Friday, March 26, 2010

brooks bouquet with a twist

Moving right along with the lace towels, I thought I would try my hand at the brooks bouquet. You don't need a pick up stick for this, you use your shuttle to go under a certain number of threads in the upper shed, usually 3 or 4, then you wrap those threads and pick up the next 3 or 4 threads. I chose to use 4 threads since I thought it would fit well in the space I am using.


Here is the lace with 5 plain picks between the lace rows. Looks good, I thought but a little blah, don't you think?

At this point I began to have real problems with draw in and thread breakage, so I brought out the ancient temple I got with Kathryn the 8 harness. More on that later.


I had only done a couple of inches on the towel, but way more than I wanted to unweave or cut out. So I just did a couple of picks of a contrasting color and started over. At the same time I noticed that the lace was off center just by 2 threads. I puzzled over this for just a minute and I wondered what would happen if I staggered the lace rows.


And here it is! In the first couple of rows I only used 1 plain pick with no additional picks before starting the new row. I then began to use 2 more plain pics before the lace row.
I have found that I need to use the filler rows as well with this lace.


Here is a close up of the wrap.


I have found that I get a more even row if I do all the wraps and then beat, then using my fingers and/or a reed hook, going from right to left I tighten up the lace motifs.


Here you can see the looser wraps to the left of the hook.


Here is the really old temple that I got with my 8 harness. I thought I would never use that old thing. All there was was 2 pieces of wood, so I had to piece something together that would work.


Here you can see one of the screws I am using.


A little 8/4 to keep it all together. I can slip these off easily when I need to.


I went online, to price new temples......... Wow, I guess this one will do just fine!



On the rug warp in blues, I had been using 8/4 doubled in black as the hem weft , and I really liked the way it showed off the bright colors in the warp. I thought it might look good to try a mess of 8/4 as weft material. I got up to 16 strands and it still wasn't enough. I then went looking for black material, and found this in my stash, what a relief.

Now for the rug shuttle full of 16 strands of black 8/4. I see a black warp in my future.


Wally is remembering how hard it was to get that big pile of bermuda grass out of the blackberry patch!


Happy Weaving, Tina

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love the way you staggered the brooke bouquet!
Rugs looking good!
Wally's really happy to be outside!!!
Carol

LA said...

Those towels are amazing! Great problem solving using the staggered groups. The "blues" warp just keeps on going. Everything looks great with it. This cloudy day will be a great day to weave!

Theresa said...

Oh boy, do you have patience, that looks beautiful. Wonderful job and a great tip on staggering the pattern...assuming I ever even try this! :-)

Maggie said...

That's really beautiful! Isn't it so fun?

Bonnie said...

Very nice. Staggering that pattern gives it a really different look. Looks great.

Life Looms Large said...

I really like how that pattern looks!!! Great job!

Sue

Monique said...

The staggered Brooks Bouquet is amazing...I'm a returning weaver and you have me drooling. Any tips I'd need for doing this? Thanks

Hannah said...

Thanks for sharing this! I wove it to make a wedding shawl for my wife, and it turned out beautifully.