Handwoven SAORI Market Bag

Our guild Retreat is coming up fast. Such a lovely time to relax with friends and fiber, with no responsibilities and no schedule. Wait... there IS one responsibility - every year we're given a different challenge, to create something incorporating some handspun. This year it's a market bag. I was planning to knit something... and then suddenly I realized the time had gotten away from me, and knitting was going to take too long. Enter weaving - so fast, so fun!

I dug around in my handspun stash, and found a skein of fingering weight silk singles I'd spun a long time ago from a pastel-rainbow tussah silk top (in the picture, I've already wound it onto bobbins). Perfect for my main weft. Thinking SAORI-style, I grabbed some multi-colored silk hankies and a small handful of mulberry silk top, along with some leftover bits of cotton yarn from another project.

Then I warped my Cricket loom with black 5/2 and 8/2 cotton, held together, in the 12 dent rigid heddle. This gave me a good background for some color play.

You can see that I used the handspun silk as the ground weft, and randomly tossed in torn-off bits of the hankies and top, creating hills and valleys and delightful textures. In true SAORI fashion, I didn't worry (much, I'm still a structure girl!) about the edges, and knew they would be sewn in anyway.

In practically no time, the piece was done.  The warp was 3 yards, and 7.5" in the reed/heddle. My finished piece was 90" x 6.5". I used this guide on Doni's Deli's blog to create the bag - essentially, the strip of cloth is folded like origami and sewn up the sides.

Et voila!

(That's the bag simply pinned together, before sewing.) I sewed it by hand, partially because I was intimidated by the thought of trying to get the thick fabric under my machine's foot, and also because I wanted to use the same black 8/2 cotton as I had in the warp. I was glad I'd made that decision - the fabric felt good in my hands and the sewing was relaxing.

Here's the finished bag. I folded the strap's edges in and sewed it as a tube (using an invisible ladder stitch) to narrow the strap and to give it strength. There was no cutting involved in the construction.

I am absurdly pleased with this bag. Once I add a lining, it will become my new everyday bag. I'm secretly hoping people will stop me and ask where I got it, so I can proudly say, "I wove this myself!"

Custom Confetti, and Another Scarf

Remember when I talked about designing a handspun yarn, specifically the rainbow yarn that my customer friend requested? Here's the resulting yarn (remember, she chose the "confetti" option):

Rainbow colors with black accents. I'm happy with the way the two skeins coordinate, considering the original braids of fiber were slightly different. They're 400 and 380 yards of 16wpi fingering weight 3-ply.

And I finished another of those fun scarves on my Cricket loom - this one is the mirror image of the Rainbow Waterfall scarf, which had a purple center that flowed down into red fringe. Instead, this Rainbow Cascade scarf has a red center flowing down into purple fringe:

50" long, with additional 4" handtwisted fringe on each end, 6.5" wide.

I'm really pleased with the way these scarves turned out - they're soft and drapy, colorful and fun. I see more in my future!

Today is World Wide Spinning In Public Day - I'm taking my Matchless to the library. We have a guild meeting, which is usually just us sitting around a table discussing weaving/spinning and passing around FO's. Today I'll demo for passersby and see if we can't attract some new members!

Handwoven: Rainbow Waterfall

How cute is THIS??? And so much fun to weave. The warp yarn (Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sport) does all the work - its regular repeat gives the illusion of faux ikat without cutting and tying individual strands.  I direct-warped it on my Cricket loom and wove it off with a bright red 8/2 tencel.

50" long (not including the handtwisted 4" fringe on each end), 6.5" wide, fully reversible.

And did I mention "cute"????