Category Archives: Design

The Gift That Inkle Saved

16 Monday Apr 2012

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What gift should I give to dear friends celebrating their 7th wedding anniversary? Hmmm… Oh, wait, I know, how about the gift I started making for them 7 years ago for their wedding and never finished!

Here it is ready to be wrapped.

The back.

Why did this pillow take me so long to complete? Because I can embroider, sew basic straight seams, but I can’t sew piping! Sometimes my ideas are bigger than my abilities and I can fake it ’til I make. Not this time.

I had such high hopes for this gift. My friends are bird watchers, so embroidering birds was an obvious theme. The pillow is made of the same color dupioni silk as the dresses that the bridesmaids wore. Perfect, right?

Nope. This project went so wrong.

I ripped it apart, sewed it again, apart, sew, apart, sew, until, out of frustration, I put it in a box and there it stayed. For seven years. I thought of it every year around their anniversary, but my skills had not changed and neither did the state of the pillow.

What the pillow was waiting for was for me to learn how to inkle weave. An inkle band added the perfect finish to what I couldn’t achieve before.

I wove the band with DMC embroidery floss, which gave the band a pretty sheen that matches the silk, then sewed it to the front piece. The design of the pillow is a little different than I initially planned; it was supposed to be a removeable pillow case, but I lost some material taking the piping off again, so it is stitched closed on all sides.

I’m very happy with how it turned out and that it is FINALLY finished. I hope they like it.

Happy anniversary you guys! May you have 7 years times infinity more.

warp, weave, be happy!

Jennifer

Yay! The Check Is in the Mail!

30 Friday Mar 2012

Posted by in Design, Teaching, Travel

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I have never been so happy to mail a check. Ok, that is a bit of an exaggeration, but I had a smile on my face when I dropped it in the box.

Not long after I learned how to inkle weave I ran across this picture.

Anne Dixon inkle woven bands. The Braid Society

The orange and white band stumped my limited knowledge of inkle design, as did the others actually, but that orange one… How was that done?! I did a little internet slouthing and found it was woven by the gifted weaver Anne Dixon. So, I emailed Ms. Dixon – and she replied with a great email outlining the process. I was ecstatic. But the funny thing is, I had no idea she was the Anne Dixon, author of “The Handweaver’s Pattern Directory: Over 600 Weaves for 4-Shaft Looms”. And now the author of the soon to be released “The Weaver’s Inkle Pattern Directory: 400 Warp-Faced Weaves”. Woohoo, I’ve already preordered mine!

So where did I send the check? To the Western North Carolina Fibers/Handweavers Guild to become a member of the guild and to attend an Anne Dixon inkle 3-day workshop in July in beautiful Hendersonville, NC! I met a lovely bunch of ladies from the guild last weekend and I am so glad to join their group.

Is it July yet? This is going to be an amazing birthday present to me and if all works out we will be able to make it a family trip. Does it get any better than that? Yeah, I don’t think so either.

warp, weave, be happy!

Inkle Nothing into Something

15 Thursday Mar 2012

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“Jennifer, what is that going to be?”

My mother-in-law asked me this yesterday while I was weaving an inkle band in preparation to teach my first class on inkle band projects at Florida Tropical Weavers Guild Mini-Extravaganza this weekend. How timely!

The potential of what it is going to be is exactly what I love about inkle weaving. I’ve always been amazed at the idea of taking “nothing” and turning it into something like sewing fabric into a dress or crocheting or knitting a ball of yarn into a sweater.

With inkle, weaving the band is just the first step of the creative process. Once it is woven, you get to turn nothing into something again. How about bangle bracelets, a handle for a handbag, a belt, or roses (the header for this blog!)? Truly you are only limited by your imagination. Fellow blogger and highly talented weaver A Spinner Weaver shares a great idea list of uses for inkle bands.

So, a bit about what I was weaving. The band really was woven to make samples of the projects I’m going to teach. I used a varigate cotton yarn that is out of my color comfort zone, but something I bought trying to stretch my color horizons. The new heddles I made for the loom are made out of a rainbow variegated nylon crochet yarn, also out of my color comfort zone.

