Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Festive

nancy's silk bag final



It's always fun to have a new bag for a party. This one is for SOAR, starting this Sunday, and it's done just in time!

You might recognize the colors, this is the same silk that Nancy dyed for my birthday jacket here. There was an extra knitted panel of silk:

Nancy's silk4

which Nancy gave me to weave up a sample scarf for her SOAR vendor booth. I procrastinated, thankfully, because she really doesn't need another silk scarf, Chris Little Carmack has been doing an admirable job of weaving beautiful scarves for her. Nope, what Nancy needed was a silk bag.

So I ran the warp:

nancy's silk warp2 Oct 2006

The beautiful silk was just too pretty:

Nancy's silk warp3 Oct 2006

And then I took it off the warping board:

Nancy's silk warp4 Oct 2006

:-)! Is that fun? It looks so festive, like curly ribbon. No matter, I put the warp on the loom:

Nancy's silk bag2

This is through the heddles, and this:

Nancy's silk bag3

is tied on, ready to weave. You can see one escapee, and the festive curly look returns whenever the yarn is not under tension. Whoop!

For the record, the warp is three yards long, 114 ends, sett at 30 epi, 3.8" in the reed. I warped from to back, and there was no problem contending with the curliness of the yarns; whenever I applied tension, they behaved quite nicely. I wove off the fabric with a 5/2 mercerized cotton weft:

Nancy's silk bag

Then I needed a band. I reserved a portion of the silk for a handle woven on the inkle:

Inkle warp Oct 2006

The bag panel was folded and stitched, and the band was sewn to both sides. The bag is lined with some silk, and interlined with thin batting. The final touch: those festive thrums, made into a tassel:

silk tassel

The total yardage in one silk blank was 420. It would make a nice scarf sett a little wider, as Chris has amply demonstrated. And now Nancy has a new sample for her booth. Stop by and see her next week at SOAR, she and Deb will be selling under the name Color to Dye For.

Me? Gerbiling. Packing. Wrapping up. I should not be taking the time to blog but there you go.

8 Comments:

Blogger Christine said...

Great bag! Truly festive.

5:55 PM  
Blogger dragon knitter said...

beeeeeeeeutiful!

5:09 AM  
Blogger claudia said...

Gerbiling? I should like to see *that*.

;-)

Have a fabulous SOAR.

11:30 AM  
Blogger Birdsong said...

Lucky Nancy! It just amazed me that something that started out looking like curling ribbon could turn into a nice, flat bag... with a curling ribbon tassel. Hope to see you at SOAR - Sharon, Amy and I will be meeting up for shopping and lunch on Friday.

1:15 PM  
Blogger Purple Fuzzy Mittens said...

Fabulous!

9:49 PM  
Blogger Sharon said...

I thought the tassle was beads, but it's even better than that - it's silk Crazy Yarn. Too clever~

8:30 AM  
Blogger Roggey said...

holy crap is that gorgeous work!

2:11 PM  
Blogger laurie in maine said...

Hi~
I'm a long time reader of roggey (AKA crazy chick with a GD hammer!) and have just dusted off my 4 harness tabletop loom...Leclerc's Dorothy. It looks as if it expands to 8 or 12 harnesses and I would like atleast a second reed.

What is the size of the reed used for the bag/width of yarn from this project?

My loom came with a 12 dent and I'm a little confused with the numbering system! To get a wider spaced reed - do the numbers go smaller or bigger?

Poking around your blog with "I wanna do that!" envy ;)

1:19 AM  

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