Fiber Monday - Completed twill gamp

This past Saturday, I had my final twill weaving class. I loved this class! The teacher is fantastic, and the other women in the class were wonderful people to spend three full days with. I am so happy I have found this arts studio. Here is the finished project.

The whole thing. It's probably about two yard long.

Here is a close up. Each square is a different twill pattern. I could now weave a whole piece of fabric in any one of them.

I love that recently there have been multiple people in my life whose focus is on what a person has learned. The instructor of this class certainly falls into that category. And I learned a lot. The gamp is certainly not perfect, but I'm pretty sure I learned so much more from its imperfections. The above photo is an example. These are the two ends of the gamp. The photo on the right is of the beginning, and the photo on the left is of the end. They each show nine squares. Would you believe that both ends are showing the same weaving structure? They look very different, don't they? The only thing that changed between them was how I beat each row of weaving. The one on the right is far too loose, the one on the left is correct. As I wove, I realized that the patterns at the beginning were less than ideal, so I wanted to weave them over again at the end so I could compare. I love having this record of learning. 

Gamps are used as resources to see what patterns are created by which pairs of threading and treadling. This will hang in my studio. I still need to mark it with tags so that I can easily remember which threadings and treadling each row and column used. 

At the end of class, I measured out another warp so that I can do a larger gamp with six squares across on my floor loom here. I'm excited to finally get it going. I hope I have time this week to warp it so I can show it to you all warped next Monday.

The other thing I did this week was finish a skein of the turquoise wool/silk blend that I've been spinning. Here it is.

I love how it turned out. You can see how shimmery the silk is in it. I decided to make it a 2-ply, because I finally came up with a plan for it. I will end up with 100+ yards of this turquoise, then I am going to make another set of skeins using the midnight blue plied with this turquoise, and finally I'll do an all midnight blue set of skeins. It should be a love set of gradient yarn which I want to weave into a scarf. So that's my plan. 

This morning, I took everyone with me, and we went and did some volunteer gardening at the arts center. It is all run by volunteers, and it seemed as though bringing able-bodied teens would be helpful. It was. They were great and did a lot of work. I was then able to show them around. L. is pretty much in love with the pottery studio and K., after seeing the current exhibit, would really love to take a painting class there sometime. L. also found a tree to climb, which pretty much made her day.

If you're local, you should check out the Fine Line Creative Arts Center. They just released their summer class schedule. If you've ever wanted to learn to spin on a spinning wheel, now's your chance. Even better, the fabulous weaving teaching I've been raving about is going to be teaching it. I actually think she is such a good teacher that even if you don't think you want to learn to spin that you would end up loving the class and getting something out of it. At least go take a look at the class schedule. There's a lot there.