There’s a meme going around about how it starts with knitting and crochet, then you get into spinning your own wool and then scouring raw wool, and then you get a loom to make your own fabric and suddenly you are a shepherd. I was never sure if it was a joke or a to-do list.
The only ones I’ve missed so far are shepherding (never say never!) and weaving on a loom. That last one is pretty much because in the last few years I’ve brought home a couple of spindles, not one but TWO spinning wheels, a whole lot of gifted embroidery thread (and hoops!), two raw sheep fleeces, and totes full of second-hand fabric and wool roving and batt. I’m pretty sure if I brought home a loom, my husband would disown me, or at least make me sleep on the porch with it.
That’s part of the reason why I was so intrigued by the idea of off-loom weaving. The other part is that it has a much lower barrier to entry: in my case, a couple of branches and some old hardcover books and, as I’ll rave about in a later post, some rocks, plus all the yarn and string and cord I have stashed from various other endeavours. Can’t complain when a new idea uses up existing craft supplies!
Plus, weaving is just cool. Like knitting and crochet, you do some twisty things with string and voila, you’ve made textiles.
I started with weaving on branches early in the summer. I’ll get around to a step-by-step soon, but I was pleased with how easy it was to figure out and how a simple variegated yarn made a very pleasing pattern.
Right around the time I was hunting for sticks and playing with branch weaving, I stumbled upon @larkandbower on Instagram and instantly fell in love with her take on off-loom weaving. My birthday was an excellent occasion to take her online workshop on making twill patterns with off-loom weaving.
Sarah uses postcard-sized plywood bases in her workshop, but I didn’t have any of those. What I did have was old hardcover books that I had used more than 10 years ago as photo props. They were originally from the dump pile at the Watson’s Mill used book store, so I was pleased that they had not only been rescued from the trash once but that I could find yet another new use for them. I try very hard to be mindful of reuse and upcycling in all my crafting adventures. This is the original photo (this little boy is 6 feet tall now!) and an in-progress photo of trimming up the book covers to use as a base to weave.
For this weaving project, I used some old DMC tapestry yarn that had been gifted to me through our local buy-nothing group. I was enchanted with how the simple repetition of a three-strand repeating pattern (over 3, under 3, over 3, under 3) turned into such a sophisticated-looking twill.
So naturally, I took a look around and wondered, what else can I weave on?
That’s where we’ll pick up in the next post!