$17.00 CAD flat rate shipping on orders to Canada & USA. Spend over $250.00 CAD and you'll receive free shipping! Receive 10% off & free shipping when you spend over $500.00 CAD (Some Exceptions Apply)
Wishing you all a peaceful, safe and joyous Holiday Season
As I reflect on this past year I am struck by how wonderful it is to be surrounded by folks that weave goodness and kindness into their lives and those around them. It has been another year of challenges for people all over the world, yet so many of you have helped us help others.
In particular, I want to thank all of you who supported us as we did our bit to assist the Artist Alliance of Jawaja in India. We are grateful to everyone who purchased a pattern which reinforced our commitment to the Maiwa Foundation as they provide support to these amazing, creative artisans during COVID. Our help is so important. JST has recently been able to purchase another large batch of heddles for the weavers of Sabahar in Ethiopia. Kathy is committed to getting more weavers working from home during these troubling times and texsolv heddles are so beneficial to the weavers and make their production more proficient. All of these talented artisans are currently facing challenges that go far beyond “just” COVID. I only have to think of these groups for a second to be reminded of how truly blessed I am.
So thank you, thank you again and again for all the support you give to JST, every customer, every student, every friend 🙂 It is so appreciated.
Sending you all hope, love and best wishes for a Happy New Year. Love Jane
We will be closed for the holidays from December 25th to January 2nd. Last orders for shipping before the holidays is December 24th. Orders placed during our closed days will be processed on January 4th, 2022.
We have Gift Certificates JST Shop & School of Weaving!
You choose the amount that you wish to give and we’ll email the recipient their JST Gift Certificate. They will then be able to put it towards something on their Wish List.
Please note that this gift certificate cannot be used for the Jane Stafford School of Weaving.
OR
Give the gift of learning with an all-access subscription to Jane Stafford School of Weaving.
Choose to give 1-12 months. We’ll email the recipient instructions on how to sign in to their new subscription. They can activate it at any time!
One of our hand-dyed silks made its way into the Handwoven Magazine’s Nov/Dec 2021 issue! Natalie Drummond’s Deflected Double Weave Cool Breeze project uses our 20/2 Tussah silk along with space-dyed Tencel. We were so pleased to see that she had chosen to work with our JST hand-dyed Felicitation! The results are just beautiful!
To view more of Natalie’s work, follow her on Instagram
We will be closed for the holidays from December 25th to January 2nd. The last order for shipping before the holidays is December 24th. Orders placed during our closed days will be processed on January 4th, 2022.
The Enxtended Units, Blocks & Profiles Workshop Coming to You Online in 2022!
Season 6 is ready to roll out the door. How exciting … another layer of ideas and understanding added to our garden of weaving knowledge. Our weaving soil is getting better and better and I can hardly wait to see what you grow this year.
Units, Blocks and Profiles are the 3 words that we will dance around in 2022. We’ve heard those words before but now we’ll take a deeper look at them. We’ll study a few new structures (well, actually very old structures) and see how we can use everything we’ve learned about design in fresh new ways. This little video should get you all jazzed up about what’s coming your way at the School of Weaving 🙂
xo Jane
School of Weaving Units, Blocks & Profiles Trailer
Sneak peak at what we’ll be weaving!
Monk’s Belt like you’ve never seen before
A new modern approach to the classic Overshot
Continuing on with Turned Twill, working with so many blocks
Overshot Name Drafting – the designs possibilities are endless
An all-access subscription to Jane Stafford School of Weaving. You get 50 weaving lessons from the previous 5 years of instructions with your subscription plus all pattern drafts needed! Sign up now and you’ll also receive a new episode every 5 weeks starting January 20th, 2022 You can subscribe between 1 to 12 months!
I was blown away when I saw what Mary had done with the Canvas Weave sample this year. The story behind it touched my heart. We asked Mary if she would be willing to write a blog post about her weaving journey and the tunic she wove after her husband asked her the simple question “What are you going to make with it?”. Read her interesting and touching story below. Jane
My first experience of weaving took place when I was given a small Spears weaving loom for my 10th birthday. I loved that little loom and seem to recall weaving a variety of striped, wavy edged samples on it in the bright, primary coloured acrylic yarns that came with the loom. Fast forward many decades (more than I care to remember) and I’m once again weaving lots of samples but now they are rather more sophisticated, less irregular, and the yarns are usually made from natural fibres.
