Weekend Classes

My other classes at Creative Strands included a beaded bracelet and rug weaving. The beading class was a little weird at first because I've never beaded anything, ever! Everyone else was pulling out their plastic boxes, setting up their padded mats, and taking out their extra bright beading lamps. There I was - use our what, huh? Who knew there were that many types of beads? At least I bought the kit, so everything I needed was there. Eventually I caught on and got the bracelet done and about 1/3 of the charms. The bracelet is a little over the top for me, but I picked up a peyote stitch earring kit and I think I can do that on my own.

The weaving classes consisted of a Soumak and a Fleece and Pile Rug class, both taught by Tom Knisely from The Mannings.

In the Soumak class we learned single, Oriental, open and closed Soumak, Ghiordes Knot, how to turn and work back, and how to use the Argatch Edge to work up the sides. Netting shuttles work well for all of these.

In the Fleece and Pile Rug class we first took the Ghiordes knot and used that with long locks of English Leicester, alpaca, and mohair. The woman next to me brough her own Romney locks so I tried that too. After each row of locks we wove 10 - 16 rows of carpet warp to keep it lying flat. You can see it on the pictures, but that's because I rolled the finished cloth off of the beam for you to see what we covered.

We also used locks to lay in the shed. For that we basically did basketweave (1,2 - 3,4) to allow more wool to show through. You can leave the tips, or really as much as you like, hanging out. When you reach the end of the row give a little twist and then use the rest of the lock to begin the next row. After 2 - 4 rows of roving put in 2 rows of tabby using the rug warp. Finally, using the same weave structure, we used roving.



Last, but certainly not least, look what I got for my birthday! It will be singles for a warp dominant fabric.