and I finished up. I took two pictures trying to give you a feel of what the color changes look like. It really is a fascinating journey, picking quills filled with yarn, cutting them from the wall and then bringing them back to weave. We'll be back at it in two weeks! It would be awesome to unwind the warp and show it like it really is, but that's a real no no since it would mess the tension up in a bad way!! When the show is over, they'll hang the 50 yards of fabric for us to see and we'll have fun trying to figure out which are the areas we wove. Each time we weave, we're taking pictures of our part so that we have a record of what we did!

So, I've been wanting to get this rug warp off for quite awhile! I finally did it! I had woven two rugs and one went to Canada so I've kept on weaving. I had to cut the rugs off inbetween because they wouldn't all fit around the cloth beam. That's such a cool thing to have to do, cutting them off. I had decided not to have fringe so they all had a 3 or 4 inch strip of sugar n cream woven at each end. They're all serged and ready to hem now.

Having chosen to add the loopers to the weft as I went along, I ended up with alot of lint at the bottom of the loom. What a mess! I've vacumned between probably about half way through doing them, but it still kept coming as I wove. Here's the final result just before I got the vacumn out. Weaving loopers is not for the faint of heart!

Just so you know, here are 9 rugs, all stacked and ready for hemming. You can see at the bottom a bit of the pink I wove for the hem on a couple of the rugs. Most of them have a lime green hem. These loopers are fun to weave with, but boy, are they slow!

I've packed up the rest of my loopers and stored them for now. I've got to get back to my regular weaving. However, first chance I get, I'm going back to weaving a few more rugs. They're fun!

Carol

Another Wintery Post

Although it is the perfect day to just weave, I've pretty much spent the day catching up on Facebook, email and doing laundry. It's the perfect day because the southeast was bombarded by snow and sleet, which started here yesterday. We were well warned by the local stations and the WeatherChannel that this storm was on the way. So me, and all the other white haired people, were at the grocery store early. I went for the ingredients to my favorite beef & vegetable soup (and a few other things) and I was in & out quickly. Although it wasn't scheduled to start until around 4 p.m., the tiny snow particles started here around 1 p.m. That was followed by big snow flakes that quickly covered everything, and later, sleet. The sleet coated the tree branches, which is always a worry. This morning when I opened the door to let Sass outside, she just stood in the doorway. At first I couldn't understand what the problem was, then I heard a loud POP, and a big branch came down right in front of us. I guess you could say that Sass saved my life!!!! Later, I discovered a large branch in the driveway when I ventured out to get the newspaper.

But, enough about the weather!
I went to weave on Anne Wilson's exhibit, Wind/Rewind/Weave, at the Knoxville Museum of Art on Thursday. I was a little concerned about using the temple for the first time, but I had listened carefully to the instructions and was ready to do exactly what they had told us to do. I looked at the weaving that had been done earlier in the week, and noticed that the previous weavers had been mainly in a "blue" mood. I can understand that! We had been hearing so much gloom & doom about the weather forecast that it would be easy to stick with those colors.


You can see the weaving that had already been done, and you'll see mainly blues. But, I was determined to brighten up my mood, and well as the weaving. I started thinking about laying on the beach, and tropical colors. I found a great turquoise, bright yellow and magenta that spoke of a warmer climate. A very nice lady visiting the exhibit chose the lime green for me. You're right, I didn't get a LOT of weaving done, but I sure did enjoy the part that I did! And, I think that the temple is a wonderful tool!

Pat came to relieve me, and I couldn't believe it was time to go! The time had flown past! She, too, had a curious visitor that wanted to talk about weaving. We never have a problem sharing our love of this art!!!

Happy WARM Weaving,
LouAnn


p.s. It's snowing, AGAIN!!!!

I just had to!

This week has been quite a productive week for me! I have woven 2 blue jean rugs, and was poised to weave another rug with this lovely teal and orange fabric, when.......

I just had to try out my idea with the circles using sock loopers!

