Monday Moods

Outside the window of my parents' home is a bed of purple irises - one of my favorite plants.


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Beyond the Scarf - Purses

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Creating accessories for my dresses and tops are part of the enjoyable part of weaving, though currently, I haven't actually made a set. Sometimes, I have extra fabric leftover from other projects and need to create items for it. Clutch The above clutch was an example of leftover warp. I ended up using up the chenille weft for the warp, and still had close to 20" left on the warp which I didn't want to waste. Thankfully, I had some wool yarn which went with the warp and weft. Since I had wanted to experiment with Danish medallions again, I decided to use this warp for the experiment, though the wool didn't felt as much as I expected it would. This is an example of beautiful items made from little pieces of material. The material is too small for a scarf, but not useful for much of anything else. At this point, I tend to use the fabric to make purses. One thing to remember when using handwoven fabric for a purse is the need for a lining, otherwise items might
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Creating a Palette - Photographs

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If you've been visiting the Bryony Studio site for any length of time, you have noticed the Monday Moods color palettes. Part of the reason I started them was to provide a color scheme for people to have. The other reason was to show how we can find inspiration from anywhere around us. Case in point, the last two or three photos ( Old Painted Walls , Brownstone and Speckle Stone ) are all off my back porch. Other photographs come from trips around the area or abroad. When weaving, some of the hardest parts is choosing colors. Most people have a standard color scheme they prefer for fashion, home interiors, vehicles and whatever else strikes their fancy. In my family, it falls into the blue  family. Accents tend to be brown, especially wood tones, or the occasional pop of color from whatever quilt I made. For me, I tend to work with purples and grays - two of my favorite colors in fact. What I find difficult is blending the warmer colors. Nature provides us a variety of c
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Weaving History - Space makes the Difference

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I focused last week on overshot coverlets as opposed to quilts. For a brief distinction a coverlet is woven, a quilt is not. Quilts and coverlets co-exist in equal appreciation during the Nineteenth Century, but as the Twentieth Century progressed, quilts became more popular and coverlets less popular. Part of the reason is simply the time  it takes to weave a coverlet let alone setting up the loom. To put this in perspective, it takes me roughly twelve hours from warping the loom to weaving the cloth to finishing off the edges for me to make the two scarves below. Both are around two yards in length. These scarves were done on my rigid heddle loom at a 7.5 dpi. What slowed them down was the pick-up stick pattern. On Helen the loom, I'm weaving at a sixteen dpi plus weaving a tighter weave so it takes longer. Take a look at the two projects below. First is the purple scarf from above before it is washed. Looking closely at it, you can tell that there is plenty of spac
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