June Gone and no blog

I feel bad that I did not get a blog written for June, that messes up my blog goal for the year.

I have been down in the dumps due to changes in the studio where I teach weaving.  I'm sad to say we lost our lease and even though negotiations are going on, I think we will have to move and I'm not sure about our continuing status.   Oh, as long as there is a space, and the looms are available, I will be teaching...but change is hard on me.

When I came into the organization, the previous teacher left to live near her family.  She was not a loom technician, so the floor looms all needed cleaning and repair.  I have spend the past 9 months with full beginning classes ( I even had to roll some students into the next class because there were not enough looms), cleaning 30 to 40 years of dirt and dust off 8 floor looms and communicated with the loom companies to get parts and get all the looms working well.  I figured I am not going to make new weavers if the equipment is not working well.

The beginning class is on table looms.

Here they are half way through cleaning.

I feel like I have invested a lot of time and energy to keep this studio going.  I know the previous teacher did too.

I need to just let go of these feelings, continue my crafts and know that all will work out as it is supposed to.

Enough of the "downer", let's see some fun stuff.

My class last week was warp painting and we had a great time.  I demonstrated one night and they came with warps ready for a Saturday play day.

Here is my class on their warps

In this class we paint the stripes to weave some towels.

This is the threading that I give to them.

The warp I demonstrated is a 12 yard cotton/rayon scarf warp that I have been designing.  I did the first scarf warp just stripes and some inlay, so I decided that warp two would be great with stripes of warp painted yarn.  

Here is the test warp batching and the color test paper.

I painted a pale yellow yarn with hot pink, yellow gold (dulled to mustard), apricot and avocado (lightened with yellow).  These are Procion dyes, as we are working on cotton.  I was dyeing a cotton rayon slub yarn.  I liked this yarn as a cotton scarf in the first warp, so it was logical to make more warps and more scarves.

Here's the cone of yarn and the washed warp I painted.

The  12 yard warp is four scarves, so I over-dyed some skeins for weft also.

The value of the weft is very similar to the warp.

Four scarves and four wefts (three I dyed and one the original color).  

I also got an interesting by product with this painting session.  I decided to use a silk scarf to wipe up any excess dye and I got a nice gold, apricot  and a little pink scarf.  It turned out pretty boring, so I think I will add another layer of color...sometime.

Simple and uninspiring 

You may be able to see pressing lines on the scarf, I have already started pressing the fold lines to do a shibori fold and dye process.

Here is another picture of the "wipe up cloth" and the painted warp.

I had so much fun with the warp I demonstrated and there was dye left over, so I came home and wound another warp with the cotton/rayon and started painting again.  This time I chose the blue for the warp.  I think that the colors will "tone" the warp so the scarf has some pattern.  I guess this warp will be turned twill so show off the colors shifting and maybe I will over-dye some  more weft.

The blue warp looks a lot darker wet.

I decided to dye the whole warp not just stripes.  And I offset the six sections so that when I paint a stripe, the color will be diagonal on the finished scarf.  I painted four scarves again, and I am really curious as to how the color will look.

Bad picture showing the offset on the warp sections.

I used a wider variety of colors, so that each scarf will be toned differently.  One is darker blues and purple, one over-dyed with yellow and green...I just used any of the colors left over from the class.

Four rows of color to make four scarves.

I am excited to rinse our the warp, but because I am driving north for a couple of days, it will have to wait.  

Second "wipe up" scarf

I wiped up the dyes with another silk scarf, and because of the wider group of colors, I think this one may be good without another layer of design...or maybe not.  When I was finished with the dyes, I just scrunched this one up and let it batch.

Now I just need to empty a loom so that I can get the scarves woven.  I had planned to warp one of the looms in the studio...oops, there is that depression again.

Scarf warp.

Here is warp #1 of this cotton rayon scarf series.  I wove this on one of the studio looms.  It was partially a test to see if I could get a long warp on the beam without paper...I put 12 yards on and there was no problem with the tension.  By the way, this picture shows the blue in the warp and that weft stripe that I painted in warp #3 above.