Thursday 31 January 2019

Weaving Part 2 -Woven Weft With Hand Spun Natural Dyed Wool

 Back in October last year, I blogged about the Warp of my weaving process. This post is about the next part of weaving to make the cloth.

 The Weft -This is the crosswise thread on my loom that passes over and under the warp to make the cloth.

For this particular project, "a small wall hanging", I chose some of my handspun wools which I had naturally dyed in my garden over the summer (please view earlier posts for this process).
A small selection of  Shetland, Jacob and Suffolk fleece were handspun on my wheel then dyed with various natural colour sources such as  woad, logwood, brazilwood and eucalyptus.




 The balls of wool always look so inspiring and beautiful together when naturally dyed.
I do a rough plan for how I want to weave the colours through, so as I develop a gradient flow of  colour in my work.



 The material is then wound on to either stick shuttles or my boat shuttles ready to weave the weft.


I love the rhythm of weaving, the absorbing nature of working with my hands and feet.
Slowly seeing the cloth grow and the colours blend together.


The thrill and satisfaction of taking a fresh fleece and spinning, dyeing and weaving it into something that is naturally beautiful.