A Visit with Eva Stossel

 

Above: My favorite piece among all the weaving I've seen by Eva Stossel, in networked double weave on 16 shafts, with warp and weft in 20/2 cotton. I really like the tesselation effect.

Which brings me to the point of this blog post: Eva Stossel (you can visit her blog at www.evasweaving.wordpress.com) is, in my humble opinion, one of the best weavers around the country these days. 

Take a look:

Another 16-shaft network-drafted double weave, again using tesselations. Even more interesting: If you walk far enough away from the photo on your screen, you'll see an overall pattern in this piece, sort of a vertical-ellipse shape, made by the squares themselves!

Here's a detail:

How did she DO that? I figure it's two colors in the warp and weft of the top layer (white and red) and two colors in the warp and weft of the bottom layer (purple and red), and her design is networked but not paralleled. And then she shifted equal-sized rectangles in both threading and treadling throughout the piece to achieve the tile-like effect.

And how about this?

Tied Lampas in 4 blocks, in a clean, refreshing design (and, by the way, using complementary colors of green and red and purple and yellow, which add to the aesthetic appeal).

And yet another:

Woven moiré in pearl cotton on 16 shafts

Eva is really generous in sharing her drafts -- both in her blog and as WIFs when asked (although at times, rightfully, she does keep some designs to herself). Her writing is clear and concise, making her blog a gift to the weaving community at large. 

I had no idea where she lived until I happened to mention how I admired her work to my friend Hedy Lyles, herself an excellent weaver from Willow Grove, PA. Both Hedy and Eva belong to the Philadelphia Guild of Handweavers.

One of Hedy's twill scarves, on display at Convergence 2024 in Wichita in July.

Come to find out, Eva and Hedy are friends! Over a weekend when I was visiting family in Philadelphia, Hedy and I took a road trip about an hour out of town to visit Eva. It was a pleasure to finally meet her. She seemed surprised when I told her her blog has fans nationwide!

Hedy, left, and Eva, right, talk weaving. Note one of Eva's designs at the bottom of the photo, woven to create an Ikat look.

I remember Hedy telling me that she weaves on a 16-shaft Macomber loom, which surprised me, as I expected her to rely on the convenience of a compu-dobby. It takes a lot of strength (and a lot of tromping) to weave on 18 treadles to lift the cast-iron shafts of a Macomber!

Eva's Macomber, with an end-feed-delivery shuttle poised on the shuttle race.

She samples religiously and keeps detailed records, which is exactly what all the great weavers do, in my view.

Eva told us that often she will use her 4-shaft Structo for sampling -- clearly not to see how a 16-shaft pattern works, but just to see how the warp and weft yarns weave together. I consider that a noble endeavor, one that never even occurred to me ;o)

Eva with her files

More samples, more notes

Really, I wanted to meet Eva because I so admire her work and her generosity -- and I wanted to learn something about how a master weaver works. Of course, you can't access a person's mind and discover the source of their creativity (don't I wish). What I did learn: Start with a good idea, sample it, sample more, make sure the yarns and colors work, dig deeper, keep weaving, keep learning. That's the essence of what it takes.

And, as is so often the case, I found how much I enjoy making friends with fellow weavers. Thank you, Hedy and Eva, for a delightful afternoon!

Not the most flattering photo of any of us (from left: me, Eva, and Hedy) but it documents a meeting of hearts and hands, you might say....

Thanks for reading!

Echo... Echo... Echo on 8 Shafts

It all started with Handweaving.net, as I'm guessing it does for many of us. 

One of the easiest ways to create an Echo design is to look on Handweaving.net for patterns with advancing-point-twill threadings, such as Ms and Ws, Gebrochene, or Crackle. These threadings can easily be made into Echo designs, simply by clicking "Parallel Repeat" on the "Warp" drop-down menu in Fiberworks Silver and then interleaving a threading line that's parallel to the original threading, separated by an interval of half the shafts you're using.

A bit of weaving terminology here -- because I remember wondering what in the world "interleave" meant as I was learning to work with parallel threadings. I always thought it meant inserting a page into a book. Actually, in weaving, it's sort of like that: You insert a second threading line above the original threading line -- so that each parallel thread is "interleaved" between two threads in the base threading -- A/B/A/B and so on. 

In other words, if you take a simple 8-shaft point draw like this...

You can interleave it with a parallel threading that is 4 shafts above it....

