A Dream Come True!

I wish I had words to express just how pleased I am with results of The Big Commission.

Some dreams take longer to realize than others. Some dreams evolve and change.

Now the very hardest part: to ship it off to the owners and hope they are a pleased as I am.

I wish you could feel the softness of the cashmere.

Joining the Big Commission

Remember the Big Commission? I just went back to find the date I began this project--February 2, 2007. Some things take longer to complete than other things.

The only parameters I received from the client was to weave a blanket 90"x100" with a bamboo warp and recycled cashmere sweater weft. I knew I was going to weave panels and join them together, but the size of the panels, the weaving technique, and the colors were all left to me. I had recently seen a textile show of the Sarawak weavers of Borneo and became enchanted by the concept of having the design come to me in a dream rather than plan out a design on paper. So that is what I did. On the side bar of this blog under LABELS is the topic Big Commission with 12 entries. (if you want to track my progress).

Then I ran into a couple of snags which stopped me cold. When I had completed 5 panels, the design seemed finished although I had only 74" in width. When I washed the panels, they became 88" long. So I waited for a dream to tell me how to proceed. That was back in March.

In March my world went into high gear with putting the condo up for sale and moving. I still continued to wait for the next chapter of the dream. As August draws near, I realized I just need to join all the panels together and finish off the top and bottom and call it finished at 74"x88"

I am not great at tailoring, but I am a fabulous joiner. It takes me between 3 and 4 hours to join 2 panels together. It is a great way to catch up on movies or recorded books. I know it is not generally a summer time project, but it is raining and in the 60's here today.

The book shown below is a fabulous book (out of print), but I was lucky enough to find a copy. I used to check it out of the Seattle Weavers Guild library, and I was the only one to ever check it out.

And what about the folks that have commissioned a larger blanket than they are getting? I have spoken to them at length, and I believe they will be thrilled with a blanket this size. It weighs almost 5 lbs as it is. I know they live in Montana, but a 7 lb blanket is just too heavy to deal with. I will be weaving them each a bamboo cashmere scarf, so they will get their extra inches in another format.

My plan is to ship the blanket on August 4th to get there in time for their 5th wedding anniversary. I will ask for pictures, but you never know.

Big Commission Takes a Holiday

It seems like a million years ago I started collecting cashmere sweaters to un-knit and use the yarn as weft to make a blanket. After I had collected 4 or 5 sweaters and took them apart, I put the skeins of yarn in my cedar chest and continued on my weaving journey. A couple years ago I was telling a friend about this great idea to make a blanket out of recycled cashmere, and she agreed and commissioned me to weave a blanket 90" x 100" that had the unknitted cashmere as the weft. These were the only parameters.

Slowly I began testing various warps to combine with the cashmere and finally settled on Bambu 12 doubled and sett at 24 epi. I ikat dyed a bunch of the bamboo and wove a 20" panel to see.

I wish I had time right now to re-cap or at least to give you the link to my older posts that chronicle the project panel by panel, but the airport shuttle will be here in less than 6 hours and I haven't finished packing and still have a couple more feet to weave before I can cut the piece off the loom (and I really want to take it with me).

I will attempt to fix the links whenever I get near a computer in the next couple of weeks. But the picture above shows some progress. I joined two of the panels together. I love the way it looks so much I decided to wear it as a shawl on my trip. It looks and feels quite divine. I am taking the other 3 completed panels with me and will join them all together in my spare time.

The delivery date of the completed blanket is August, and I have 4 more panels to weave. It is time to get busy.

I am sure you have noticed the narrow horizontal panel is longer than the ikat panel. Well, I fixed that right after I saw the picture (grin)

Integrating Panel #5 of The Big Commission

Panel #5 is the horizontal purpley one closest to you. These pictures are just my beginning to experiment with the placement of the panels.

It’s quite exciting to see this puzzle start to take shape. Since I haven’t written anything down or taken any notes (except for the dimensions of the panels), it is thrilling to see for the first time a broad hint of the finished piece.

When patterns repeat, it is easy for the eye and brain to take it in. When there is constant variation and no repeat, it is much more challenging for the eye/brain. I wonder if that is a positive or negative feature for a bed covering?

I much prefer the center panel in this picture. I am going to have to find a place where I can lay this whole thing out so I can really see it. There will be 2 more horizontal purpley panels that will go along the outside edge. The bed it is being made for is a king I believe, but it is at least a queen. It’s interesting to note how well this blanket (actually it is more of a sleeping mantle) looks with my purple wall.The bed is a standard double, and I am as far away from it as I can get..

