2010 in Review

 

Another year has come and gone. While I was contemplating this past year, at first I thought I really didn’t do much or accomplish much. That really isn’t true. Now don’t get me wrong everyone wishes they have done more in the year. But I think very few of us look back and see what we got accomplished.

I got to go to the PA Farm Show and get a lot of fleeces, I raised chicks which is a whole story in itself, fun and rewarding non the less. Did well with selling produce this year, which took up most of my time over the growing season. Revamped my Inkle loom and was doing self study on inkle weaving. Learned a new weaving technique, I’m referring to Bobbin Lace (which is a lot of fun I may add). Got too meet new people and make new friends.

So no I didn’t get everything done this year I had hoped. But I got more done than I originally thought. The New Year is less then fourteen hours away, so perhaps next year i will get even more done. Time will tell, see you next year.

Clerical Stole

 

Over the summer a friend of mine asked me if I would make a Stole for her. She would like to give it as a Christmas gift, I had no problem doing that. At the time she asked me I wasn’t doing any weaving because of time restrictions. I was finally able to make the stole for her and it is on the to her as I’m typing this post.

The one and only request she had was that it be colorful, ok but how do I do that for a stole. So I got a brilliant idea to incorporate all the liturgical colors of the year into the stole. I originally started out to weave the stole in shadow weave, my minds eye said that would have been beautiful. And it may have been with not so many colors, I just couldn’t get a color combination I liked so I scraped that idea.

Then I came up with the idea of doing overshot, I was going to do the whole stole with a pattern. Then I decided since I have eight shafts why didn’t I do this in steed.   I know what your saying that you can’t see the pattern, this is why we sample so we can see if our idea works before we make the full project. The only other request was that it be 6” wide so I had to make a sample to get the correct shrinkage percentages as well. First looking from left to right the colors start out with blue and pink for advent which is when the christen new year starts. To be specific it starts on the first Sunday of Advent, then white for the Christmas season, green for the time between Christmas and Lent, purple and pink for lent, black for Good Friday, White for the Easter season, red for Pentecost and to finish out the year green for Ordinary time. This way the stole can be worn any time of the year and will have the correct color for the season we are in. The patterns are two different ones (this is where the eight shafts come in) the one on the right and the one  on the left are both the same and are on shafts one through four. The center motif is on shafts five through eight.

I had done a piece about a year ago using the same pattern weft as I did with this sample. With the piece I did previous the pattern stood out quit nicely. Here not so much then I realized that on this piece I’m using ecru for the tabby weft, which is muting the colors and there for muting the pattern. So I had to pick a new pattern weft, after doing the math to get the shrinkage percentages I found out that the piece is to wide so I had to pick new patterns for the left and right sides. This is what I came up with.  

 

 

You can see from the picture above the pattern is only on one side. That was done on purpose, In the beginning I was going to do an over all pattern then I thought to do something like this. At the fringe you have the corner motifs then the center, a space the center motif again, space and the reverse of the bottom and I would continue with the center motif as the start of the repeat. Instead of doing that all over I decided to do that on one side and not repeat it. Which I like the results of this much better then my original idea. It’s simply elegant in a reverent sort of way. 

The back I had some fun with, to make life easier I decided to weave the angels in to the pieces. let me show you what I mean.  

That way all I had to do was serge the ends and sew the two piece together. That worked out to be one of my best ideas. I also had another idea to place a motif in the back, you’ll se that in the picture in a moment. After weaving and washing I found  it to be a bit to long. I myself am over six feet tall this stole went down to my ankles. So I had to reduce it’s length by six inches, which means instead of the stole being 146” long it measures 140” long. That put’s it half way down my knee, which is the correct length for me. Some people like them a little longer so there shouldn't  be a problem with the length. If you look over on the left shoulder you will see a motif in its center. when it is worn properly that motif will be on the back. I thought that would be a neat thing to do since you all ways see the decoration on the front and never the back. Yet you do see the back of the minister more then you realize, so here is some thing to look at on the stole.

I do hope the recipient of this stole enjoys it and where's it many, many, many times.