This represents an interleaved threading that is parallel to the original threading (there are lots of variations on this, which I won't go into in this post). Typically in an Echo threading, the parallel threading line is half the number of shafts above the original design, as it is in the diagram above: Threads 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 have a parallel threading line that is 4 shafts above them on an 8-shaft loom. The overall Echo threading -- a.k.a. parallel threading -- is now 1, 5, 2, 6, 3, 7, and 4, 8. Then, when you reach the base-line thread on shaft 5, the parallel thread "above" it is on shaft 1. The reason: Remember that Echo is a technique based on twill, so, just as with a straight twill -- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 -- the next thread for a straight draw is 1. (Because we don't have 9 shafts on our loom, you have to corkscrew around to shaft 1 in your threading in order to weave a continuous twill line.) 

Echo calls for two colors in the warp, one for each threading line. (You can also design Echo using 3 or 4 parallel lines, each with a different warp color, but again, we won't get into that.) Another key to this technique: Echo uses a twill tieup and, typically, a sett that is somewhere between that recommended for twill and that recommended for double weave. Also, Echo usually requires a weft that is about half the grist of the warp threads. These are not rules, just recommendations, helping to show off the warp pattern. (Echo designs are warp-emphasis designs.)

So here's where I began, with this lovely 8-shaft advancing-and-descending-point-twill design on Handweaving.net:

I really like the luminous quality of the chartreuse weft, defined by the grass-green color of the warp.

And simply by clicking "Parallel Repeat" on the Warp drop-down menu in Fiberworks (a feature, like networking, that is only available on Fiberworks Silver), I got this variation:

I confess that I tried hard to find the draft on Handweaving.net so that I could give you the number to look it up -- searching under "Twill," "Ms and Ws," "Point Twill," and even "green," but I couldn't find it! The site is so full of treasures, you could spend an entire day looking at drafts and saving the ones you like....

Anyhow, I decided that the above design was too stretched out width-wise, so I created a version in Jin (which is basically Echo with a tabby tiedown in the treadling) in order to balance the motifs.

I like the simple variation of colors in the warp: bright green and turquoise, with a weft of slightly lighter green. And then, while I was shopping at Convergence in July, I came upon a 4 oz. skein of chartreuse Tencel and a 4 oz. skein of hand-painted Tencel in a variety of blues (at the Eugene Textile Center booth, which was full of temptations). Both skeins were 10/2 -- perfect! And here's the result (another version of the photo you saw at the beginning of this blog):

Along with being one of the most environmentally friendly of all the weaving fibers, Tencel also has a great sheen to it, giving the fabric a gloss similar to silk. Plus it has considerable tensile strength (hence the name Tencel, I'm guessing).

Because I didn't feel like plying lots and lots of fringe -- which is a graceful accent to a scarf but takes a lot of work -- I wove a double-weave tube at both ends of the scarf. All you have to do is fold it inwards, iron it flat, and blind-hem-stitch the sides of the tube together. 

Here's the drawdown for weaving a plain-weave tube on an Echo threading:

I'm considering -- that's the operative word, "considering" -- writing a second book, this one about Echo, offering designs for 8 shafts only, as that's the easiest way to learn this technique and 8 shafts seems to be the number of choice for the majority of weavers. This pattern would be one of them and, of course, I will have to weave up another 11 projects before I even start writing the book. So, if this book gets written, it will be a while....

Thanks for reading!

Seasons of the Finger Lakes: Sampling, But Not There Yet

 

Summer -- my favorite design and the sample that has the most errors, darn it.

Autumn -- my favorite sample so far. This photo has more blue in it than the cloth itself.

Winter, which my spouse thinks looks like summer, but I see it as cool and icy.

Again, the photo is bluer than the real cloth. 

Maybe it needs a thicker, grayer weft. 

(Note to self: Do not ask spouse's opinion if they are not weavers.)

Spring. This one is inarguably spring.

I don't know where this one fits in but I love periwinkle. 

So maybe it's bluebell season, something like that.

So. It all started on an airplane a year or two ago. I was flying from my home in Rochester, NY, to teach a workshop. Looking out the window, I could see laterally east across the Finger Lakes and the bordering hills, with the lakes stretched like blue/green ribbons north to south across the land, fading into the distance.

An aerial view of the Finger Lakes, courtesy of NASA. I figure this is fair use, because it's NASA and this blog is definitely non-profit ;o)

Canandaigua and Keuka are my favorite lakes, with Keuka having a slight edge. I have spent many happy sunlit hours swimming, boating, water-skiing, throwing sticks for dogs, making sure everybody has their life-jackets on, eating burnt marshmallows, walking on dirt roads, looking for fossils and lake glass, and generally mucking about on the shore and in the water. 

