What Was Old is New Again!

 Anni Brown's Family of Double Weave Floppy Dolls.  Woven from an archived article and draft from the Winter 1977 Shuttle Spindle Dye Pot magazine found in our RFG Library!  

INSPIRATIONS

 Circles on Eight 

Kathy Rand's handwoven scarf with 20/2 silks.  Draft from Marian Stubenitsky's Max8, Page 11.  The warp was first sett at 36epi but upped to 48 epi to achieve CIRCLES!

Another beautiful Eight-Shaft Scarf  woven by Lorene Sullivan.  Fiber is bamboo and the draft was from Stricklers Pattern Book.  

MEET RFG'S NEWEST WEAVER! 

 

Congratulation and kudoos to Wendy on completing her first handwoven project!  Wendy's bag was woven on her Ridgid Heddle Loom from lessons learned while attending a 2.5 Day Workshop (Weaving Two Ways) at the CNCH 2026 Asilomar Conference last May.  

Sage Weavers - What's it all about?

 Our  bimonthly meeting was, as usual, filled with lots of conversation, opinions and catching up time.  This month we had a bounty of free yarn.  Some just so-so and some very nice indeed.  There were also stacks of Handwoven, Väv Magasinet, Shuttle Spindle and Dyepot and maybe a few others.  Most everything was gone by the end of the meeting, so it's in new hands and new future projects.

We started our round robin "show and tell" with Nancy P.  She has a history of education in weaving tapestry and brought three of her pieces for show and tell.   

  

Nancy P. with her larger than life Calla Lily Tapestry

 

Nancy told us that these were all woven sideways and that they were woven with the back facing the weaver.  Such amazing work and we were all happy that Nancy shared her work with us.

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Our next bit of show and tell was from Diana F.   Diana is a newer weaver and has subscribed to the School of Weaving with Jane Stafford.  The following photos are of her two towel warps.  The towels were so wonderfully soft and you could immediately tell they will be very absorbent. Can't  you envision this hanging in your kitchen?

 

 

                     This one is calmer, color-wise, but very elegant in its design

 

  

 

 This end piece was really the exciting end to Diana's project.  She tried weaving a tube for the very first time - and achieved one, much to her amazement.  She was so elated,  she wore it as a little scarf around her neck  for a while!

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We ended the meeting by looking at the new book by Stacy Harvey-Brown, 

Creative Dimensions in Weaving:  A Handweaver's Guide to Texture.

 

The photos in the book lure you into the world of textiles with texture, differential shrinkage, distortion and woven sculpture.  To illustrate, Beryl brought in a couple of samples from a Zoom workshop with Denise Kovnat in 2022 about deflected double weave.  The new book covers this subject, but also many more topics and is a sure bet to shake up your weaving  experience.

 

 

 

 

 Potholder Weaving With Imagination

Potholder weaving at our October meeting for some of us was a bit of nostalgia wrapped in memories of one of our first weaving experiences as a child. For others it was a whole new experience and something to look forward to doing with family members in the future.

One of the books we had available for inspiration was Radical Potholder Weaving by Deborah Jean Cohen.  It includes instructions for doing clasped weft designs, and a number of patterns with floats going over or under two or three loops as well as many plain weave patterns using color and weave designs.

Suggestions for faster easier weaving included picking up the pattern with a knitting needle so that you can slide the hook into the shed thus created more easily, beating the weft into place using a large tooth comb and using the knitting needle to check the straightness of the weft.

There is also a clever hack at the beginning of the book for making a 19 loop pattern on an 18 peg loom. It involves adding a loop in the middle of the warp and the middle of the weft. The author suggests looping an elastic hair band onto each end of the two extra loops and attaching them on the back of the loom with an S hook. I found rubber bands were easier to remove than the hair band. It does crowd the warp a bit in the middle and makes keeping the weft in line a bit harder but it is well worth it for the flexibility in pattern making. 

