Finally - a Fiber Post! Weaving a Peacock Throw, and some rugs

Oh, my poor blog readers who love my fiber posts.  I have been sorely ignoring you!   Filling you up with posts of packing, moving, motorhome stuff and grandkids.  FINALLY I will do a post on a fiber project!

YAYYYYYYYY

I didn't post this one before because it was a gift, and the couple who received it read my blog (nephew Chris and his new wife Lyndsay).    So I saved the pics of the project until now.

They were married 2 weeks ago, and I finished up the throw in advance and mailed it to them in Pennsylvania.  They got married up in Michigan and would have had to haul it all the way back to Pennsylvania in the car.  I knew they would have more than enough to haul, so shipping it ahead of time to their home seemed to make the most sense.

This woven throw I named Peacock Throw because the theme for their wedding was peacock feathers and all the rich colors were part of their wedding.

I wove this up as the LAST item I wove on my big 60" wide LeClerc loom.  The warp yarns came from Chris's mom, my sister, Linda.  The weft was a thick bumpy boucle yarn from Lion Brand yarns.

It wove up very easy and once it was done, 

I washed it first gently in the machine 

and hung it out to dry.... 

Then I twisted the fringes with my small LeClerc fringe twister, so they all came out like little ropes.   I beefed up each knotted fringe first with extra boucle yarns so the "ropes" would be thicker than just from the warp yarns.

and soon it was done!!

Also, I recently wove off a few rugs from the Union loom before we tore it down for storage.   I really like these burgundy and grey wool rugs.  They are woven with thick wool blankets that were cut up and woven in plain 2 harness weave.  For the borders, I twist 2 half width pieces into "arrows".  What fun, but a little tricky to make the arrows come out evenly and pointing the right ways.  I liked doing them opposite, going one way and then the other. 

Here are some solid colored faded denim rugs I wove up for a customer, but she decided she wanted stripes instead?  So they are thin denim colored cotton fabric, not as thick as I normally do my rugs.  Great for fitting under opening door thresholds, or where a thin rug is desired.

This rug was woven in my Granny Patches technique,

using clasped wefts to make blocks of colors in the rug.

Amazingly, THIS Is my union loom, on the right pic it is all torn down (and each piece marked)   so I can reassemble it again when I want it up and running.  It's torn down with the warp intact from the back beam through the heddles on each harness, and through the reed. I can just set it up and continue weaving without having to beam on a warp, thread or sley the reed.  It can even be torn down while in the middle of weaving a rug if need be, and just let the front takeup beam be added to the same bundle and tied or taped carefully together.

 It's not too big of a pile... about 12 inches high and spread out a bit in this pic.  

Takes about 20 minutes to put it together.   But before I re-assemble it, I am going to replace the bolts and nuts and washers with new ones.  These were pretty rusty, and some were even bent.

We loaded it all easily into the back trunk of the Saturn car.  Just look at that! 

I am storing it for a while in our son's garage until I get more organized and get some stash depleted in the motorhome compartments.  I have to get a lot of these bins contents knitted up for socks for fall inventory.  Right now the loom pieces would fit on top of all these bins, but I think I would prefer to finish arranging and sorting before I load it up for full-timing.

I will get this figured out yet, I will... I will... I will!