The image outside the airplane window, the memories... why not weave my impressions? I had grand visions of maybe 11 long panels as a series (because there are 11 Finger Lakes, from west to east: Conesus, Hemlock, Canadice, Honeoye, Canandaigua, Keuka, Seneca, Cayuga, Owasco, Skaneateles, and Otisco)....

For many reasons, some discussed in previous posts, including a flood in our house (ironic? I think so), that plan for 11 panels got reduced to a plan for four. 

Perhaps the four seasons? I began weaving. Long, long story short, I made errors. You understand. Still, I finished my four seasons, cut them off, serged the edges, washed and ironed them, and bravely brought them to lunch with two friends who just happen to be esteemed weavers: Susie Taylor and Ruth Manning. You can look them up, I am telling you they're GOOD.

Weavers who lunch, left to right: Susie Taylor, me, and Ruth Manning

I showed them the results and, in between bites of salad and Mandarin oranges, quickly came to realize that these are not finished pieces, definitely not ready for prime time, but good samples that give me a sense of direction and at least the beginning of a plan. They are studies, the templates for something, with more work ahead if I want to weave something special.

(The details, for those who are interested: My samples are all variations on a 32-shaft threading in four-color Echo, using 16/2 cotton in burgundy, turquoise, chartreuse, and Provence blue, with wefts in 16/2 rayon and, for the winter sample, very fine silver thread.)

And so, as always, the moral of my tale? Sample, sample, sample.

Thanks for reading!

Post script: This piece is dedicated to Australian weaver Liz Williamson, who died this week at the age of 75. I was fortunate enough to take a workshop with her at Convergence in Vancouver in 2002, which inspired me to pursue dimensional weaving. She was one of a kind -- and she was a kind teacher.

A Talk with Master Weaver Lillian Whipple

The photo resolution may not be good enough to show it very well -- but the warp for this piece is 240/2 silk! Or maybe it's 260/2, which is another yarn she often used for warps.... 

Here's another example of her work:

That's Lillian Whipple's superpower: weaving with silk so fine that most of us would need our reading glasses to see it. Here are a few more of her ever-so-delicate, feather-light "kimono" weavings, each one a work of art on its own, each about 1" wide by 2" long.

Many weavers boast of having an entire collection of Lillian's pieces. That's because, at every Convergence conference for many years, she was known for sharing them with every attendee she encountered, myself included.

Motifs on Lillian's loom

Lillian's beloved 24-shaft AVL

I first met Lillian at Convergence (not sure which year), standing in a group of friends, when she approached us, introduced herself, and shared her tiny, lovely kimono samples with all of us. This was my first time I'd received one of her weavings and I felt like I had been initiated into a very special club. Since then, I've met many people at weaving conferences proudly wearing name-tags accompanied by maybe half a dozen of Lillian's postage-stamp-sized pieces, each woven in exquisite detail. 

And one day, surprisingly, she appeared in one of my workshops. It may have been at Convergence in Reno in 2018. (Side note here: Like Lillian, many well-known, highly respected teachers are more than happy to take workshops. I think of Chaucer's quote about the Clerk in his Canterbury Tales: "And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach." But I didn't know that then. All I knew was that Lillian Whipple was in my class and I'd better be on my toes.) 

"It was about 50 years that I was weaving," Lillian told me in a recent phone conversation from her home in California. "I can't weave anymore but I had a great time and I'm still hearing about it," she continues, laughing. "I have many pieces on my walls and in my closet to remind me."

She has two COEs (Certificates of Excellence from the Handweavers Guild of America), highlighted by an in-depth study for her second COE entitled "By a Fine Silk Thread." For more than 15 years, she chaired the Fine Threads Study Group for Complex Weavers, serving as a mentor to talented artists like Molly McLaughlin. Her many accomplishments include teaching, exhibiting, writing and publishing, and a host of awards for her garments and wall hangings. She is perhaps best known for her Taqueté and Summer and Winter weavings in fine silk -- such as the pieces shown at the beginning of this post.

What drew her to weaving? "It satisfied something in me," she muses. "I was able to create what I wanted. I was able to design what I wanted and the field was open to me, wide open."

Her advice to aspiring weavers relates to this. "I would tell people to enjoy themselves and do what you want and go where you want, because it's wide open! You can do anything you want, I believe."

Words to weave by. Thank you, Lillian!

Top, Whipple in 2009 and below, one of her Summer and Winter weavings. 

(From WeaveZine, October 1, 2009.)

