Triloom weaving with Loops & Threads "Cozy Wool" yarn

I've been searching for just the perfect yarn to weave shawls with on my triangle loom, and I think I finally found it. My pegs are spaced just a little further apart than on most triangle looms, and I've been dealing with the fact that most yarns are a little too thin to give a good, solid fabric when they are that far apart. But this week I tried 'Cozy Wool', by Loops & Threads. (I bought it at Michaels.) It is a 50% wool, 50% acrylic blend, and is not only very toasty warm from the wool, the acrylic makes it really soft against bare skin. My only real complaint is that it comes in a limited range of colors so far.

This is what the shawl looked like on the loom. I used purple, dark blue, and light blue to give a nice plaid effect.

While it was on the loom, I was afraid that this yarn was going to be too skinny for what I had in mind, too. You can see the gaps between threads. (I did go back and wiggle the threads around to even up the weave.)

When I took the shawl off the loom though, the yarn immediately blossomed some as I released the tension.

And then I wet finished the shawl in the washing machine, with hot water in the delicate cycle. After the shawl dried, the fabric looked like this:

The fabric has transformed into a very stable weave that is thick and luxurious, and soft to the touch. Yes!! I finally found my yarn. I'll be making more shawls from this brand for sure.

The finished shawl looks like this:

Fulling hand woven fabric--What a Difference!

This is actually an older project, but I was talking about it briefly on Ravelry today. (I'm there as 'TangibleDaydreams'.) This was one of the first projects I wove with my hand spun yarn. The yarn is singles, from a merino wool and tencel blend roving that I picked up at the Griffin Dyeworks fiber retreat some years back. The colors were inspired by a summer family trip to the beach and ocean in Mexico. The pattern is an undulating twill design that I drafted in a workshop given by Sharon Alderman.

The interesting thing about this project to me is that I decided to see just what seriously fulling the woven fabric would do to it. So after I got it off the loom, wove in the tails, and twisted the fringe, I tossed it in the washing machine on hot and let the machine do its worst.

This is how it turned out. The fabric shrunk by at least half, and thickened up considerably. Where it had a lovely drape right off the loom (I was thinking shawl with it), it stiffened up after fulling. The pattern was partially obscured, but still showed through and gave a little bit of texture. The colors melded together.

Well, it wasn't going to be a shawl any more. But, it wasn't ruined. Instead, it turned into a seriously kick ass table runner, which I love love love. It is just the size of my dresser, so I have had it displayed there for several years now. The fabric wears like iron, and I suspect it will still be in good shape several generations from now.

(The spinning wheel in the picture is a great wheel from the 1800's that I have pressed back into service. The basket on the right comes from Prague, and has carded fleece in it that I'm gradually spinning for another project. The candle holders and the eagle sculpture were done by my father. And two of the stacked boxes on the left are hand made as well--one by a friend, and one by my grandfather.)

Historic hand spun, hand woven tunic based on the Bocksten Bog Man's outfit

I'm part of the Society for Creative Anachronism, a group that studies the Middle Ages and Renaissance by doing it. I displayed this costume at an event we had today. It is finally done! It has been a long time in the making.

First, I spun the yarn for the over tunic:
http://tangibledaydreams.blogspot.com/2010/12/wet-finishing-singles-hand-spun-yarn.html

I dyed the dark blue weft yarn with indigo at the Griffin Dyeworks Retreat:
http://lissamc.livejournal.com/275345.html

I wove the fabric:
http://tangibledaydreams.blogspot.com/2011/01/estrella-weaving-project-warp-is.html
http://tangibledaydreams.blogspot.com/2011/01/progress-on-warping-up-estrella-weaving.html
http://tangibledaydreams.blogspot.com/2011/01/estrella-project-actually-weaving-now.html

And fulled the fabric:
http://tangibledaydreams.blogspot.com/2011/02/fulling-and-finishing-estrella-weaving.html

I sewed the under and over tunics based on the Bocksten Bog Man tunic. (The under tunic is linen.)
 http://www.kostym.cz/Anglicky/1_Originaly/01_Goticke/I_01_31.htm
I used these directions among others for inspiration:
http://www.virtue.to/articles/tunic_worksheet.html

The trim at the neckline is a finger loop braid:
http://tangibledaydreams.blogspot.com/2011/02/tutorial-basic-finger-loop-braiding.html

And the belt is finger woven:
http://tangibledaydreams.blogspot.com/2011/06/tutorial-finger-weaving-beginners.html

It is done!! And it is surprisingly comfortable to wear. The full skirt swirls out beautifuly when I spin around. And it will be wonderfully warm when I go to outdoor winter events with the group.

This one, I'm proud of.

Fulling and finishing the Estrella weaving project

I did the finishing work on the Estrella weaving project today. I am really tickled with how it turned out!!

First, I had to do a little bit of work with scissors and needle. I trimmed all the tail ends where I had started and stopped weft threads. Then I dealt with the couple of spots where I had repaired broken warp threads. I didn't actually break any threads in the weaving process, but I had snapped two in the warping process. At the time I just knotted them back together, and then I did a splice when I got to that spot in the weaving.


But that left me with a start and a stop, with a little gap in between them.

So I needle wove one of the threads back up the web, so the warp threads overlapped by about an inch.


After all the threads had been appropriately taken care of, it was time to wet finish the fabric. Before wet finishing, the fabric measured an inch sort of 10 yards long x 25" wide, which was larger than I needed. And it was kind of scratchy.

The solution? Fulling. Fulling the fabric exposes the wool to water, heat, and agitation in order to mesh the fibers together into their finished position, and to shrink and soften up the fabric. Before the invention of the fulling mill, one way Medieval folk did this was to put the fabric in a large vat of water. Then they added fuller's earth and stale urine to the mix, to scour away any remaining lanolin, dirt, and grease.

I skipped the fuller's earth and stale urine part. The roving I used already came with the lanolin scoured away. Besides...ewww. Because the next part? The fuller got into that vat, and stomped on the fabric.
For long amounts of time, if my experiments are anything like the historical reality. After a half hour of tromping around to some inspiring Irish jigs, my tub looked like this:

The water was blue with the extra dye that was rinsing out of the fabric. The fabric itself? Well, the fulling was starting to take place. The fabric had shrunk a half inch or so, and the fibers were fluffing and blending.
But I was sweating, my legs were beginning to ache, and my knee was giving out. This was harder work than it looked like! Medieval fullers must have had legs of steel, impressive stamina, and the patience saints.

I wanted to shrink up my fabric from 25" wide to 21" wide, to give the width I needed for my eventual sewing project. I decided that I understood why the Medieval folk invented the water wheel driven fulling mill as the first part of the fabric making process to be mechanized. And lo and behold, I had access to my own version of a fulling mill.

Yup. Another 15 or 20 minutes in the wash, and the fabric had shrunk down to the 21" width I needed, and was 8 yards 2' long. The colors had blended, the fibers had meshed, the fabric had plumped up and the surface had softened.
Done! (insert happy dance here) I tried laying the fabric out flat to dry in one long strip...

...but today was very very windy. It wouldn't stay put. So I brought it inside, and the finished fabric is currently on a drying rack over my tub. Do you see that cool stripe pattern that showed up? Not planned. It is a result of an inconsistency in how thick I did the various skeins of hand spun yarn. I like it, but it tells me that I need to work on my spinning some more.

Now, all I need to do is write up the documentation for the competition, and this part of the project is done!