This how to video by Noreen Crone-Findlay shows how to make potholders and mug rugs (coasters) woven on the Equilateral Triangle looms, using techniques shown in previous ‘how to’ videos.
The potholders and mug rugs are quick and easy to weave using the Weaving techniques that she developed for the Equilateral Triangle Looms that she designed and Dewberry Ridge Looms builds.
Here’s the link to the ‘How to’ video for the potholders and mug rugs (coasters):
The year of the Rabbit is seen as a year of sweet goodness in all kinds of ways.
I am totally in favor of that, and I certainly hope it will show itself to be a gentle and healing and harmonious year in 2023.
This Rabbit year is a busy one for me.
I am focused on 5 things, as well as all the usual things that unfold in life-
1- Grieving the sudden death of my beloved son in law is hard work, and has revealed the deep paradox that love offers us: The immense gratitude for everything that love brings us, including the shocks and anguish of loss, as well as all the incredible blessings… truly paradoxical.
2- I am knitting as many Comfort Bears as I can get done before the Celebration of my lovely Son in Love’s life this Spring in his honor to give to people at the Celebration of his life.
They were very important to him, and he always had at least 3 in his pockets, as well as his personal Comfort Bear, so he could give them to people who needed comfort. He was such a lovely man that people would confide their sorrows to him, and he would give them a comfort bear, and then see if there was something else that he could do for them. Kindness was truly his religion!
As I have been working on the Comfort Bears, a new design for them has evolved, and I will make a pattern and a video for them when I can get to it.
BUT… this year of the Rabbit is a VERY busy one indeed….
3- I am working to deadline on a new book- Yay! I can’t say anything about it, except that I am working with my much loved editor (hurrah) again at Stackpole Books. Writing this book is really helping me to move forward and it is very healing to be focused on loveliness!
4- I am also working on a new solo show of my woven works for 2024…. again… very healing, very powerful, and exciting as I have had lots of breakthroughs into new places in my wovenworks 🙂
5- And this is the one that is most immanent and that I am scrambling to get the work done on asap:
For about 7 years (!) I have been working on a new set of looms and co-creating them with Donna and Gary McFarland of Dewberry Ridge Looms. I am just a (rather large and longish) Hare’s Breath away from finishing up all the editing, pattern writing, video shooting, photo taking, photo editing and all that that involves, so that I can finally…. F I N A L L Y get these looms out into the world. Whew and yay!
And, oh yes, I mustn’t forget…. my husband and I have unexpectedly adopted a very sweet and rather wild little new furkid who is an astonishing handful and is completely full of adorable love and puppy wackiness…. puppies…. sheesh….. and lots of loving laughter.
He is my devoted studio companion, and has his own chair right beside me. Excellent solution to the problem of him needing to be glued to me 🙂 ❤
I hope that 2023 will be a truly fine one for us all. Happy Year of the Rabbit!
All through the Covid pandemic, I have been working on designing and fine tuning a large new Teneriffe Lace loom that is my response to the situation that we are all in.
I wanted to create a loom that would be a way of celebrating love, compassion, kindness, resiliency, hope and friendship. The image that came up for me was of hearts and flowers.
So, I have designed a large Teneriffe Lace loom that is meant to be woven on with thicker yarns or threads than ‘normal’ and to be much larger than ‘normal’.
At the beginning of March 2020, a very kind lady sent me a pair of ‘Polka’ Teneriffe looms to say thank you for all the hard work that I put into writing the ‘Potholder Loom Weaving’ book.
I was delighted with them- but didn’t like the way the foundation strand was put onto them.
So, I figured out a different way of continuously chaining on the foundation chain.
I also figured out a way of warping the loom continuously, and then had to work out the logistics of weaving the heart and flower motifs, and, also, how to get the motifs off the loom in a workable way.
I wove hundreds of samples and made dozens of variations on the looms.
Lots of them became firewood 🙂
BUT eventually I arrived at the configuration that I love.
Gary McFarland is the mastermind behind the CNC machine at Dewberry Ridge Looms and he has added his finesse to the final version of the loom.
Some teas come in cloth tea bags that can’t be composted, so instead of throwing them in the garbage,
here’s a great way to upcycle the bags into yarn that you can weave with (or knit or crochet).
