Workshop with Kathrin

Last October I showed you the fun weekend I had with my sisters.  But I had another fun weekend with my weaving buddies.  The local weaving guild brought Kathrin Weber to give a workshop on painted warps and weaving them.  She has some great work that you need to check out at Blazing Shuttles.  She dyes the yarn, warps and weaves the fabric and then sells blankets, bags and other beautifully colored items.

We had three days of fun with her.  I usually take a workshop to spend some fun days with my friends.  I have been weaving and such for over 30 years, so usually I am happy to pick up a couple of new ways of looking at things and some ideas for better teaching my classes.  In this class I got a couple of "wows".  She had a couple of tips that I will be putting into my working mode and exploring a few new things.

We started with looking at her wonderful use of the dyed warps.

She talked about how she does her work and how she puts the warps on the loom.  She has very specific ways and she offered several tips that I plan to try on my methods. 

We all worked on getting the warps on the looms...Kathrin helped where asked for and we got down to work...some got down more than others.

Julie really got into the "power warping"

 and she really got an audience!

My warp going on...

Here it is weaving, I have about 1 yard more to go.


The last day we did some dyeing.   I bought some of Kathrin's measured warps and I also measured and brought some of my own to do.  I loved that she used paper or fabric under the warps to soak up the extra so there are no "blended" brown places on the warps.  She also winds and stacks them in a great way to get the shifting on her warps.

I had several pieces of cotton cloth that I had left from a dyeing for quilts class that I had taught and I brought several warps to try her techniques on.

First I wet and crumpled the fabric on the table then I laid a couple of warps on the fabric.

When I painted the carpet warp, I guess I got a little too much dye in the mix and ended up with OMG pink, orange and blue.

After washing (and Kathrin's method of setting and rinsing is great) the color toned down some but is still think it falls in the heading of OMG pink!  Here's the fabric...

and the yarn.  I think I will do some bag fabric with it.  The dyed fabric could be lining, or straps...we'll see.


I also did some warp for a jacket yardage and the fabric could be used for lining, facings, bindings ...

I think that I will have to dye some more solid color to go with this so I will have enough width to get a jacket, but it should be fun.


I had a great time in the class, it is always fun with my weaving buddies.  I also learned more that I expected to and that was great.  And I have several projects to add to my UFO stack...damn.