Hi kids,
This month we’re shining the weaver’s spotlight on Rebecca Logan from Stony Plain, Alberta. Rebecca is a fabulous weaver, an animal lover extraordinaire and I love her for her gardening skills. I love how she takes the seeds I sow and grows an entirely different garden from each packet of weaving seeds 🙂
Yes, we sow weaving seeds at JST and the end result is why I love to share ideas….it is such a joy to watch gardens spring up all over the place. Important take away…..be inspired by things you see around you and then take those ideas and gently guide them to your happy place.
I hope you enjoy Rebecca’s take on Tea Towel Time with Jane….
Sending tons of love
Jane
When I saw Jane’s Tea Towel Time towels, I was immediately hooked. They were all so beautiful and colourful, and yet each was uniquely fascinating. I had to try them!
Although Jane’s colour choice was gorgeous, I was feeling spicy at the time, and substituted hot colours for her cools, sticking with similar values. Her black became my chocolate, the light bright green was substituted with cayenne, and the purple and peacock became merlot and magenta.
I made a mistake while winding the warp chains, missing a few repeats of the four-end sequence, so then had to repeat the error with a later warp chain for symmetry.
A run of twelve towels, each different, was like freedom at the loom. With each towel I could try something completely different, or play upon something I liked about an earlier towel. For example, I wove three towels with the same border sequence, one in straight draw twill, one in basketweave, and one in turned twill, just to be able to enjoy the subtle differences.
Another favourite was what I called the wiggles. Jane wove them as point twill treadling, but I wanted them to be more wiggle than zigzag, so played about in my weaving software to find the correct rosepath treadling that gave me those desired wiggles. That towel was so much fun I wove it twice, with different weft colours.
That towel was so much fun I wove it twice, with different weft colours.
Everyone who sees the finished towels understands how much fun they must have been to weave, although that may be my gushing enthusiasm in talking about them. I know that such long warps (12 yards, as long as I could make) no longer intimidate me. Now I see them as an opportunity for play! And maybe that was Jane’s intent – to encourage the freedom of playing at the loom.
I was lucky enough to have five different in-person classes with Jane before she went digital, and consider those weeks some to the most important in my development as a weaver. Now that the guild is available, I’m diving even deeper into the most joyful details. Weaving is a gift that will keep me interested for a lifetime, and hand woven dish towels have become my art form.
Learn more about the JST Online Guild Weaving Lessons!