I had already made a rough drawing of sorts, trying out color ideas and circle placement.

Almost immediately, however, I had to give up on the circles, at least as small as mine were. I couldn't work out the small section of the circle. I may try making some of the loopers smaller, or I suppose I could do one big circle on a different color background, or how about a target kind of thing!

You realize this is coming to me as I type this don't you! I will try that next, but for now I went with squares instead,

and I think I like it! The colors are not nearly as bright here online as they are in real life, and the edges of the squares leave a little to desire, but I believe it it has been a good exercise in working out the problems of an idea.

Once I finish this one I will do a couple of the teal rugs, which I love, love, love. More blue jean rugs, (more on that next time,) and then I think it is time to get those bread cloths on Lillian. I have put it off long enough.

I need some time weaving finer cloth, rugs are slow and fast at the same time. I really can't get a rhythm going if you know what I mean, but they are done before you know it!

Happy weaving, Tina

LEARNING

Weaving is a continual learning experience. As you have read about the Knoxville Museum of Art Exhibit that we are participating in- "Wind, Rewind, Weave", I took it to heart and decided to try something the artist, Ann Wilson, talked about at our orientation. Take a look at what I am trying. I think I like it. It is different.







Yes, it is loopers.

Here is my next project what do I want to do? A rug out out of this? Or, cut blue jeans and do a jean rug? Decisions, decisions!

Can you tell that I like bright colors?

HAPPPY WEAVING!
BONNIE

Lanny's Summer Vacation

This summer, Lanny Payne, one of the Tuesday Weavers, took a class at John C. Campbell Folk School. The class was during Scottish Heritage Week at the folk school, and it was taught by Marjorie Warren, a native Scotswoman. The class was called Scottish Estate Tweeds. Estate Tweeds differ from Tartans in that they are the tweeds woven specific to each estate, and are used in suits for the workers on the estates. A tweed in this case is a 2/2 twill.

Lanny is very interested in Scottish history in culture and lectures on the Scottish Reformation. He and his wife, Ann have visited Scotland, and Lanny can be seen in our group photo wearing his kilt.

Lanny is shown here with his notebook from the class, each page

containing the sett for each sample, the sample and which estate each tweed belonged to. Lanny explained that there were 12 looms set up,

each with a different tweed, and the students went from loom to loom, weaving each sample.

It was a challenge to finish the work in time, though the class had a week. Twelve samples had to be finished, squeezed in between three delicious meals a day, songs at sunrise, an hour and a half for lunch as well as evening entertainment.

Ms. Warren had a magnifying glass to look closely at each student's work. The magnifying glass had a graph on it, and Ms. Warren used it to determine if the squares in each pattern were indeed square, more of a challenge than one would think, Lanny said.

Lanny and some of his classmates found the need to work in the evening to get finished before the week was over.

All samples were woven on a four-shaft loom, all with Jagerspun 2/8 wool. There were no floating selvedges, and it was easy to see Lanny's selvedges improved with each sample. Although the sett varied for each, the treadling was the same for each. They were all done with direct tie up, all in a sequence that moved only one foot at a time. Lanny said that to watch Ms. Warren weave was amazing, her shuttle flying and her feet dancing on the treadles.

This is a gamp, a study in different tweeds. Notice that each square--by definition, no larger than 2 inches square--is a different treadling.

Scottish week at John C. Campbell was more than the weaving class. There were also classes offered in blacksmithing, wood turning, scottish cooking, knife making, jewelry and beginning pennywhistle, among others.

Lanny said, "It was a lot of fun. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'd go back in a minute!"

Yippee!!!! It's Tuesday!

Another loom with a story! Thelma Louise Nixon was quite a weaver, according to her children. And this loom is a testament to that fact! Her kids, Kim & Nick and grandson, James, thought that the Center would be a great place for this LeClerc 45" Nilus. We all agree. Thank you! After moving looms just last week, we moved things around again today to make a place for her, and it will be put to work very soon. Pat & Alan got her just where she needed to be!Elsewhere at the Center today, Lanny & Maggie are working on a project using the notebook he made from the workshop he took last summer. He wove some beautiful plaids, and Maggie is always looking for a new challenge. This is Networking at its best!

