Mary Margaret and the Checked Blanketing...in her own words

beaming on!

making a few adjustments

extended birdseye patterm

another view of the plaid

Today is the end of my sixth week at the studio.  During this time I have completed a summer blanket/winter sheet and a set of linen napkins.  I have also dyed the wool for my current blanket. The summer blanket/winter sheet had a cotton warp and a wool weft.  What I learned most from this blanket was how to (and how not to) throw a shuttle.  Because the blanket was wide and the warp was fine, I broke a lot of threads.  But I am also getting better at darning!

The linen in my napkins was even more fine than the cotton in my first blanket.  The warp was white and the weft was natural.  This provided a challenge in threading the warp through the heddles.  Each napkin had a different pattern.  I had so much fun choosing and experimenting with these patterns.  This project taught me a lot about the structure of twill fabric. I cannot wait to finish and wash all of my napkins!

Now, I am enjoying working on my wool blanket.  The indigo and pomegranate dyed yarns came out even better than I had hoped.  I love the horizontal and vertical stripes in this blanket.  This may be my favorite piece so far!

I will be keeping you up to date on my projects and all that I am learning, but now I'd like to get back to my blanket!

Great Projects on the Looms This Week

Sandra weaving her runner and Mary Margaret at the warping board

Jackie working on a new run of dishtowels

Lila is learning tapestry weave

Karen finishing up a throw made with her own handspun  yarn

Sandra's overshot runner

Stevie beginning a new wool throw

Susan working on a run of small cotton blankets

Pat's wool and cotton rug

There's been so much activity here this week, and all of it pretty exciting work, so we wanted to give you a peek.

Mary Margaret is gearing up for her third project, a hand dyed wool singles blanket (which we'll follow up on in detail next week), by winding spools from skeins, and then building her three-section warp. 

Jackie is working on a run of 8/2 cotton dishtowels, in some bold and beautiful colors. She's doing a plain twill stripe with different wefts for each towel to experiment with what varying color combinations will do, with some very handsome results.

Lila, our 13-year-old apprentice, is working on a tapestry bag right now. Norman showed her the basics before he left on his winter sojourn, and she's designed her own diamond patterns, with a few different degrees of difficulty and problem solving to work out, all part of her learning process. Her great eye for color is definitely at work in her choices of yarn for this piece.

Karen is here for the month of February, learning more indelibly how to build a good warp. She processes, spins, and dyes her own wool, and has been using her own yarn to make a number of very beautiful, earthy, twill stripe throws, the texture of which are quite wonderful and one-of-a-kind.

Sandra spent quite a bit of time dissecting the weave structure out of a wonderful cotton shawl that a friend had brought her from South American travels. She figured out how to reproduce the pattern (albeit with different yarns) and is currently making an exquisite runner using this lovely overshot weave.

Stevie whipped through another gorgeous throw this week, using up odds and ends from her stash of yarn to come up with a reverse twill block pattern in shades of berry, pink, purple, and white.

Susan has been working on a run of small cotton blankets using a chunky organic cotton yarn that we've hand dyed for her. They're each a different color - one purple, one red, one green - with bold herringbone stripes...incredibly handsome.

Pat has been working on a calimanco stripe rag rug warp. Her first rug was with cotton rag weft, but the last two she experimented with using a chunky carpet wool, first with plain weave and then with a reverse twill block. The results are quite wonderful...and somebody's feet are going to be very happy.

It's pretty cool when there are so many interesting projects going on all at once...very inspiring for everyone to see each day, and to reconfigure in their own ways to come up with new projects.

An Update on Our Intern

Mary Margaret working on her linen towelling

Summer Blanket/Winter Sheet fresh off the loom

fine linen tea towels in twill and bird's eye patterns

next project in the pipe - indigo and pomegranate singles wool warp for a blanket

Mary Margaret finished her first blanket a week or so ago. It was truly beautiful, laid out on the floor of the studio. Her color choices were very elegant and quite in keeping with a traditional colorway. At night she's been working on darning and stitching up the center seam.

In the meantime, she had dyed the wool singles yarn for her second blanket. We set up an indigo vat one day, and then the next day she dyed the other half of her yarn with natural pomegranate, to come up with a beautiful soft british khaki.

For the last week and a half, she's been working on a run of fine linen singles tea toweling, which has been a real challenge...dealing with linen is always tricky in some way, but she's been doing a great job of learning how to deal with it, and her towels are lovely. They'll be off the loom this week.

Her next project, which she's been building the warp for this week, is a heavier wool blanket than the first one. She's going to be weaving an extended birds eye pattern in a simple two-color plaid.

We'll keep you posted...

A Little News About Jerry Osterman

Jerry using his spindle

using the great wheel for long-draw spinning

knitting socks with his handspun, hand-dyed wool

a skein of Jerry's beautiful 2-ply yarn

Susan baking sugar cookies in her Vermont kitchen

Jerry Osterman is the husband of Susan, one of our weekly students here at the weaving studio. In November of 2009, Jerry decided he'd like to learn how to spin, and took a week-end-long class with Norman Kennedy, where he learned first to spin with a spindle, and then on a great wheel, with Norman's unique method of traditional long-draw spinning.