 

Sampling, in Search of Beautiful Cloth

 

Way back in the misty past -- that is, about two years ago, my memory being what it is -- I was flying out of Rochester on my way to teach a workshop. As it happened, I had a beautiful view out the window looking east over the Finger Lakes. They're a series of 11 lakes in western New York State that all stretch north to south, long and lean, like fingers. (In the image below, you can see them in the winter and you can sort of see where I live, in Rochester, NY, in the top left-hand corner of the photo, with Irondequoit Bay flowing south and Lake Ontario filling the northern left half of the photo.)

Above, from NASA, a satellite photo of the Finger Lakes region in winter. Public domain.

They really are way more beautiful than this, especially when you're on one, in a boat or on a dock or in the water, in the summer, in a bathing suit on a sunny day. Some of my fondest memories come from these lakes, especially Canandaigua and Keuka, both close to my home, where I learned to waterski, and tried to sail, and swam and floated and tanned and roasted marshmallows and threw sticks -- or stones -- for dogs.... (Our beloved boxer, Bruno, seemed to think he could retrieve a rock after it was thrown into a lake that was full of them.)

But back to weaving. After seeing that view and reminiscing, I opened my computer and started to design a draft with many variations, based on my feeling for the Finger Lakes. (Background: I have a 32-shaft loom and I love designing curves for 4-end parallel threadings with lots of colors.) Here are some of the variations I came up with, all on the same threading. The draft at the beginning of this blog post is my favorite, which I've named "Finger Lakes Summer."

These drafts are, from top to bottom, "Finger Lakes Farewell," 

"September," "Spring," and "Storm."

Finding the right warp has been a real challenge. I started with with 50/2 linen (or something close to that, not absolutely sure) that I dyed in natural dyes to resemble the colors seen in lake water.

Nice, right? Wrong!

This is how they looked when I started weaving one of the "Finger Lakes" designs.

Blah and bland, even when I used red in the weft.

And then, we had a flood in our house. I'm not kidding. How is it that I'm weaving up a warp using water colors, and it doesn't work at all, and a pipe bursts in our house and floods the better part of two floors? Coincidence? I think not.

I'm telling you, this was no fun at all.

You don't know the half of it.

Fortunately, my looms -- and my husband's pianos -- were unharmed. I don't know how that happened, but they were fine. Next, only slightly deterred (and living out of a hotel), I cut off the linen warp, which was a first for me. It just wasn't going to work. I know, it's linen... but I was in no mood to put extra work into this one. So, like Goldilocks, I went in the opposite direction: I wound a new warp in a much heavier linen, 16/1, in much brighter colors.

Nice, right? Wrong again!

Dare I write this? This warp was also a clunker. The yarns were just too heavy for the patterns, although the colors were fine. At this point, I'm realizing just how important materials are to the success of a project....

Not working for me. At all.

Yes, dear reader (if you're still with me), I cut this one off too. That makes the second warp I've cut off in my weaving career. 

By now, these missteps had taken up the better part of eight or nine months, what with living in a hotel for three months, keeping on top of the home repairs, and teaching workshops (mostly on Zoom, during the winter). I'm not sure what possessed me, but I decided to press on. It's not even that I thought these designs were so great... maybe it was just curiosity, wondering whether I could get even one or two good patterns out of the dozen or so I had designed. 

Well, long story short (even though the story is already long, it could go on much longer), I finally went back to my go-to yarn for these 4-color Echo designs: 16/2 cotton (or sometimes bamboo/rayon, depending on what colors are available). The ensuing saga involves tying on a warp, not knowing what I was doing, adding a cross, figuring out that a raddle might be nice, making lots of errors, and having to fix my Megado because shafts were sticking.

BUT, although the story still isn't over, I've at last found one pattern that seems to work! And the warp grist is right and my loom is running fine (thanks to my clever spouse).

I prefer the top part of the sample, with warmer hues in the weft. But not sure. 

Ignore the treadling error about a third of the way up in the photo.

Below is a detail of the drawdown. The pattern is Jin and, while you may not be able to see it, there are actually two colors in the weft, which is not traditional. Typically, there is one color in the weft, but I've learned that using two colors adds richness to the overall color mixing. For the top part of the sample pictured above, I alternated red and golden orange for wefts. 

A detail of the drawdown

The moral of this tale is that you learn a lot from your mistakes. Way more than you learn from success, in my view. I've learned that materials are foundational to what we do. I've learned that it's good to break the rules (in my case, using two colors in the weft when weaving Jin). I've learned that it's OK to cut off a warp (or two).... I've learned that the best-laid plans don't always work out but if you adapt and persist and shift your goals, you might come up with something worthwhile.

I guess I've learned overall that weaving isn't easy! Well, occasionally it is, but you can never tell what the weaving goddesses have planned for you....

Thanks for reading!