And, supervising the controlled chaos is Carl....he calmly watches, listens, and gets a lot of weaving done. He's our "go-to" guy when we have a weaving question. We're all so glad he's back with us!!!!
Now, for the applause: Maggie cut off the warp on her loom today!!!! Cheers!!!! That warp make some spectacular placemats and runners. (But, secretly, Maggie was ready for it to be gone....too much of a good thing!) I can't wait to see what's next for her.
As always, lots of laughin' and yakkin' and great fellowship (and a little weaving, too!) Tuesdays are a good thing!
LouAnn
p.s. We sure did miss Tina today!

Workin and Dreamin

Well, here it is. My turn to write. Sadly, I am still not weaving. It seems that my time is spent between our houses and delivering our boys to where they need to be. The weather has warmed up the last few days so I could continue to work on the yard. I even enlisted the help of a teenager! Our son and I finished raking up leaves. All ten billion of them! This wasn't too easy because the bottom layer was wet. He was working so hard to rake up the leaves that he broke the wooden handle of his rake! After that he continued to rake with half a handle! He looked pretty funny. Picture a 5' 11" boy using a half a rake! I offered to trade rakes with him since I am height challenged but he wanted to keep his. He continued working with a smile on his face. This child is such a gift! He is a good sport even when sent back down into the woods to pick up more trash.

The last owner of this house stopped by while we were there and told us about all the plants that are in the beds. I can't wait to see what Spring will bring!

As for the inside, I spent time removing all the nails, screws, curtain rod brackets and window blinds. I want to get ready to wash walls and paint as soon as the power and water get turned on. I also spent time removing more staples from the floor, scraping it and sweeping. Cough, cough. I created quite a dust cloud. It is a good thing it was warm enough to open all the windows and doors!

When I am not over there working I am here dreaming. I am thinking about which colors to use in the rooms. I have a mental image of what I want it to look like. I hope it looks as good in person as it does in my mind!

Linda

Museum Opportunity for us!

As LouAnn mentioned yesterday, we are involved as weavers in the exhibit that just opened at the Knoxville Museum of Art!
What an opportunity for us!

This exhibit has several sections and all are quite fascinating for us. As fiber people we're not really into glass. However, Ann Wilson had an opportunity to do an artist residency in glass. The result is part of the exhibit. Glass bobbins that appear to be wound with fiber, only it's all glass is a major part of the exhibit. To hear her talk about the experience..........hot molten liquid glass that hardened into a solid form connected with her. The liquid....flexible, pliable, spinning, winding, binding. All those are words we relate to as fiber artists. That's what they were doing with that glass. We do the same with our fibers. That part is called rewinds because they represent small links of fiber that we often call thrumbs, to be saved and used later in sampling, tieing on warps, etc.

The main part of the exhibit, the room we'll be in the most, is in 2 parts. The first is the book room. I can't wait to get into there, look at the books they've got on the table, see if there are any that I need to find to add to my collection. I love books. Fiber books that include history are fascinating. When I work, I'm taking a notebook and pen so that when I get a break, I'm going to check those books out!

