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You are here: Home / Archives for bobbin lace

September 15, 2009 by Tien Chiu

Back to work

I spent Monday contending with a venomous mix of poison ivy and jet lag – itchy and exhausted is no way to work! – but I managed to get the sample warp wound and beamed on, ready for threading.  I’m hoping to be weaving on it by end of day on Thursday – a bit ambitious considering it’s 23″ x 72 ends per inch = 1500+ ends to thread and sley, but quite do-able, I think.  (Assuming this poison ivy EVER stops itching!)

Meanwhile, a friend is coming over this afternoon to learn how to make fudge.  It’s not actually that difficult, but I have a few tricks that make it easier.  Primarily, I replace half or all of the milk with cream, resulting in a much denser, richer fudge that is less prone to early crystallization.  It is softer than conventional fudge, though, so not as good commercially, so you won’t see it in commercial fudges.

We’re going to make plain chocolate fudge, which is of course something of a misnomer when working with something as good as Valrhona chocolate.  I’ve taken my standard recipe, scaled down to make somewhat less fudge (about 3-4 lbs as opposed to 6+ lbs), and we’ll play around with some variations.  I want to see what happens  if you replace cream with milk, and what happens if you “spike” the fudge with even more cocoa than I usually do.  I’m guessing that adding cocoa tightens up and hardens the fudge (partly because the acids in cocoa powder tighten up the milk proteins) and that replacing cream with milk will also make the fudge harder.  I’m hoping  to get at least two batches in this afternoon.

Here is a photo of the bobbin lace samples:

bobbin lace samples

They go from top to bottom, left to right.  You can see pretty clearly (despite the blurry photo) that the quality of the work increases drastically from the first sample to the final one – by the end I was starting to get the hang of manipulating the bobbins, and it certainly shows!

It’s hard for me to believe that these three little strips of lace are all I have to show for the approximately 15 hours I spent on them during vacation, but then of course I spent most of the first 10 hours making mistakes and laboriously correcting them, so I spent nearly as much time unweaving as I did weaving.  Hopefully the later pieces will go faster.

I’m debating what to do next after I finish threading up the sample.  I would really like to do one more sample for my article for WeaveZine, and since I recently acquired a small table loom, I could try setting that up and weaving it in parallel with the sample for the dress fabric.  On the other hand, it might actually be faster just to wait until the dress fabric sample is complete and then warp up the floor loom again.  I’m not accustomed to doing two weaving projects at a time, so the prospect of two at once kind of boggles my mind.  I think I’ll wait and see.

And, finally, here are photos of the parasitized caterpillar, and the emergent roundworm.  I am still ASTONISHED that 8 roundworms (or more!) fit inside this poor little caterpillar.

parasitized caterpillar

roundworms emerging from caterpillar

Filed Under: All blog posts, chocolate, food, textiles, weaving Tagged With: bobbin lace, wedding dress

September 3, 2009 by Tien Chiu

…and bobbin lace, too

Yesterday, I went to visit Donna, a fellow Black Sheep guild member who is into bobbin lace.  She’s been doing it for 13 years, and has explored many different styles of lace, producing some absolutely exquisite work along the way.  After I got done goggling at her finished pieces, I explained that I was interested in producing some bobbin lace to go into the wedding ensemble (thinking I could produce the piece while traveling, since weaving is not terribly portable).  We talked about it, and decided that a tape lace to tie up the bride’s bouquet with might be good – simple and fairly small.  We even picked out a pattern that looked interesting, but actually creating it was more than I  could figure out on my own.

So, bless her soul, Donna is going to figure out how to do the pattern, and will then show me how to do it.  She’ll do that while I’m away in North Carolina, and meanwhile, I’m taking several introductory books and lacemaking equipment/threads with me.  (Donna was nice enough to loan me lots of bobbins, pins, etc. as well.)  I spent yesterday preparing the pricking cards and winding threads off.  I bought some linen thread (because I want to make the finished lace out of linen), but I couldn’t afford many different sizes, so I’m “filling in the gaps” with silk thread, since I have quite a bit of fine silk thread sitting around.  I’m bringing 140/2 silk, 120/2 silk, 60/2 silk, 30/2 silk, and 12/2 silk.  (Not that I’m a silk junkie or anything.  🙂 )   The last two will probably be used as gimps.

Amusingly, Mike walked in while I was doing this and said, “Don’t tell me – you’re working out how to keep yourself busy every second while we’re on vacation.”  LOL.  He knows me too well.

Anyway, between the sock blanks and the bobbin lace, I should have enough to keep me busy even if we just sit there for ten days.  I’m rather hoping I don’t get around to much of either.  🙂

Dianne asked about sock blanks.  There is a great tutorial on them here: http://www.knitpicks.com/KPImages/PDF/sockblankdyeing.pdf, but the essential idea is that you knit up a piece of fabric, dye it, unravel it again, and use the dyed yarn.  Dyeing in different patterns gives different effects.  To see all the stuff I’ve done with knitted blanks and weaving, see https://tienchiu.com/tag/knitted-blanks/.  To buy knitted blanks for socks, weaving, etc. see Nancy Roberts’ website, http://www.machineknittingtodyefor.com .