Spear weaving Loom
I started spinning about 18 years ago and weaving seemed a natural progression. At the time there were very few weavers in the guild to which I then belonged so I set about teaching myself to weave using every resource I could find; books, magazines, videos and YouTube. I actually spent far more time reading weaving books and studying pattern drafts than reading novels. Then a few years ago a fellow weaver, Ian, told me about the JST online guild and I joined that same day. It was the start of Season 2 Plain Weave and now 4 years on I am still following Jane’s classes and learning so much from her.
I was really pleased to discover that Season 5 was devoted to lace weave as it was a structure I had not previously explored. Here in the UK, it’s not always easy to source similar yarns to the ones Jane uses and I often find it quite a challenge to find suitable substitutes. For lesson 2 on Canvas Weave though, I used yarns that I already had in my stash hoping they would give satisfactory results. The warp was a cotton and linen mix 28 wpi that I purchased on eBay some years ago and the other yarn I incorporated was pale blue Bockens linen yarn 30 wpi that I was given just before lockdown.
I warped up my Louet David loom with the suggested 6 yard warp at 16 epi and set about weaving the sampler as per Jane’s instructions, finding the labels attached to the treadles especially helpful when trying to ‘own the structure’ as Jane puts it.
I was delighted with the way the yarns were weaving up and loved the patterns that were emerging. The more I wove the more I felt that the fabric deserved to be more than just a sampler. The glimmer of an idea began to develop as I continued to weave the 20 samples, trying to square them up consistently. There was quite a lot of warp remaining which I used to create a length of ecru plain weave throwing in random double picks throughout.
When I showed the finished fabric to my husband his immediate reaction was to ask what was I going to make with it. When told it was just a sampler his response confirmed my original thoughts entirely, it was crying out to become something more. Sadly this was the last piece of my weaving that my husband saw as he passed away shortly afterwards.
Some months later though on a miserable rainy day I decided it was the right time to put my idea into action rather than mope around the house. I had planned to make a tunic top from the sampler. First I took photos of all of the samples so I could refer back to them if need be.
Images of some of the samples
The pattern I used was a Butterick pattern 3383. It was one that was recommended in a Handwoven magazine some years ago as being ideal for using with handwoven fabric. It consists of just three very simple pieces with no darts or facings.
Normally when I am sewing with handwoven yardage I make a mock up first but there was no need on this occasion as I had made up this pattern twice before with some handwoven plain weave (Season 2) so I already knew what tweaks I needed to make to the sizing and neck line.
I carefully selected and cut two lengths of fabric from near the beginning of the sampler to form the centre panels of the front and back. I then cut the plain ecru strip in half lengthways. The selvedges of these strips were machined to either side of the centre panels so there was no need to over-lock the edges of the seams. The front and back pieces were cut out and immediately over-locked all round the edges before seaming them together. With the body made, I then set about the sleeves.
There was not sufficient width to cut out the sleeves along the length of the grain so they were cut out across its width, two pieces of fabric for each sleeve. I carefully positioned the pattern so that the dominant lines between the samples were similarly positioned on each of the sleeve caps as this is what the eye would go to. Likewise with the bottom half of each sleeve. The edges of all four pieces were over-locked to secure them before joining them together, the assembled sleeves were duly inserted and the armhole seams over-locked. The final step was to machine stitch all of the simple hems.
I was delighted when, at the end of the day, I put the garment on a coat hanger and stood back to look at the final result. Everything had fitted together perfectly and I couldn’t really find much fault with it which, for me, is almost unheard of. I usually see something I’m not entirely happy with! I think I must have had a helping hand that day and I’m sure I heard a voice say “Well done kid”. Hardly a kid but it’s what my husband would have said to me.
Making this tunic has set me thinking about how I might use future samplers. I love sampling different weave structures but a lot of time, money (I often purchase yarn specially to produce the samplers) and love goes into making them and it always seems a shame to assign them to a box or drawer rarely to see the light of day again. It was really satisfying to produce something wearable from the sampler and I can still refer back to the patterns whenever I need to.
Looking for a gift for a Friend?
Give the gift of learning for a weaving friend, an all-access subscription to Jane Stafford School of Weaving. You can purchase a one-month subscription gift or as many months as you would like, anywhere up to 12. They will have time to binge-watch all previous 5 Seasons over the holidays before we head into Season 6.
Units, Blocks & Profiles, starting January 20th, 2022!
We are pleased to offer free shipping on all Louet looms within Continental North America. We also offer the option to pay a $1000.00 CAD deposit on your loom with the balance due when the loom ships out to you. This allows the flexibility to make smaller payments towards your balance at your convenience.
With exciting advances made to both the Louet Spring Loom and the Louet David Loom, there is no better time for your dream of a new loom to come true.
