My Love/Hate Affair with Weaving

This picture (above) is my latest project. I'm trading handwoven fabric for seamstress-ing. I am not very good at sewing, and my daughter will only come to medieval events with me if a) there is archery, and b) she can wear an Italian Ren dress. Archery is easy. We have the supplies and lots of events have the opportunity. However. I cannot sew. Working flat and trying to imagine 3D is pretty much impossible for my brain. If I had a dress dummy I could drape it, but alas. So, enough 18" wide twill to make a Norse apron dress here we go!

I love the repetitive action of weaving. It's very meditative. I find it difficult to weave in the summer, but in the winter I love it. I'm also a total dork, and I like to put on the Lord of the Rings movies (not the Hobbit- those movies were designed to sell video games and toys, especially the first one), and sit there and pretend I'm an elf. I have to say that the new tv series which has been announced is like Schrodinger's Catastrophe... Anyways.



Warping (putting all the crazy, tangly strings on the loom) is an entirely different matter. It's getting easier with practice, but the first few times it took all of my courage to do. I didn't take pictures of those projects, but they weren't awesome anyways. Also, it's expensive. If you do it wrong you have made a time-consuming and expensive mistake (which is why I started with narrow width projects). I had a serendipitous find at a local thrift store and picked up a huge bag full of weaving wool in white, so it's extremely dye-worthy. And it was $2 per spool. Serious score.

 This was my second attempt at diamond twill. I made it wide enough for bags, and long enough to cut in half and give to two separate people. There was one glitch in the pattern on the left edge, but I feel pretty good about it. My weaving is improving slowly but surely, and my edges are actually pretty good.

Here is the same fabric after being dyed with madder. It came out a little bit nicer than this picture suggests. It's a nice fall hue. Below is the first time I warped this pattern. I discovered that the wool was waaaay too sticky, so I traded it out for the dark grey and used the warp yarn as weft. It worked out much better. To say that I was annoyed at having to do it all over again would be an understatement. It took me nearly a year to get up the willpower.

 My first attempt at diamond twill. I was making leg wraps, and it turned out pretty well, but the fabric is a bit thick to wrap cleanly without bits sticking out. I'll have to try again with even thinner warp and weft. I've turned the fabric into drawstring bags and donated them to the kingdom (Ealdormere) to use for gifts. So far I have done this three times and I still don't have leg wraps. Maybe fourth time's the charm?

My second attempt at weaving leg wraps. I used hand-spun Manx Loaghtan wool for the weft, but it's really thick and doesn't wrap very well. I'm saving it to make into something else. I'm not sure what yet, but handwoven cloth never goes to waste. My first attempt at leg wraps was much too thick, and is now being turned into drawstring bags. It was fairly hideous as leg wrap fabric, but it's pretty good as bags. There will be no pictures to commemorate that...