Valentine
What better photo to feature on Valentine’s Day than the photo from February from our own calendar? Red – it comes in so many shades and is so much fun to design with. If you need to make a statement in your quiet cloth – red is willing to jump in as a frame, or a stripe to grab your attention. It can be a subtle red like the roses or a screaming red that really makes you sit up at notice.
Crackle Placemats
Everything moves in a circle here at JST. I was doodling around with Crackle and was inspired by the colours that Arlene Kohut had used in the Just Monk’ing Around Tea Towel Kit Berry Bowl version that I had to try on the Crackle. Then I asked Rebecca Logan to bring her wonderful graphic sense to the pattern and then weave them up with her own design. I love this type of collaboration. The patterns are always the result of many weavers joining minds. How cool is that! I hope you enjoy weaving these wonderful placemats. They are a set of placemats that make a statement on a day when red is the focus of attention – be it Valentine’s Day or Christmas.
Just Monkin’ Around
I am so delighted to share Arlene Kohut’s Monk’s Belt towel pattern. It is absolutely fantastic and you will have so much fun playing with your own designs once you get it all warped up. I’m sure you’ll make this pattern over and over again in whatever colours strike your fancy.
Arlene got carried away and created it in 3 colour ways. After her first set, she started playing with more graphics…..so simple to weave and play with.
Holly & Berry Tea Towels
I love to teach skills that will help weavers develop their own ideas and creative sensibility to become independent designers. Tea towels are a small and inexpensive way to experiment without the financial stress of expensive yarns. Once you have a successful towel you can look at it as a design sketch for a blanket, a placemat, a piece of yardage or a scarf, the possibilities are endless.
This towel was also designed by Arlene Kohut. What a great way to bring lace into the kitchen!
From Our Inbox
From Our Inbox, this week we share the photos that Carolyn Franke from Toronto, Ontario sent to us. She shows us the fun she had creating her own Crackle Weave towels from School of Weaving Season 6 Episode 6. I love getting mail from weavers who are really enjoying taking a particular weave structure and pushing it to see what they can do with it. Well done, Carolyn.
Jane
Loving the crackle weave; the next time I am going to thread each block in its own analogous colour, probably in the green-blue-violet range. Jane, your explanations and demos were so helpful in understanding the various ways to weave crackle. I am such an old-fashioned purist that I really wanted to try Mary Atwater’s no-tabby method the most. I have to say the threads didn’t shift as much as I thought they would, but let’s face it, we don’t want sleazy cloth! I am captivated by the interplay of thick and thin and warp and weft colourways. Of course, I must tell you about my threading error; somehow I missed out 5 threads when warping and had to add them in afterwards and could never get them to be the right tension, hence a dark stripe. Not too noticeable in the last 2 towels.
Thanks for an amazing School of Weaving!
Carolyn
Toronto, ON
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