Tag: Mecchia Loom

Weaving

22 February 2024

Frances2 Comments

Kia ora, it’s been a while. In my last post I mentioned that I was working on the Creative Fibre correspondence course ‘Certificate in Design 2’. After taking a break over the Christmas and New Year period I finally finished it last month and I’ve made a short video to show some of my process.

The course builds on the skills from an earlier course that I completed a few years ago. In that course you learn about the design process and different tools to use. In the Certificate in Design 2 course you use the design process as you choose a concept/theme for an exhibition, design and complete one work, virtually plan the exhibition and develop the concepts for several other works that would be part of it.

My exhibition and completed work were inspired by the pāua shell, in particular the contrast between its exterior and interior. Below is a photo of the finished work, the colour is not quite right, the joys of taking photos inside with bad lighting. The colour is more like the second photo below.

Dyeing · Weaving

April – Part 1

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Weaving some tea towels on my Mecchia dobby loom, using up odd spools of cottolin. The draft is A Basket of Stripes Towels by Megan M. MacBride in Handwoven May/June 2022.

Sewed up a skirt using fabric I wove way back in 2020. The skirt pattern is one I have made up a couple of times already, but this is the first time using handwoven fabric. It’s the Clair skirt, a zero waste pattern by Liz Haywood, mine isn’t quite zero waste as my fabric was narrower than the recommended fabric and I also managed to measure one piece incorrectly and had to do some piecing. Very happy with how it turned out though.

Continuing to weave the Deflected Double Cloth sample blanket from Exploring Woven Fabrics by Janet Phillips. I’m nearly halfway through and I’ve found that my understanding of this structure has definitely increased after working through the different lift-plans. Really looking forward to finishing this warp so I can plan some projects based on it.

Mā te wā | See you soon,

Frances

Weaving

December 2022

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I had good intentions to post during November but now it’s December and that obviously didn’t happen. Better late than never I suppose, so here’s a quick roundup of what I’ve been up to.

Weaving

I finally hemmed the hand towels that were my first warp on my Mecchia dobby. They are already in daily use, replacing our rather worn out old towels.

I put a warp on my Ashford jack loom to work on the Summer & Winter lesson from Jane Stafford’s School Of Weaving. I enjoyed weaving the tea towels even though I managed to make a few mistakes, mostly due to inattention when weaving the tabby picks.

In the middle of November, I attended a workshop on Echo Weave, led by Agnes Hauptli. The workshop was organised by Creative Fibre Auckland, as part of their Spring Education Event at the Estuary Arts Centre in Orewa. I really enjoyed it even though lots of concentration was required.

Different treadlings on my workshop warp.

Reading

After the workshop I purchased a copy of Weaving with Echo and Iris by Marian Stubenitsky. It’s a pretty expensive book but it has a wealth of information in it and I’m slowly working my way through it.

Dog Tales

Rufus is still growing and still full of energy. Occasionally he does have quiet moments.

Dyeing · Weaving

August – Part I

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Weaving

August is racing away, I don’t know how we are already over halfway through the month. The weather has been wet and cold so it’s been good to be inside weaving. First up are some photos of the double weave scarves that I mentioned in my last post.

Each scarf has a wintery phrase woven in morse code, from left to right they are: “It’s Cold Outside”, “Wrap Up Warm” and “Looks Like Rain”. The right hand side of the photo shows the full front and back of “Looks Like Rain”. They were on display at “Gathering”, a collection of works by members of the Franklin Arts Festival committee. It was held at the Franklin Arts Centre, Community Gallery from 3-22 August.

The tea towels are finally off my Mecchia loom and are now waiting for me to hem them.

Last week I put a cotton warp on my Ashford jack loom and wove some woven shibori pieces using the techniques from Catharine Ellis’ book “Woven Shibori”. I wove four pieces with a cotton warp and two with a polyester weft. On Saturday my local weaving group had an indigo dyeing workshop and I dyed all the cotton weft pieces and one of the polyester weft pieces. I dyed both polyester weft pieces with Rit Dyemore dye as well and steamed them to set the pleats.

Woven shibori pieces on the loom
Handwoven pleated purple coloured pieces hanging on a branch,
Cotton warp and polyester weft, the piece on the left was first dyed with indigo before both were dyed with Rit Dyemore dye.
Cotton warp and weft

Dog Tales

Rufus is now 6 months old and continues to keep us on our toes as everyday he finds something new that he can reach. He loves playing with his balls and running around.

Dyeing · Weaving

June

Frances1 Comment

Weaving

June has flown by and I’m not quite sure where all my time went. At the beginning of the month I took part in a Pop-Up Artists in Residence event at the Franklin Arts Centre which was good fun. I took a couple of looms, a rigid heddle for visitors to play on and my table loom, and some of my work. I worked on one of the doubleweave samplers from Jennifer Moore’s book in between chatting to visitors and another local artist Eric Braks popped in and drew a lovely sketch of me weaving (masked up of course). The colourful works on the gallery walls were painted by some local high school students who were also part of the event.

Handwoven scarves on a rack

I completed the doubleweave sampler and continued working on the Monk’s Belt placemats from this season of Jane Stafford’s School of Weaving. After a few months of setting up my new to me Mecchia dobby loom (it’s around 40 years old I think) I finally put the first warp on and started weaving. One of the wires leading to the dobby unit came loose soon after I started weaving and had to be reclamped but I have now managed a few hours weaving on the loom, with not too many issues (i.e. flying shuttles flying off the loom ). There’s a bit for me to learn, I’ve never used a dobby loom, flying shuttle or sectional beam before but I’m enjoying it so far.

Green, blue and white cotton tea towels being woven on a Mecchia dobby loom.
First steps on the Mecchia dobby loom
Doubleweave sampler

Dog Tales

We visited dog-friendly Rooseville Park in Pukekohe after being told about it by a friend and it lived up to the recommendation. The wet weather met that there were lots of great fungi to see as well as all the native trees. We only explored a small part of the park but we’ll be going back again to see more of it.