Soft Heathered Blanket

After weaving a pair of double weave blankets a year ago for two weddings, I received a request for one more in custom colors. The customer wanted a mix of blues, purples and one green to be muted by greys, creating a soft heathered look. The warp is 100% mercerized cotton and the weft is charcoal cotton/wool fleece. The blanket measures 48 x 72". I loved the finished look to the cloth- muted, but still colorful (grey is one of my favorite colors!) I sent it off a few weeks ago, just as the seasons have turned. Although I am still having trouble with my sticking shaft, this blanket went much more smoothly than the first two, and I am thinking of making myself a blanket in 100% wool- perhaps in orange and cream. We'll see!

new studio

Back at the loom. It's been a long couple of months of packing up, commuting to NYC and then getting a new job in Philadelphia. I'm back in the fashion industry for now in the only company I would return to the industry for. On the more important side of things, the new studio is coming together, and it has natural light! Photography will be such a relief instead of a hassle. It just needs a bit more storage and organization.



In the meantime, I have work to do. I'm weaving another set of folded doubleweave blankets- the first was requested with custom colors- the second will be a gift. There are a whole bunch more projects on the to-do list. It's going to be an amazing fall.

cerulean & grey double weave blanket

As the weekend of October 23rd wrapped up the last of the two big weddings I attended this month, I can finally show what I have been working on lately. This is one of two blankets I made as gifts for each of the couples. They were woven folded in half on my Baby Wolf, much as you see above. I used the full 24" of my loom to make these 48x72" blankets. The warp is cerulean and charcoal mercerized cotton with an 80% cotton 20% wool fleece from Brown Sheep as weft in charcoal and black.

It had been a long time since I had woven any variety of double cloth, so I did a bit of research about 8-shaft double weave at the library and online. It was incredible how many resources I found for cloth with blocks of separate top and bottom warps interacting. I also found many resources on folded double cloth that used only 4-shafts with a plainweave structure, although often using color and weave theory to create pattern. I was very interested in creating my own pattern on a folded double cloth that would best exercise my 8 shafts. The best resource I found for understanding folded double cloth pattern structure was Rosemarie Dion's writing on Double Width Double Weave. Using her methods for translating 4 shaft drafts into combined top and bottom reversed drafts, I used a pointed twill draft.

The cotton/wool fleece was lovely to work with, and gave the blankets such a heavy, plush hand, but its thickness kept me from being able to wind bobbins with a lot of yarn, so I had many ends that needed sewing in afterward. It was slow going, as the Baby Wolf doesn't have the largest shed, but completely worth it to finally take the blankets off and see them as pure yardage! I would love to make blankets again, but I think I will wait until I have a wider loom, as the sheer hours it took to weave these made them luxury items!

Loom Work

I have a piece that has been brewing for over a year now, and I'm finally ready to get started on it. It requires a tapestry loom, so I bought some 1x2s and got started building. It is a very simple, rudimentary design, but it will be functional, and is as much as I could accomplish as the wood shop in my studio isn't accessible at the moment. I drilled the boards together so it will be able to be dismantled when moving. Another project I am working on will be stained, so I used the tapestry loom to do a test of the stain color. The color will work for the other project, so I have a bit of wood protection and test staining done in one go! I warped the loom in two sections so that I can do some tests, but I still need to get the shed stick and heddle bars set up and then twine the warp ends to set the spacing. This has been on my list of things to do for some time now and it feels amazing to have this physical loom after all of this planning!


Another item on my to-do list was unsticking the 8th shaft on my Baby Wolf. When the loom arrived, the 8th shaft would raise and then stick halfway when the treadle was released. My guess was that either the shaft or the metal track was a bit warped. As I can do nothing for the metal track, I sanded down the top left side of the shaft and was able to fix the stickiness! What a relief, as it made for very messy sheds and my needing to manually push the shaft back down into place. Now onto the rest of my never ending to-do list!

sanding on the top left edge

You can see extra space around each of the shafts, except the 8th shaft (furthest to the left).

shawl test warp

First weaving done! It's good to be back! Time flew while weaving- only took about an hour to weave off 1.5 yds... Note to self: buy a threading hook. I have a brass reed hook that came with the loom, but failed to remember that I would also need a heddle threading hook. Luckily there were only 30 ends that I hand threaded like needles. However, I would love one before I have to thread the 208 ends for the actual shawl.

I used WeaveDesign on my work PC to create five treadlings based on a straight draw and 1-8-1 draw. (looking into mac weaving software... quite a difficult decision, as I only have experience with Fiberworks PCW, which I love, but is only available in PC format)


I started with some leftover golden wool from Halcyon, woven tightly. It was lovely. I wish I could have made a blanket this way. I'll have to file that idea away for the future. After weaving, I washed it with woolite and let it dry. There was not much shrinkage, maybe 2%. I've decided on a threading and treadling pattern, and now just need to construct a rattle! The yarn's age (and probably dye saturation) have made parts of it VERY fragile- I had three yarns break during weaving- not from tension.. the construction of the yarn must be so compromised that the fibers just pulled apart. Common sense tells me to take a hint and use other yarn, but I insist on being stubborn and trying to make it through with a back to front warping and careful attention.

maiden warp on the baby wolf

After a two and a half year hiatus on weaving, a soul-sucking job in the fashion industry, a long adjustment to city life and several apartments later, I find myself with a studio and an 8 shaft Schacht baby wolf. When one of my aunts found out that a loom was in the works, she came to our July family reunion armed with a two-pound cone of blue/green/turq yarn and a request for a shawl. After a lot of life organization, the test warp is on the loom!

I am happy to start with this shawl, as I need to start out simply and slowly so as not to throw myself into an insanely complicated project (which is quite typical) that will only end in frustration and multiple starts. The yarn is unmarked, but it seems to be a mohair blend: it is a three-color space dyed yarn. It has a great hand and weight, but I am not sold on the space dye. I am afraid of ending up with one of those striated patterns dictated by the color sequence, so I will try to use structure to evenly break up any chunks of color pattern that will result from the yarn. Thus, the test warp for choosing a construction: I will probably go with a straight draw twill or herringbone twill, but will keep experimenting to get to know the yarn in case I end up with leftovers.