Nature gives us inspiration for free.


This is one of the most beautiful photographs I have ever seen.

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The Warp that Keeps on Giving: Echo, Jin, Double Weave, Shadow Weave, and Warp Rep All on One Threading

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How do you weave a countless number of structures on one warp? With an extended parallel threading, of course! This particular technique offers a lot of "bang for the buck" for weavers. All you have to do is modify your treadling and, in some cases, change the tie-up. If you're REALLY ambitious, you can change the tie-up and re-sley as well to achieve Double Weave or Shadow Weave. What is an extended parallel threading? For those who follow the work of Marian Stubenitsky and/or Bonnie Inouye, it needs no introduction. For the rest of us, all it means is that, for starters, you use two colors in your warp, so that you can thread them A-B-A-B, etc. (A being your first color and B being your second). Then, instead of threading a straight draw of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 (just as an example), you thread your two colors using the same line, but separately, at a set interval.  For example, if you decide you're going to thread at an interval of 4, for an extended
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Woad vs. Indigo: Here's What Happens When You 'Get the Blues'

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Last Saturday at the Weaving and Fiber Arts Center, I taught a class on "Getting the Blues: Natural Dyeing with Indigo and Woad." The short story is that, among some 275 plants that have usable amounts of indigo in their leaves, woad and indigo are the most popular worldwide, indigo itself ( indigofera tinctoria ) being the most popular natural blue dye of all time. Both have been used for thousands of years (woad, for example, was used in the British Isles by the Picts to paint themselves blue during warfare). The textile industry in southern France, centered in Toulouse, was devoted to woad -- until the 16th century, when indigo was introduced from Asia and, literally, blew it out of the water! (OK, so I can't resist a bad pun.) Indigo has the most concentrated levels of the blue pigment, which is why it's preeminent among its competitors. So I thought we'd have a class to demonstrate why. The photos below give you some of the results. (There are several quali
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Understanding Turned Taqueté

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I think it's Elvis Costello who said, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."  You could say the same about weaving. Writing about weaving is like... painting about cooking. He's making two contradictory points at once, to my thinking: first, that it makes no sense to try to verbalize what is going on -- and second, on the other hand, you may be doing something interesting in the attempt! Hence, this blog post.  I'll start with Madelyn van der Hoogt, who defines Taqueté (the unturned structure) as a "weft-faced compound tabby."  "A weft-faced pattern weave with two or more sets of complementary wefts. Even warp ends separate the weft sets so that one set (color) is on the surface of the cloth and the other(s) on the back. Odd warp ends bind the complementary wefts in alternate (tabby) order, thus the name weft-faced compound tabby , also called taqueté and summer and winter polychrome...." from A Pocket D
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