We will mostly be in the area they refer to as the factory. This is the participatory part of the project. People coming to the museum are invited to sit down at a station and wind bobbins. They have quills sitting waiting for someone to fill them with yarn. There's a big table full of cones to choose from. About 20 mills donated cones of yarn for the exhibit. About once a week, Nick, LouAnn's son and the Knoxville manager of the exhibit, will hang them from the wall to add to the pile of bobbins that are already there! We will pick a bobbin, cut it from the exhibit, and then take it to the loom to weave. I think we've kind of been dreading the weaving but it's forcing us to expand again. That's great for us and as we do this, we'll become comfortable with another aspect of weaving that we haven't done before. I haven't used a temple before and I don't think any of the tuesday weavers have. We're also not that comfortable with fine threads. The thickest will be about 10/2. The warp is put on so that we weave bands of weft faced fabric. That means we won't see any of the warp as it is completely covered with the thread. That's something we haven't done before. As we had the meeting yesterday morning and then listened to the lecture in the afternoon, it became apparent that, yes, we can do this and it'll all be good! I'm looking forward to

We've agreed, as a group, to weave every other Thursday starting this week. Everyone that weaves will be part of the catalogue of the show. We are already part of it because we were asked to talk about ourselves as weavers and the notebook with what we said is there for anyone to read that comes to see the exhibit. Anyone that winds a bobbin can sign their name to the list and they will be included in the show catalogue. We've got 50 yards to weave. There are about 50 weavers that have signed up to weave in the 3 months of the exhibit. The museum will get the fabric. No one has decided yet what will become of it, but whatever they decide, it's going to be neat to see. We can point to the parts we wove. We are weaving in bands of color. I can't wait to see the whole piece spread out with all the different colors. I, for one, will take my camera each time I weave, to take a picture of my small part of it.

Yesterday afternoon, just before the lecture, I went around the exhibit and took pictures for this blog so that you could see what it's all about. I just spent almost 2 hours trying to get the pictures to move. Instead, the prose just doubled, tripled, quadrupled, all mixed up.

To figure out how it should be, look at the last picture, read a bit, then the next picture up, etc. In other words, the pictures are backwards. The first picture shows a family winding bobbins, the second, the book room. The third picture is Nancy whose day it was to weave on Saturday. Then the wall of bobbins with their ends tied to a rod at the ceiling. The last two pictures are of the glass bobbins. They're actually very fascinating when you look at them!

If you're in the Knoxville area before April 25, let us know and we'll be sure to help you get to the exhibit! It's going to be worth your time! Carol

Lots Goin' On!

It has been a very busy week! I finished my scarf and wore it Thursday night to the opening at the Museum of Art. I did take note that there were a few other woven scarves to be seen!

Last night Tina and I went to the Lenoir City Jam and set up our table of woven items. We didn't sell anything, but we had a great time. Tina brought her wheel, and sat and spun while I crocheted a dish rag. The highlight of our evening was a chocolate Frosty we picked up as we drove out of LC. But, doesn't the table display look nice!!!!

This morning, several of the Tuesday Weavers and I attended the Weavers' Meeting at the KMA. This was the time to ask questions and walk through the exhibit with Anne Wilson, Libby O'Bryan, Janette Ramirez, and Nick DeFord. There has been so much planning and work on this exhibit, that it really takes your breath away. I still think about my reaction when I peeked around the corner Thursday night and saw the color wall.......it still makes me GRIN!

After listening to Anne this morning, I realized that I have such connection to this exhibit. My great-grandfather, Joel Norris, moved from North Carolina to Atlanta to Knoxville to supervise in the mills. My Mom told me that she loved to pick the lint out of his hair when he would come in after work. Isn't that a great memory??? And, of course, I have Ester's coverlet that she wove from handspun wool. Yes....I have a connection! And, we have now connected with weavers from ALL OVER.....elsewhere in Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, and Illinois.

Before Anne had to rush off for a meeting, we got a great group picture of us: clockwise from the left are Jeanette, Nick, me, Anne, Carol, Bonnie, Sharen, Libby and Pat. And, the website for the exhibit is: http://www.windrewindweave.com

Gotta go weave...I've got another scarf to finish up today. Happy Weaving!
LouAnn

Blue Jeans

Blue jeans are wonderful things. I am usually wearing them, wouldn't be without them.

Since I began weaving rugs however, they have come to mean so much more!

I recently bought 75lbs of old blue jeans from a woman in my area. I was going to pay her $1 lbs. We decided however to make it $50 plus a blue jean rug.

