I’ve had the opportunity to try out quite a few different techniques through my Spinners and Weavers group over the last couple of years and although I have shared several of my spinning techniques, I have not shared many of my woven items on here because my projects have been more about learning and sampling, and less about planning and making something with a purpose.
For this project, I had been given a 100g bag of fibre (lucky dip style) that needed to be crafted into a unique handmade gift to swap at our end of year club party. These challenges can be a lot of fun, as you have to come up with something that will hopefully be appealing to the recipient, and you must work with colours that you did not choose yourself.
My package had black and orange corriedale fibre from the Ashford range. I decided that rolags from the bending board would be a quick and effective way to work with these 2 bold colours and added a little bit of white from my stash, just to make the blend a little more interesting.
I was really happy with the way it spun up, with a balance of blended orange/black creating an overall brownish colour, but lots of pops of solid orange, black and white in the mix as well.
As well as overcoming the colour challenge, this project needed to be quick and not too big, as 100g of fibre only goes so far. The Ashford 50cm knitters loom was a perfect way to quickly turn my handspun blend into a woven fabric that I could then sew up into something useful! It might seem like a lot of work, but I knew what I wanted, and this would be quicker than knitting or crochet.
I measured how many metres I had of the finished handspun, then carefully planned the warp and weft so that every little bit of yarn would be used in the weave. With a bit of my signature denim thrown in, my finished woven fabric would be the perfect size to cut and use for 2 gift items, a bag and a notebook cover. Aside from a tiny amount of loom waste, all of the fibre was put to use!
I was pretty happy with the finished gifts, and I think the recipient was too!
