It’s a while since I posted and I’ve been working hard to get ready for project 3 presentation at the end of the month. My workings have been around trying to design fabrics for upholstery using linen mix blends. I’m designing for a geologist’s study and taking inspiration from rock formations. I have spent the week assembling my swatches for presentation this week-end including all the technical details.
© sue orton
There is much excitement in our new garden pond. Dug and built in the winter, Hackney frogspawn in during March, and now newts and this local frog, with resident tadpole looking on nervously 🙂 [frogs eat tadpoles!] On a positive note, it will be excellent to mix the frog genes!
We are taking delivery of native pond plants this week; hoping to entice dragon flies and other life.
© sue orton
I’ve had mixed results with the window blinds. I’m not becoming a fan of linen and linen blends although the double weave concept seems one I want to explore further. Learning the importance of thread counts and float length have been interesting. The sleying and cram and space experiments too have revealed how sticky linen can be. Patience tested on this warp. I think I much prefer my mercerised cotton test piece!
© sue orton
French window blind research continuing with a first sample of scaled up weave. It’s shown her in mercerised cotton with a linen/wool mix weft. I’m liking the movement of the weave blocks held with crammed stripes to hold them in place. Threading inconsistencies are easier to see with the stripes.
© Sue Orton
With beautiful linen and linen mixed supplies on the way from Gary at GTM, I am testing the pattern and threading with 3 x 2/16 mercerised cotton. I should get it finished this morning ready to weave and see if the scaling up works.
© sue orton
Today I’ve been scaling up double-weave cloth with blocks. My brief is to provide window treatments for a french window. Imagine a 3m drop 2m wide (approx), I’m looking to weave a small piece of the pattern full size. Interesting. I will be warping and putting it on the loom tomorrow. I’m exploring the use of cramming and spacing to assist here too.
sue orton | gathering threads 