My Own Rainbow

Ahhh Woven Rainbows, thank you for being such an inspiration to a colour person like me. 

Here is my attempt ...

I love these COLOURS!

The yarn is called rayon and comes from my best yarn shop at Asemka called 'Sunflower'. Asemka is in Glodok, downtown Jakarta. Really heavy traffic - I go early on a Saturday morning. It's so cheap at only $1 a ball. Here are my colours with the design all ready to go on my iPad. 

Rainbows - an Inspiration

I love colour. Sometimes when I am sitting quietly I think about colour. I find it both soothing and inspirational. 

Sometimes a think about combinations of colour. Lime green, hot pink, lavender. 

I happened upon a Facebook page called Woven Rainbows. The weaver creates bany wraps. These are 5 metres in length and are used as a baby sling. 

They are wonderful. I could look at these all day. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Woven-Rainbows/131119003724111 

I noticed that there is also this post about patterns. 

I feel a new project is about to begin. In fact I had a go myself, but I'll leave that for another post :)

The Jane Loom

After much research and thought, I decided to take the plunge and buy a shaft loom. I actually purchased it in Australia and flew over to collect it. Here it is just after I opened the box back in Jakarta. 

After watching a video on You Tube, I began to put the loom together. This loom is from Holland and is known as a Louet loom. The type of loom is a table loom and this model is actually called Jane! I wanted it because the Jane loom was designed by a weaver. 

Now here it is finally fully assembled. 

This is my first weaving. An 8 shaft project designed on my iPad using the iWeaveit app. 

Blanket Project

This project was partly inspired by a blanket my mum bought on Samosir Island back in the 80s. This blanket was woven on a large backstrap loom but I wanted to use my Kromski Rigid Heddle. 

I decided to make it as a series of panels and then join them together. 

First the black panel. Then the red ...

Next I made the Sami band detail. I began to join the panels. 

I want to add another black and another pattern band. I hope to finish it soon. 

Oh I must point out that the weaving is textured and includes 'window pane' patterns created with a pick up stick. 

Sami Bands

I had been exploring a technique known as Sami band weaving. It comes from Sweden and uses a rigid heddle combined with a backstrap loom. 

This photo shows what a traditional Sami band looks like. The photo below shows the equipment that I ordered from Sweden. It's a fabulous little rigid heddle that is designed in such a way that the pattern bands are separate from the others making it very easy to pick the pattern. 

So I had a go and it worked thanks to a You Tube video and some online posts in a weaving forum. Now I had a way to make pattern bands to include in a larger project. 

Getting Better With Technique

As I had started to become more familiar with my Kromski loom, I found it easier to weave more evenly. I bought myself a 12 dent reed so that I could weave finer threads. 

This shawl used cotton that gradated through different shades of grey. 

It seemed like a nice cloth to add manirat to. So I did. I was very pleased with the result so I sent it to a funeral in Medan as a present. 

Moving On

My next challenge was to make something like the trafitional cloth found at my husband's village at Lake Toba North Sumatra. 

This meant that I needed to revise my skills in edging technique otherwise known as Manirat. 

With my daughter's help and some notes that we took down whilst in the village, we set out to remember the technique. 

Finally it started to work. It was quite hard to keep the tension even. 

Next time, we will make a better result. 

Rigid Heddle #2

Soon after I began weaving with my little 30cm rigid heddle loom, I realized that I needed a wider cloth. 

After some research I found a loom called Kromski which is made in Poland. 

It became my second loom. 

Here is that loom with some painted warps on it. 

My New Blog

I have been weaving regularly since last November 2014. I want to recognize officially that this is something that I am going to continue with for some time. 

It all began with a trip to Japan ...

I happened upon a shop in Kichijoji, Tokyo called Avril. That shop was the most amazing yarn shop that I had ever seen. I spied a small loom which I bought. I soon learned that this loom is called a rigid heddle loom. 

That was the beginning of my new journey ... in weaving.