Finally, here is my work on my second weaving project! I have photos from start to finish, so you can see what I have been learning. Part of the work I did was at my local museum where I took the class, but it spilled over into the Refugee Empowerment Center as my teachers are Karen refugees from Myanmar (Burma). My class is officially over now, so the other students and I are planning on continuing to go to the Center on Saturdays to keep on weaving.
This odd looking set of boards is a warping board. This is what we use to create the warp, which is the structure on which we weave. So what you are seeing is actually the threads that will eventually be removed. It is sitting on its side at the moment, but once removed and we begin weaving it will no longer be horizontal as shown. The large stick on the left will be what is connected to the wall (or some steady structure) that holds the rest of the weaving. Some of those poles will be used as well and the thread is wrapped around them.
This is a very important piece of the loom. It is the heddle rod and the kite string (in the future I hope to use something a little less slippery as I had problems with knots coming undone and the thread going wonky and causing problems) is what is separating the threads. It is woven around every other green and/or white thread and it is what will eventually separate those threads and enable me to weave. It's one of those Eureka discoveries--so much easier than trying to weave your weft through every other warp thread.
Here is a close up to one of those poles that holds the threads and creates my warp structure.
Okay. Here it all is taken from the warping board and attached to the wall. Do you see how all those poles now create the loom? It took me quite a while to wrap my brain around how it all works and how it works together. I am still learning, but I understand the very basic process. The stick with the kite string attached is my heddle that opens and closes the threads. So I can weave the weft thread through and then that nice, big, nicely sanded bar is a batten and it is used to beat the weft thread into place.
Here is a close up of that heddle rod. I could have been more systematic in the placing of my warp threads by color and made a nicer, more orderly pattern but as I am still learning I decided to let them go as they may end see how they randomly end up. I should have taken a photo of the threads open, but there are a couple of photos back in this post.
Here is me working and you can see my heddle rod that has my weft thread I am weaving with. When creating the warp you use two threads in tandem, but when you actually weave you only use one. Again I just randomly switched from the green to the white. The top part of the cloth has a white weft and the bottom a green weft woven in.
And here it is all finished. The tassles at the end were really a challenge for me. It took me a couple of hours to do them. My teacher was showing me and she was so fast and could create them into tight wraps I was incredibly impressed. What you do is take two sets of two threads separated by your finger and then roll them against your leg in one direction then take the two sets and roll those together in the opposite and make a little tie and the tension of the twists against each other holds them together. For someone skilled it is pretty easy. For someone new, like me, it was frustrating. But for a first try they are not so bad, I think.
This is my one small detail, a fancy design my teacher put in one end and then helped me do on the other end. It is really pretty simple (though I am not sure I could do it on my own yet) of weaving loose threads through the warp--she used extra sticks to open the warp in a different way that I cannot obviously explain to you here, but it looks nice, don't you think? I think this sort of embellishment is particular to the Karen ladies in their weaving. And you can see a close up of the actual weaving and tassles.
This is the whole cloth--I guess we can call it a scarf, though to be honest I am not sure I will ever actually wear it. It is just a learning piece for me. But all in all, it is pretty cool and I loved doing it. It is folded over twice to give you an idea of length--a lot of work went into it!
And this is the first project I did after I took it off the loom. It has some blue woven in as I ran out of black. I used a much finer cotton thread (the green and white is also cotton thread, which is what works best for this type of weaving). I could have created tassles on this one, too (the spun tassles that is), but I just could not face the prospect of doing more last weekend.
My adventures will continue tomorrow as I will be going to the Refugee Center and hopefully begin project number three! Now to figure out how to get m own loom (as you can see it is something fairly easily cobbled together, though the batten is the most important piece that needs to be well made).
Learning to weave has certainly been a way for me to use my brain in a new way and learn to think totally outside the box. It feels good to use that "muscle" in new ways, too.