Oh another little feature: I photoshopped the dresser and window out of the picture and inadvertently took out a little of the blanket. I have just an Elements 2 that someone gave me. I haven’t figured out much, but some.

Warp On, Warp Off

sThe Woven Word piece is threaded and ready to go. I plan to use my recycled cashmere for the weft. I am enjoying the cashmere so much.


And then I cut panel #5 of The Big Commission off the loom. This is the piece I was using to practice "Weave Every Day". I'll be curious to see how this panel will look next to the others. That will have to wait until another day.

The Big Commission is taking a long time to complete. It is partly because I am working without a plan, so I have to look at the panels for a while before I know how to proceed. I hope that after I have completed the blanket and trace it back through the blog to the beginning, I will be able to see the pattern in my thought process as I went along.

Big Commission--Chapter 6: Blanket Meets Saori

I just couldn't go away leaving this warp sitting on the loom. Since I am going to a Saori Conference, I decided to weave a test panel in what I believe to be the Saori way. After I come back from the Conference, I will have a better idea of exactly what that philosophy is. But this is what I did:
1. Weave what I feel.
2. There are no mistakes.
3. No planning ahead. For me, this meant "no counting" "no measuring"

Who knew I was a compulsive counter!

What started out as a frustrating exercise soon became lots of fun.


So here are 3 of the proposed 7 panels of the blanket. It was challenging to find a place where I could get far enough away from the panels to actually see the whole thing. (60" of the 90"). You can sort of see that the panels are not put together. My sort of plan is to intersperse four 8" panels. I thought it would be interesting to make the 8" panels a weft faced design using the colored recycled cashmere. I will still use the same bamboo for the warp although not ikat dyed. The weft will still be triple strands of unknitted cashmere sweaters. Because the warp will still show, the weft will be muted. The colors are full of nuance. I did much color blending, and the gray warp keeps the colors from jumping out too much.


The panels are folded over a rod, but you can get the idea. You're seeing about 60" of the length.

Not writing anything down or taking any notes is quite a challenging exercise, like working without a net. Ladies and Gentlemen, do not try this at home. It takes a lot of years and countless attempts. It takes a lot of faith. But mostly it takes knowing how to set up very tight parameters. Even though I don't really know what it is going to look like, that is the only variable I have. Showing you every step of the way is my attempt to demonstrate a process of weaving into the future.

I realize just pulling a piece off the loom is weaving into the future--at least it was for me the first 20 years or so. Weaving offers a lifetime of lessons, a lifetime of healing, and a lifetime of creativity.

Big Commission--Chapter 5

I just cut off panel 3 (center panel)! I had to hang it right up. It has a lighter look than the first two, so I decided to put it in the center for now.

In case you are just tuning in, each panel is 20" wide and will become a blanket 90"x 100". The warp is ikat dyed bamboo, and the weft is un-knitted cashmere sweaters.

In addition to the goal of using recycled cashmere, my plan is to design the blanket without writing anything down. I don't know exactly what I am going to do next, so I will let the panels hang there for a while and wait until they tell me what to do next.

The next time the sun comes out, I will find a place outside where I can stretch out the whole length of each panel to see the entire piece. I hope I like what I see.

If it doesn't rain tomorrow, I will be dyeing some 8/2 cotton.

Big Commission--Chapter 4

My basket of un-knitted cashmere sweaters has grown to two baskets (15 sweaters). The basket of colored cashmere will come into play in later panels. I just received 6 more sweaters yet to be un-knitted. I see more cashmere weaving in my future.

I just figured out why these back and white ikats delight me so much. It's like clearing my visual palette between color courses in my weaving banquet.

As I may have already mentioned, I had launched into the Big Commission with just a single idea: to use all ikat dyed bamboo for the warp and un-knitted cashmere sweaters for the weft. The finished blanket will be 90" x 100".

A sub-theme: to juxtapose random ikat dyed sections and intentional sections.

My current "plan" is to alternate four 8" panels with the three 20" panels.

The 8" panels will feature the colored cashmere.

Another sub-theme: to design the blanket without pen and paper, guided by intuition alone.

Big Commission--Chapter 3

When the end is in sight, it is always exciting!
If you can't figure out what the pink strings are doing and why they are there, you'll just have to ask. I don't mind explaining if necessary.
I'll have some better pictures, but I wanted to give you an idea of the direction the blanket is taking. Although these are only 2 of 7 panels, these 2 panels make up 40% of the blanket's area.
The second panel is the one on the right.

Updates from Grace and Gary

The Grace Report: I'm weaving along on the Big Commission Panel #2. I expect to weave it off this weekend. I have some ideas for Panel #3. Notice my new shuttle. In case you haven't read the history, this is a bamboo ikat warp with an un-knitted cashmere sweater weft. The blanket will be 90"x100" and woven in 7 panels. I am attempting to weave this blanket without a net. The net in this case would be a clear plan or at least a sketch of some sort.

