Weaving workshops in New England
I stacked two weaving workshops in New England this month: a week sampling deflected doubleweave at Harrisville Designs in New Hampshire, followed by a week screen printing on warps at Marshfield School of Weaving in Vermont. Weaving schools are few and far between – I feel so lucky that I can travel to them. And it's great to learn from different teachers and experience different types of looms.
The deflected doubleweave workshop was taught by Lisa Hill. Everyone put on a 6 yard warp, worked on a sampler, then designed their own scarf with the remainder. Everyone except for me, that is – I went off-script and kept sampling for the entirety of the project.
Deflected doubleweave is such an interesting structure. You weave two layers of cloth that are completely separate but intersect with one another, which creates flaps and pockets.
Color is also incredibly important with deflected doubleweave. You can use different colors within each layer, but they need to be of similar value for the clearest visual effect. I missed that memo when I designed my warp – so I decided to go wild with blending colors! For the last sample (the one that's purely pink/purple), I ended swapping out some threads on my warp to make everything cohesive.
The warp printing class at Marshfield was so amazing!! It was taught by Dosia Sanford who worked out a great system to get the dye on the warp. We used fiber-reactive dye paste and I plan to experiment with natural dye paste to see if I can get similar effects.
The end product is delightfully ikat-esque. Though I can't seem to get a good picture of the finished product without artifacts. Maybe due to the cloth sheen and texture? It's 60/2 silk, the most delicate thing I've ever woven.
And those looms! It's quite something to work inside a massive loom. If I ever have more space...
Year of Stories recent read: Foundation and Earth by Isaac Asimov (a disappointing end to a series that started off so strong... at least I have the Apple TV adaptation to look forward to!)