Oh how fun it was to look down and see those little dots of color! Feeling the comfort zone stretching . . . inkle rainbow heddlesDon’t they look like rainbow sprinkles?Inkle heddles rainbow sprinkles on pinkEye-candy for sure!Inkle heddleswarp, weave, be happy!

Inspiration at My Fingertips

06 Tuesday Mar 2012

Posted by in Design, Inspiration

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While having a cup of tea the other day I glanced down at my nails and thought, “It is time to take this polish off.” Then I thought, “I wonder what this color would look like in an inkle band.” Inspiration at my finger tips.

It may be hard to see in the picture, but the color is an iredescent deep purple created by blending charcoal gray and pinkish iridescent pearl. I enjoyed that manicure. . .

I’d never worked with metallic yarn so I was really intrigued by this bit of inspiration. As soon as my son was up from his nap, I packed him in the car and off to Jo Ann Fabrics we went.

I bought purple, lavender, and pearl DMC metallic embroidery thread, without a coupon (sigh). Curious what the metallic yarn would look like next to a cotton yarn, I chose 3 perle cotton yarns from my stash that were very close in color to the metallic yarns.

Then I designed a simple pattern with stripes, horizontal bars, and dots to see what the effect was in different pattens. I used all 6 strands of the embroidery thread so it would match the weight of the perle cotton yarn. And ended up with . . .

Inkle Band Metallic

  1. Bars
  2. Dots
  3. Metallic dots next to a metallic line
  4. Line

Lesson learned: the closer in color the metallic yarn is to the the cotton yarn the harder it is to achieve a patterned effect. Instead, the metallic acts as a highlight, not a standalone element.

It’s going to be fun to incorporate this into future projects now that I know what I know. And knowing is half the battle. Isn’t it?

What inspires your craft?

warp, weave, be happy.

An Inkle Dance of Joy

17 Friday Feb 2012

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Ta-Da! Introducing the project I made with all those inkle bands:

Inkle Bangles!

I am doing my version of the dance of joy right now. If this was a football game my team would definitely be charged with an excessive celebration penalty.

This inkle project has been an idea in my head since October. I could see what I wanted, but wasn’t sure how to create it. I made a few samples that were unsuccessful, but close, then I finally came up with the right process. Yay!

My studio (a.k.a the room where crazy happens) is such a mess right now. The past two weeks have been a crazy dash of conceptualize, weave, create, tweek, repeat. Nothing I used in the create/tweek stages has been put away. I can’t pause the creative process and clean up when I am in the zone. Actually, I don’t ever like to clean, but that’s not the point. Crazy was happening.

The bangles take about 3 hours to make, including weaving time. Not a bad time investment considering what I end up with.

I am SO SO jazzed about how they turned out! It always feels great when something I have envisioned in my mind turns out even better than I hoped. And it is just an added bonus if I can wear it too.

warp, weave, be happy.

Inkle Bonanza

10 Friday Feb 2012

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I’ve been inkle weaving my little heart out. In the past 7 days I have woven 9 inkle bands. I was trying to create a new design to replace the inkle band I wove last week that was too wide for the project I’m working on (to be revealed soon – I’m so excited about it!). I went crazy. It was so fun!

The results of my inkle weaving bonanza.

It’s amazing how changing the accent color can change the look of the pattern. The red/black and yellow/black bands are the same pattern. The yellow pops so much more.

The inkle bands are woven with garment quality nylon crochet yarn. Nylon is not normally a material I use, wear, or like, I am a cotton girl, but I love this stuff. It is soft and smooth with a great sheen – perfect for the soon to be revealed project. The only challenge is that the sheen makes it hard to tell the whitish colors apart from each other when next to black.

Top: beige/black; Middle: cream/black; Bottom: grey/black

In the end, the red/black – yellow/black designs come the closest to what I was trying to do, but overall I am pleased with all of them. I think they will look great in my project.

warp, weave, be happy.

Image

back to the inkle drawing board

03 Friday Feb 2012

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I’m working on a project and designed an inkle band in black and white that I really like. The only problem is that the band is too wide for my project. The pattern needed to be modified to fit a narrower width. So, I wove another inkle band in cream and black, which I really like too, just not as much as the first one.

I am going to give it one more try to see if I can come up with something a little closer to the original. Fingers crossed.

warp, weave, and be happy~ Jennifer

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