I again turn my focus to weaving… Actually, I just wanted to point out that there are sign ups for a weave-along over at eloomanator. Participants will work their way through the textured woven patterns. Are you in?
To conclude the Week of Weaving series, I will show you how to weave on a weave-it or weavette hand loom. If you are still tuned in here in the third week of the week of weaving, I am guessing that you already know how to use a hand loom, but just in case you don’t, I made a flickr set to show you how. If you are already a master, skip to the end…
In addition to the series of photos, I took a video of myself weaving a 2 inch square. It is not the greatest quality, but you can definitely see what is going on. This is how I found out that it takes me 5 minutes to weave a square, and my camera can only records 4 minutes and 45 seconds of video. So you don’t get to see me tie off the end, or triumphantly remove it from the loom.
Weaving Masters
If you have already mastered the basic woven square, and you want to try something more advanced, how about weaving some twill? One of my weave-its came with instructions titled “Diagonal Weave.” It uses entirely different set-up rows than the standard square and makes a dramatic result.
Luckily, Abby has provided awesome instructions and pictures of how to do this.
A continuation of the Week of Weaving.
If you have a two inch and a four inch loom, you can whip one of these up in no time…
I really like the scalloped edges on the finished woven squares. I wanted my finished pouch to have the same edging, so I just backstitched around the edge (one row in) of two 4-inch squares stacked on top of each other.
The back side of backstitch isn’t as attractive as the front, but it’s not too bad. I attached a 2-inch square to act as the closure. I sewed a buttonhole in one, and attached a snap to the other. Word to the wise - If you attach a snap, be sure to add a little backing fabric just behind the snap since the woven square isn’t sturdy enough to handle it. These aren’t too mind-blowing, but it is nice to see how a finished one looks, right?
A continuation of the Week of Weaving…
I find it totally amazing that you can use two squares sewn together to a shape as funky as this one.
When I was a kid and would get dragged to my Mom’s quilting meet-ups, many of the ladies had pincushions that looked kinda like this one. I remembered the name sounding something like “biscuit.” It wasn’t until I saw one of the winning entries in the Craft Stitch ‘n Pitch contest that I remembered it was called a biscornu. I thought it would be fun to make a wee one out of 2-inch weavette squares. I hadn’t seen one in ages and was totally surprised (and excited) to see June’s whiplash entry - a tiny biscornu for your wrist! Then, I saw that Miss Wooly was hard at work on a traditional cross stitch biscornu (she also provided a link to a fantastic history and tutorial at Own Two Hands). Time to throw the woven biscornu into the mix!
I have a flickr set tutorial that I will summarize here, but I encourage you to check out June’s and the tutorial at Own Two Hands, as they do an excellent job. The idea is just to offset two squares so that the corners of one square match the midpoint of the sides of the other square (this is the same as turning one of them 1/8 of a turn). It results in a funky little 8 sided pillow. Traditionally it has a button in the middle, pinching everything together - but I omitted it on mine. The pincushion is so tiny that if it gets cinched down, it will be too small for pins!
To get started, place the squares on top of each other and offset the top one by half of its length. In this arrangement, the corner of the bottom square is lined up with the midpoint of the top square.
Sew together as indicated in the picture. The next step is to twist the top square so that the midpoint of the top square is lined up with the corner below.
This is the process (twist and sew) that you repeat all the way around until 6 of the 8 sides have been sewn together. Then it is time to stuff it. I used some fiberfill, and the yarn scraps that I had leftover from weaving the squares.
Finally, sew the last two sides. Sit back and admire your handiwork.
If you have a few minutes more, you can make a matching needlebook!
Reason #415 to buy a hamster: The hamster powered paper shredder. i could really use this. i could have a hamster shred paper for my other pets - my composting worms.
- #CraftCon 2008 is this weekend - I'll be there!
- #Has anyone tried "retro-clean"? It is a detergent for cleaning old linens. Sounds nice.
- #