Meanwhile, having packed my vast supply of things-to-do, I’m now free to start winding the warp for the sample again.  So I will work on that today.

Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, weaving Tagged With: bobbin lace

August 6, 2009 by Tien Chiu

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

A recap of the last five days:

two 5-yard warps for tea towels:

First set of tea towels (Laura warped this one for me)
First set of tea towels (Laura warped this one for me)
2nd set of tea towels (I warped this set!)
2nd set of tea towels (I warped this set!)

A 5-yard warp’s worth of collapse weave samples (now neatly indexed and ready to go into binders):

Collapse weave samples
Collapse weave samples

A shawl from the collapse weave sample I liked best:

Collapse weave shawl, full view
Collapse weave shawl, full view

And learned to make bobbin lace, producing three bookmarks (my first one not shown because I left it behind in Canada; Laura’s mailing it back to me)

Bobbin lace bookmark - my second project
Bobbin lace bookmark #2
3rd bobbin lace bookmark, this one with spider stitch
3rd bobbin lace bookmark, this one with spider stitch

Not bad for 5 days!

And now I’m home, re-energized, refreshed, and ready to go!

(By the way, if you are interested in studying with Laura in her studio, it’s only $100/day with hotel, or $125/day if you stay at Laura’s.  If I were you I’d jump on it!  Her contact info is on her website at http://www.laurafry.com .)

Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, weaving Tagged With: bobbin lace, collapse weave, laura fry

August 5, 2009 by Tien Chiu

Collapse weave shawl, bobbin lace #3

The collapse weave shawl came out BEAUTIFULLY!  Here are two photos:

Collapse weave shawl, full view
Collapse weave shawl, full view
Collapse weave shawl, closeup
Collapse weave shawl, closeup

Isn’t it stunning?  I LOVE the ruffled “ribbons”.

Hard to believe that that’s “just” plainweave, but it is!

And, I finished my third bobbin lace bookmark.  Here is a Very Bad Photo, but you can get the general idea…

3rd bobbin lace bookmark, this one with spider stitch
3rd bobbin lace bookmark, this one with spider stitch

I fly home today, so I’m not starting any new projects.  Instead I’ll be roving through Laura’s voluminous swatch collection and library, looking for inspiration, information, and good reference texts to add to my library later (after I have a job again).

This has been fun!!  I can’t imagine a vacation I’d rather have than this one.  🙂

Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, weaving Tagged With: bobbin lace, collapse weave, laura fry

August 4, 2009 by Tien Chiu

Magic in the water

“But,” I hear you say, “Laura is also an expert on wet finishing.  What about that?”

Well, yesterday I asked her to show me some “interesting” fabrics from a wet-finishing point of view.  She suggested trying collapse weave, as she had several yarns in her (extensive) stash that would do well for collapse weave.  So off we went.

I threaded up a warp (plainweave) with stripes of blue/white Lycra yarn and stripes of white Lycra yarn, alternating with 12/2 cotton.  I then tried all sorts of wefts with it – 2/28 (feltable) wool, silk, high-twist wool singles, 12/2 and 20/2 cotton – each with an open and a dense beat.

I got a lot of very interesting results – which I will post later, when I have more time – but for now, I’ll just show you one of the more dramatic ones:

Differential shrinkage, Lycra warp alternating with 12/2 cotton warp, high-twist wool singles.
Differential shrinkage, Lycra warp alternating with 12/2 cotton warp, high-twist wool singles.

This is (as the caption says) a very fine, high-twist wool singles done with a very open beat.  The right side is the sample before wet-finishing.  The left side (top sample) is the sample after wet-finishing.

Isn’t that cool???

Now, one of the interesting parts (to me at least) was contrasting it with the exact same warp and weft, but with a dense beat with lots of ppi:

Same warp/weft combination, firm beat.
Same warp/weft combination, firm beat.

See how there’s a little texture, but not a dramatic collapse?

This really illustrated how collapse weaves need “room” in which to express the collapse.

I’d love to see what this looks like with the high-twist singles alternating with cotton stripes (densely and open-ly beaten), with an open sett – thus giving the high twist singles room to work their magic.  I’m guessing it would be a gridded cloth, and be quite interesting.  If I have time left at the end of this shawl warp I’m making, I’ll do a sample of that.

Because yes, I’m making an entire shawl out of this pattern/warp; I think it’ll be very pretty, not to mention warm.  It’ll also make something nice to show off at my next guild meeting.

And, for those who have patiently read through to now, here is a little treat: my second bobbin lace project!

Bobbin lace bookmark - my second project
Bobbin lace bookmark - my second project

I’m very pleased with it – there are no errors (that I can see) and the contrast in colors looks very nice.  I’m getting ready to start a third bookmark, but as most of my time is going to be spent concentrating on getting the shawl done (I only have today to finish it – I fly out tomorrow!), I’m not at all sure I’ll finish it.

Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, weaving Tagged With: bobbin lace, collapse weave, differential shrinkage

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