Someone asked at our October Meeting if anyone wove using both sides of the warp loops separately. Toward the back of the book there are designs called Indian Weaves that are woven this way. The patterns are formed by places where the loops are woven as usual, under or over both sides of the loop. It makes a denser pad and deserves more exploration as a technique.

Another split loop technique involves beginning each weft going over or under half a loop and then continuing with the other half of that loop and half of the next one and ending with another half loop. If the warp has alternating colors this makes a pattern of a different sort.

The author notes that adding tension to the potholder as you crochet the edge keeps the loops from hopping off their pegs prematurely. Bullnose office clips work well for this. I used the smaller ones but the picture in the book shows the one inch size. They really do help.

The book also lists sources for loops other than the ones from Harrisville. All in all an excellent manual for modern potholder weaving.

Another Little Loom Project

 

Jen has once again inspired us with her colorful patterned potholders.

She had a wonderful time with her family playing with an old fashioned potholder loom. Remember those when we were kids? They still have them at Hobby Lobby and Harrisville Designs, The Woolery and more.

 

It's a great way to try out color and weave patterns without having to warp a table or floor loom. We prefer the cotton loops over the nylon ones that melt. Some of the looms come with 18 pegs per side (Hobby Lobby)and some have 19 (more expensive). It will make a difference in the pattern possibilities.

We recommend this book for inspiration:

Happy Weaving!

Tensioning your warp while you wind on (without a partner to help)

 At Sage Weavers we talk about all things weaving and sometimes we pick up good tips from other weavers.  

 This month, one of our new weavers asked questions about how to manage a warp without anyone to help her while she was winding it on to the back beam.  An experienced weaver, Suzanne, told her about how she uses C clamps to weight the warp (as opposed to lots of heavy books, etc.)  Here are photos of the process.  As Suzanne winds the warp and the C clamps advance closer to the loom, they are repositioned further back on the warp.

You can see that these are heavy C clamps to give a good weight to the warp and they are positioned in back of the raddle.

Give this technique a try on your next warp and let us know how it works for you. 

 

 Here is what Suzanne says about the process 

* just remember to stand back to shake out and snap each section to get your threads aligned before attaching clamps and winding. 

Guessing you could do this with table loom if hanging off the back end of table. 

May need smaller clamps as this size might be to heavy to wind on table loom since it’s a knob vs a crank handle to wind. 

 

 

 

 

 

October Meeting with Judy Hilbish

 Reno Fiber Guild had a slow start to their regular guild program year because of a recent fire near Mt. Rose.  However, we were rewarded with a nice October meeting in which Judy Hilbish was our guest speaker.

Judy is a weaver with over 50 years experience.  Her focus for many years has been weaving rugs and assorted weft faced, summer and winter pieces on Heidi, her much adapted counter marche loom.  Judy studied the shaft switching device devised by Peter Collingwood in his book, Rug Weaving Techniques:  Beyond the Basics and set about to make one for her loom.  She revised the instructions and decided to make a device for half blocks.  This allowed her 180 blocks on her four shaft loom.

 

Judy explained that  the technique she uses allows her to make curves (see the rug she is holding in the photo), but not circles.  The half block system allows smaller steps when making a curved design.  In the photo above, her cat approves the design and feel of a newly woven rug. Judy says he claws almost everything except her rugs - so he has great appreciation for them too!

 In an arduous trip to view some petroglyphs near Virginia City, Judy, her husband and their guide got stuck in mud.  Her rug (shown below) reflects the memories of that day with the tire tracks around the red motifs in her design.

 If you would like to learn more about shaft switching, you can download the Peter Collingwood book in pdf format for free.  On-Line Digital Archive of Documents on Weaving and Related Topics  (The link takes you to books with authors last names starting with C.  Look for Collingwood.)

 Another excellent resource is a DVD done by Jason Collingwood.   Rug Weaving:  Block Weaves and Shaft Switching.  You can find this at a variety of online weaving stores and sometimes on E-Bay.

You can buy Judy's wall hangings, table runners, etc at third Thursday sales at the Generator in Reno.