He went home and began practicing everything he'd learned, encountering over time the necessity of training himself to spin consistently in differing yarn sizes. After some time he was building up quite a stash of yarn, and one day at the studio, Norman inquired with Susan about how Jerry was doing with his spinning, and when she replied that he was spinning up a storm, Norman said, "And what is he doing with all that yarn? He should be knitting!" So Susan taught Jerry the basics of knitting. And Jerry started knitting hats, and more hats, and even more hats. And he liked it, that knitting, just as much as all the spinning.

Feeling the need to broaden his horizons, Jerry then took a knitting class at The Knitting Studio in Montpelier, where he started knitting his first sweater. And then he branched out into making socks, and designing his own hats. And kept knitting, and spinning, and knitting some more...

He gives everything away to friends or enthusiastic admirers of his work because he just loves doing this. He even takes his knitting projects to work (he's one of the partners at Osterman & Burke, an accounting firm in Barre), and can be found busily knitting away while taking a lunch or coffee break. His work is wonderful and earthy and creative, and we love it that he enjoys his spinning and the fruit of it so very much.

In Her Own Words...

Mary Margaret at the loom

her beautiful summer blanket/winter sheet

finishing up the indigo dyeing for an upcoming project

It does not seem like I have been in Vermont for nearly two weeks!  I am enjoying every minute I spend in the studio. I am currently weaving a summer blanket/winter sheet.  Because it is so much wider than the dishtowels I have previously done, it has been a bit challenging, but I really like the way it is coming along.

Yesterday we started dyeing the wool for my next blanket. I am so excited to learn about natural dyes!  I love the indigo vat and I can't wait to see how the pomegranate turns out.

After each day in the studio I get to come home and look through the books Kate has lent me from her library. I have never seen such an extensive collection of books dedicated to historical textiles!  Right now I am working on one book all about coverlets woven in Tennessee and another about textiles and equipment used in early Canadian settlements.

There is such a vast wealth of knowledge at the Marshfield School of Weaving. I hope to soak up as much as I possible can during my time here!

Carpets for Winter

Silas Burton carpets

Silas Burton carpet woven by Kate Smith

warp-faced carpet woven by Susan Osterman

a run of small carpets woven by Lynnette for our holiday studio sale

indigo venetian carpet woven by Lynnette for one of our Eaton Hill clients

detail of the indigo carpet still on the loom - very luscious underfoot

Izzy helping Deb Livingston measure her hand-dyed ikat stair runner, fresh off the loom

Warp-faced carpeting is one of the favorite projects woven by students here at the school, and because it is a plain weave it is one that beginning students can weave without too much difficulty. The most complicated part of the process is actually in the design work and warping but once it's on the loom the weaving is pretty straightforward. Most of our carpets these days are all hand-dyed from a beautiful custom spun 2 ply English long wool yarn. Our friends at Jagger Brothers in Maine did the spinning of this yarn from imported English wool and the result is a yarn that takes the dye well and holds up famously for carpets.  We use either a cotton or linen filler for the weft.

A Winter Intensive Study

Summer Blanket/Winter Sheet

Overshot and Summer Winter

Checked Blanketing

Linens - pillowcases and sheets

Fancy Bedcover Weaves

Linen Towels

Checked Linen

Tow Linen Bags

Kate Smith (left) and Mary Margaret Kirkpatrick (right)
work up a draft in the studio

Welcome to our opening post for 2011. We are excited to be starting our first long-term study program this month with a young college student from Memphis, Tennessee, Mary Margaret Kirkpatrick.

She is going to be here for the winter, studying and weaving the textiles that would have been included in a 19th C. woman's wedding dowry - blankets, linens for the kitchen and bedstead, and a fancy bedcover.

She will learn natural dyeing, spinning, and all the appropriate finishing techniques for each piece. There will be a strong historic element to her study of these textiles, and she will have access to our vast library of books and collection of antique textiles.

She will keep you posted on her progress in upcoming posts.

We are currently in the process of developing a curriculum for continuing intensive studies in historic textiles. Here is an outline of what we're going to be offering:

CLOTHING FABRICS      8 week intensive

    Scottish Tweed

    Linen Checked Shirting

    Worsted Drugget Skirting

    Silk Twill

    Cotton Stripes

    Singles Wool Shawls

19th C. DOWRY TEXTILES      8 week intensive

    Summer Blanket/Winter Sheet

    Checked Wool Blanketing

    Linen Towels

    Linen Pillowcases

    Fancy Bedcover

LINEN INTENSIVE       10 weeks

    Linen Towels - Huck & M's & O's

    Linen Tablecloth - Spot Weave

    Linen Shirting - Singles Plain Weave

    Linen Sheets

    Linen Pillowcases in Bird's Eye

    Checked Linen Napkins

ETHNIC RUG TECHNIQUES       6 weeks

    Shaker Rag Rugs

    Swedish Krokbrog

    French Canadian Warp-Faced Jaspe

    Scottish Ingrain

    Kilim Tapestry Weft-Faced

    19th C. Venetian Carpets