So this week finally, I have been processing some of the blue jeans for her rug. Hilary over at Crazyasaloom has a great tutorial about that so I won't go into it in detail. ( You really should go see her blog, she is a great inspiration for us Tuesday weavers)

I have cut up the blue jeans and then cut the legs into strips. I will then sew the strips together, load them on a shuttle and start weaving.

I have wondered if I could sew the rectangles of the pant legs together first, and then cut a continuos strip. I have got to try that!

After I have cut the big strips, I end up with a couple of smaller strips that I will use in placemats.

Tonight Lou Ann and I will go to the Lenoir City Jamboree. We missed it last time because of the weather. This is the first time for us, so we are going to check it out!

Then it will be back to blue jeans for me! Yep, the tub is full too!

I keep seeing all those saggy baggy jeans some of the kids are still wearing, and I can't wait for them to go out of style and into my rugs!

Happy Weaving, Tina

Happy Endings!

Today, I cut the warp off the 8 shaft loom that's been posing as a 4 shaft for the last 8 months. It started with a rag rug made from quilting fabric I bought at a quilt shop in Montana where I worked in 2000. That rug will go under the dining room table.

I used all the fabric for that rug, and had no other fabric to make another to use the rest of the warp. So, the loom sat idle, except as a jungle gym for my new kitten, Weft, seen in other entries in this blog. LouAnn gave me some white fabric to finish the warp, but I couldn't bring myself to make a rug with that much white showing, not in a house full of pets! I finally decided to use natural, red and black carpet warp, wound 5 strands at a time, but ran out of red halfway through. I couldn't bear to wait until next Tuesday when I could buy more from the center, so finished with just natural and black. It shows, definitely, and doesn't look great, but I've decided it will be just fine as a rug for under my desk. My feet are cold right now without it, and I will be the only one who'll notice its imperfection.

Next, the rugs will be serged and washed, cut apart and find their new homes. Meanwhile, there's a naked loom in the room! Our Clinch Valley afghan project will go on that loom, using all 8 shafts, but will have to wait until after the twill workshop on the 30th. I'm excited that I was able to take that day as a vacation day and will be able to attend.

The lace towels have been idle for the week, since I've been in Nashville visiting my son, Matt and his girlfriend, Dana. They just returned from a vacation in Romania, and brought me back a beautiful tapestry, woven by the sister of their tour guide and host, George. It's made from wool from their sheep. They weave in a manner similar to Navajos and Hopis, using vertical looms. I will be attaching a sleeve on the back of the tapestry this afternoon, and hanging it in my back loom room, or Loominaria, as my boyfriend, Jarrett calls it.

I missed Tuesday weaving, but have had a great week on vacation. Back to reality and work tomorrow, for a full week, followed by another mini vacation of weaving, dining and yard work. Life is good!

Happy weaving!

Maggie

T G I T *

*Thank Goodness It's Tuesday!

Welcome to Ann, our new weaver. She chose her thread and wound her warp today. It's now chained off and waiting for next week.

Alan and Lanny worked together to cut some upholstery fabric for rug weft. They sewed one seam, and ran the piece through the rag cutter as one piece...but it took both of them to keep it all on track. Another advantage of working with our group!

Before Christmas we moved the AVL to Maggie's so that she can work on complex weaves, and we would have some extra floor space. Then we measured each space for the remaining looms and made graphs of them to plan out a new layout for our weaving space. We knew the barn looms would have to stay put for now, but everything else was movable. Pat worked and worked on arranging the looms on the graph paper, and Tina ran back & forth checking measurements. After lunch, we moved the "monster" loom and turned two of the smaller looms in the middle to create a space for supplies and parking for the Wolf Pups. It's not written in stone, and I'm sure we'll make more adjustments as time goes by. We still don't have space for the other rug loom, but the space is more livable.

As always, lots of laughin' and yakking!!!! You just gotta love TUESDAYS!!!!!