The Gary Report: One of the things I love about ikat is it's so much fun to weave. Design appear as if by magic.
I get to experience the magic THREE times. The first time is when I am winding the warp back onto the warp beam. The second time is when I am weaving, and the third time is when I first cut it off the loom. Well FOUR times! The fourth is when I wrap the finished piece around myself. When I was weaving sticks and weeds, the fourth part wasn't magical at all.
It is always comforting to be able to create order from chaos so easily.

Big Commission--Chapter 2

I don't have the energy to write except to say I am pretty jazzed by this warp. I will write more tomorrow. The warp is ikat dyed bamboo yarn.

Big Commission--Chapter 3

One of the great things about having woven for 47 years is it seems like I weave all the time. What is true, though, is I go in many directions at the same time. Every once in a while, I like to take a break from all that color and try to find the color nuances in black and white. Every once in a while, I get the opportunity to create a large weaving. As I mentioned before, the big commission will be a 90" x 100" blanket. The warp is bamboo and the weft recycled cashmere sweaters. Every once in a while, I begin a project without a plan. I just begin and see where it takes me.
I had this idea: What if I combined my Easy Ikat technique (the center stripe) with random stripes of ikat dyed yarn. I wanted to see what sort of patterns emerged all by themselves. This is an example of my getting the threads to do some of the work. It is also an example of my attempt to dialogue with the treads.

Here is the first panel as it hangs on my wall. I am not sure where I will go from here, so I am looking at it often waiting for the next panel to announce itself.

On a completely different topic:
Shall I tell you about the lowest low from yesterday? Oh, it's too late again. Besides in the light of day today, I realized it wasn't the lowest low at all. It was merely a good lesson for me, but all too often good lessons seem like bad news.

Big Commission--Chapter 2

This isn't the best picture in the world, but it will give you an idea of my test pieces for the Blanket Commission. I am testing randomly placed ikat dyed bamboo in the warp with the un-knitted cashmere sweater weft. The colored stripes on the left are the colors of the sweaters that I have (although I didn't have the burgundy cashmere shown in an earlier post when I made the test). I wish you could feel it. The cashmere does wonderful things with the bamboo. Although this test was primarily for weight and hand, I am very pleased with the look of the random ikat.

One of the things I love about designing "Easy Ikat" cloth is how the design emerges on the warping board as I warp. Before I wind a warp, I group together the yarn I think I am going to use in the piece. I let the yarn "discuss" what it wants to do. Sometimes the yarn decides quickly, but other times it takes weeks of discussion. I must check on the yarn often to see how the discussion is going :)

Some of you may think I am joking, but others will know exactly what I am talking about.

My mother thinks I am a lazy person, and perhaps she is right. I like to get the yarn to do as much of the work as possible. By "tuning into" the yarn (believe me when I tell you I don't know how I do this), it seems to speak to me. It always has from the very beginning. You would think that I would be into spinning, wouldn't you? I do love the "idea" of spinning. I even tried it once. I think of myself as a "virtual spinner". I am also a virtual quilter and gardener! Every morning I wake up and say my mantra "No New Crafts. No New Crafts. No New Crafts" If I had both a husband AND a wife I would explore the above along with Bobbin Lace and Kumihimo (just to name a few). I used to claim I was a "virtual dyer", but I have had to give up my virtual status of late. In fact on Saturday, I will be dyeing yarn for my upcoming "Easy Ikat" workshop.

Uh OH, I feel myself slipping into what I like to call "Creative Procrastination". I must sign off and weave. I will write about creative procrastination later:)

Big Commission--Chapter 1

Five or six years ago I got this crazy notion. I started collecting old cashmere sweaters and un-knitting them with the idea of using the yarn as weft. I un-knitted 6 sweaters and lost my focus. The yarn languished in my cedar chest until recently when I was telling an old friend about my idea of weaving a blanket using recycled cashmere. She got very excited about the concept and commissioned a blanket.

The next step was to find some more sweaters and decide on a warp yarn. My first inclination was to use merino wool, but since I had been playing around with bamboo, I thought I should weave up a test.

This ends chapter 1. In chapter 2, I run a couple of tests

PS. If you have or know of anyone who has an old cashmere sweater or two with moth holes or stains, please consider sending it to me.

PPS. Since I received the commission, I have acquired 6 more sweaters. I probably have enough for this blanket, but who knows how far I will take it.

By the way, it takes me about 8 hours to un-knit a sweater.