Weaving: May 2006 Archives
A few pins, a bit of fluffy roving and some brown embroidery floss later, my pincushion is a reality. Believe it or not, my knitting experience came in handy with the seaming of the two woven pieces. Originally, I thought I was going to use back stitch to put the pieces toether. Then I remembered that the backside looks different from the front side, and that the back side doesn't look neat enough when it's going to be exposed. So I ended up using something that reminded me of mattress stitch for seams.
It's a very rustic -- the woven fabric is rustic, the cross stitching in rustic, the backstitching is rustic, the seaming is rustic. But what could be better than turning my own handspun into something useful? This little pincushion has been the gateway to a lot more than just doing cross-stitch again. It made me realize that when I combine my hand spun with my Weavette I have almost endless possibilities for creating templates for small cross stitch projects. Now that indigo dyed wool/silk skein can become a blue background for a small project. I can spin a finer yarn or single and create a template that is less rustic. For someone who almost never sews fabric, it was pleasant to discover that I could work out a way to solve my problem and get the result I was imagining in my head with the few rudimentary skills I acquired when I was in my early teenage years. And this template can be used for more than just pincushions. I can also imagine a pretty little pillow sachet for a lingerie drawer. Add a ribbon and some cedar stuffing and it could be a decorative means of discouraging moths in a closet.
So there you have it. My entry in Julie's May Pincushion Challenge featuring
Pincushion details:
The foundation is made up of a hand-woven fabric that I created using a 4" x 4" Weavette loom and some of my hand-spun two-ply wool/silk yarn. The tomato was cross-stitched using 6 strands of with DMC embroidery floss and back-stitched with 3 strands of DMC embroidery floss. The inside of the pincushion is lined with a light weight muslin fabric to provide structure and to prevent the stuffing from escaping. It's stuffed with a little bit of lovely and cushiony moorit CVM roving. I seamed the woven pieces and the muslin together usin 2 strands of the same brown DMC floss as I used to backstitch the tomato.
There's one more thing that I bought at MS&W that I didn't mention in my "what I bought at the festival" post. This was partly because I forgot about it and partly because I wanted to play with it and have some results to show off before I talked about it. If you read Julie's blog, you've already read what she has to say about her Weavette. I bought mine at the very same place (Haltwhistle Fibers) , only I purchased the 4" x 4" Weavette. Weaving is one of those crafts that I've been interested in for some time (and I can remember playing with my potholder loom when I was small, and working on a very simple frame loom when I was about 10), but have shied away from because of the fact that it's not a cheap pursuit to embark upon. I can be fickle with my crafting hobbies and I figured that I needed to find some smaller scale way to try this out to see if it was worth it to me in terms of both money and space to move on to bigger and more expensive things.
Clearly, the tiny weavette is a good place for someone like me to start. In addition to the loom, I also bought a handy-dandy little book of textures (I do like me some spiral bound craft books! Why can't more people make books like this?) to help me on my way. I thought about the yarn to use it with for a little while, and then settled on some of the 50/50 silk/fine wool blend that I had spun after Christmas, since I thought for the first experiments it would be best to do something where color didn't get in the way of being able to observe the texture.
First off, I had a lot of fun doing this. The instructions that come with the Weavette and that are in the book are excellent and easy to follow. It took me no time at all to "warp up" this little loom and get started on my first square of plain weave. Taking it off the pins was a little adventure because I was curious as to how the fabric would change. Clearly, the frame put tension on the fiber, so would it retract a bit like I would expect knitted fabric to do? In this case, it changed very little, though I suspect that some of that has to do with the high silk content (and, thus, reduced elasticity) of the yarn I chose. For a little while, I couldn't put that square down. I was completely surprised that in less tthan 15 minutes I could create this wonderful little square bit of cloth. So I made another, and then another. I think I might like this whole weaving thing!
I think it's appropriate that there should be a convergence of cross-stitch and weaving for me right now. As soon as I started to handle the plain weave square, it occured to me that this was no different than the woven linen fabrics that I've used to cross stitch on. Amazing how it can take actually making something on my own to help me see the painfully obvious. The weave is quite large, though, so I don't know that embroidery floss would be my best bet to cross-stitch with. But what about the silk single that I am spinning up right now? Could be an interesting combination, I'm thinking, if I can find a simple design that will fit in the confines of a relatively small space. I've been wanting to join Julie's pincushion challenge, but given my rudimentary (at best) sewing skills I was at a loss for what to do. Now I am beginning to think I might have the inkling of an idea.
There's also a pretty rich set of patterns out there on the internet for this little toy. My favorite site was eLoomaNation, a site that focuses on doing interesting things with little looms, and which has a whole section filled with vintage patterns and projects for use with the 4" x 4" loom with lots of nice downloadable PDFs.
Can you tell what toys I'm going to be playing with this weekend?
