“There’s a lot of lovely wool here. We should do a guild project.” A guild member at one of MWFA’s “nearly annual” year-end yarn sales was referring to a box of mostly 2-ply, vegetable-dyed yarns that had been donated.
In the Spring of 2004, a planning session for this project became the program for an MWFA meeting.
In an effort to avoid having the project get bogged down with unknowns, then-president Susan Styrchak weighed and counted the skeins and wove two samples, one with a sett of 8 epi and the other with a sett of 12 epi. The samples were woven in tabby and twill and washed to determine shrinkage. Susan noted that such activities seem to be included in “other duties” in our president’s job profile.
It was decided to weave a blanket in three panels to allow for a different colour or design in each panel, if desired. A 30-inch width would be an easy width to weave, and 90″ would finish to a single-bed size, allowing for draw-in and fulling. In addition, one long warp would waste less yarn than three individual warps and require the use of only one loom. Finally, if Susan’s loom at the lake were to be set up for this project, guild members could have a weavers’ retreat at her cottage (a setting more amenable when the water is turned on, but always available) to complete the project.
The samples had many golds, yellow greens and browns. Someone suggested adding purple. There were ten skeins of grey that could be dyed purple for the weft. A new colour wrapping with less gold was more appealing. Yellow-green is opposite red-violet on the colour wheel, so dyeing the grey weft magenta looked promising. The suggested purple became “red-violet”. The weft was dyed in two batches, one pale magenta, still suggestive of the original grey yarn, and the other a brilliant colour with no trace of grey. The warp was made and rolled on.
The weavers met at the cottage on a weekend in late September to thread, sley and plan the weft sequence for the three panels. Then the weaving began! MWFA members enjoyed two glorious Fall days at the lake getting the project underway. The weaving was completed over several sessions, and after it was cut off the loom, the blanket was assembled, washed, and fulled, bringing the project to a successful completion in the Fall of 2005.
The beautiful blanket will be used by Manitoba Weavers and Fibre Artists in a fundraising activity, with proceeds to be donated to charity.
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“Postscript” The leftover yarn from the blanket |
