Month: May 2022

Spring at the Cabin

Whether you are dreaming of a cabin in the forest or one by a lake, these tea towels will feed your imagination. Picture yourself nestled between the trees, and from your window…you see a vast blue sky or lake – or both – it’s your dream 😉 Under the trees and in the grasses, there is a dusting of light purple as the spring flowers enjoy the sun’s warmth, as you are. I can see it all now…..

Log Cabin is such a beautiful, classic Colour & Weave effect on “just” Plain Weave and it’s so easy to weave on a “warp canvas” that is just begging you to explore and create your unique designs.

These Spring at the Cabin towels have been designed by JST Dream Team member, Gail Maier and are simple to weave on a warp that gives you 8 towels to “play” with! Keep on dreaming!!

A few more towel kits

The following towel kits also give you a chance to explore creating your own designs as you go. You can design your own towels using any of the three warps as your blank canvas. Experiment and create your own Colour and Weave, Asymmetry or Huck Lace tea towels while working with “Mr.” Fibonacci to create some full-sized samples.

Sassy Brassy Log Cabin Tea Towel Kit

C$144.00

Organic Cotton Stripes Tea Towel Kit

C$117.00 – C$133.00

Huck Lace Cotton Tea Towel Kit – Pretty Pansy

C$80.00

Ask Jane

A number of you have a new, or new to you, Louet loom living at your house. We thought this might be a good time to share a Q&A from the JST Knowledge Base that Jane wrote about the Louet raddle and how to use it in the world of inches 😉

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The Louet raddle has a space every .5 cm.  So do I convert the width of my project to cm, figure out how many threads per 1/2 centimetre and group the raddle cross that way, and for fractions just skip spaces on the raddle every once and a while?

Your Louet raddle has 5 slots in each inch.  Over 5 inches you gain an extra slot (because the raddle is actually metric) so all I do is leave one empty slot every 5 inches.  I always work in ends per inch.  If you have 20 epi you need to put 4 in every slot.  I often use the #5 reed column on a reed substitution chart to figure out have many ends to put in a slot.  The important thing to remember with all raddles is this: If you have warped with more than 1 end in your hand don’t split those ends up and put one end on one side of a raddle peg and the other on the other side.  You are just asking for trouble if you do that.  In the raddle, they should be treated like best friends that need to stay together.

The other thing to always remember about your reed is that it has nothing to do with the pattern, its only function is to help you spread your warp out to the desired width. If you are out by 1/2” it won’t matter, if you aren’t perfectly centred it won’t be the end of the earth. I think it’s good to be a little ‘off’ :^) I like life to be simple so I use two main methods of warping. For 99.9% of all of my weaving, I warp back to front with only one cross because my loom is small and there isn’t a huge reach to my lease sticks. Warping with two crosses was often used because old-style looms were so darn long…..you couldn’t reach your lease sticks at the back without climbing inside your harnesses. Our looms are short in comparison so using 2 crosses is just more work than is necessary (in my opinion and remember, it is only my opinion and it doesn’t have to be yours).

If I want to reduce stickiness going through the lease sticks then all I do is warp with more ends in my hand.  I use 2 or 3 ends and that reduces the intersections on your lease sticks by either half or thirds.  Usually, that is all you need to do and it also makes warping twice or three times as fast. Bonus, bonus! Less work, simpler. If I am dealing with a truly sticky warp, like brushed mohair…I warp a very particular way which is a combination of front to back and tying on.  You can see detailed instructions for that on my Knowledge Base under “Weaving with Mohair”.

If you are a subscriber to School of Weaving, you can watch Jane dress a loom with a Mohair warp and weave it in Season 1 Episode 9 Making a Mohair Blankie Yes!

We 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 gives you the flexibility to make smaller payments towards your balance, at your convenience.

Here to help

Have a weaving question? Find us on the Jane Stafford School of Weaving Forum and on Weave with Jane Stafford at Ravelry.