I’ve made a video about how to cut the cloth tea bags into fabric yarn-
What can you do with upcycled tea bag yarn?
Weave with it as if it’s regular yarn… for instance, here are a Star , a Dragonfly and Heart woven on pin looms that I designed for Dewberry Ridge Looms
Or: Make upcycled brooches- here’s a video showing how:
More videos about weaving with teabag yarn –
How to Weave Using Upcycled Teabag Yarn 2 Nails at a Time on Pin Looms:
I have loved wooden dolls all my life and have made many, many of them throughout my life.
More than 20 years ago, I began a series of flat wooden dolls that I called: ‘Merrie Sunshine’.
I’ve worked with Merrie Sunshine off and on for all these years, but until the pandemic unfolded, it didn’t occur to me to make a mermaid sister for Merrie Sunshine.
I’ve been working on larger articulated wooden mermaids and it was these dolls that brought Merrie Sunshine to mind,
and then inspired me to give Merrie Sunshine a mermaid sister.
Here are Merrie Sunshine and Minnie Moonbeam with my most recent wooden mermaid (the inspiration for all this)
I asked Donna and Gary McFarland of Dewberry Ridge Looms if they would be interested in making
unpainted, unfinished Merrie Sunshine and Minnie Moonbeam dolls that people would then be able
to make uniquely their own.
They said that they would, and so here are what the dolls look like fresh out of the envelope from Donna and Gary:
MERRIE SUNSHINE: LINK TO ORDER from Dewberry Ridge Looms
and
MINNIE MOONBEAM MERMAID: LINK TO ORDER from Dewberry Ridge Looms
I have made 4 videos that show how to paint or color or decoupage the dolls to make them uniquely your own and how to stitch the dolls together
LINKS TO “HOW TO ASSEMBLE AND EMBELLISH MERRIE SUNSHINE AND MINNIE MOONBEAM DOLLS’
PART 1- How to’s for the Face, Hair and all kinds of things:
PART 2- More Embellishing
PART 3- How to use Washi tape and origami paper to dress the dolls:
PART 4- How to stitch the dolls together:
Here’s a little inspiration for the Merrie Sunshine Dolls”
and a glimpse of how I have embellished some Minnie Moonbeam Mermaid dolls:
And, dolls need clothes, right?
So, I have designed an eBook of CROCHETED DOLL clothes for Merrie Sunshine and Minnie Moonbeam
I have been enjoying weaving kitchen cloths on the Pro Size and Mighty Big Mamma potholder looms with old crochet cotton odds and ends that I have bought at Thrift Shops over the years.
The fabric that weaves up from the upcycled crochet cotton is lovely.
I decided to experiment with bias weave for the kitchen cloths (save those precious trees and use cloths instead of paper towels- yay!) and I love how it has turned out.
Here’s a link to the video showing how to weave bias on the Pro size and Mighty Big Mamma potholder looms- it’s really fun to weave, and the cloths are great.
If you’d like me to make a pattern for the woven Albert Einstein please let me know 🙂
One of the lovely things that people are doing during the pandemic is to hang hearts in the window to cheer up passers by.
This video shows some of the window hearts that I have woven on the 6 inch heart loom that I designed and Dewberry Ridge Looms makes.
The woven window hearts are a great way to use upcycled t-shirt yarn, fabric strips made from torn up worn out household linens or outgrown clothing or bulky yarn or roving or 6 inch potholder loom loops.
I embellished some of the hearts with little dolls that I made from my Rosie Recycle eBook: LINK
I am so delighted to introduce a wonderful, yummy new potholder loom:
The Mighty Big Mamma Potholder Loom 🙂
She’s a 36 nail potholder loom that weaves a 12 inch square.
The Mighty Big Mamma Potholder Loom is in response to people asking for a bigger potholder loom than the pro size (27 nail loom).
I thought long and hard about what would make the Mighty Big Mama a sweetheart of a loom to weave on, and Gary McFarland of Dewberry Ridge looms has put everything that I asked for into the making of her.
There are some tricks to weaving with the Mighty Big Mamma, so I am making a series of videos about her,.
The first video shows how to weave tabby (plain weave) in the ‘4 Square’ pattern with the help of a very pleasing shed stick.
I am so pleased! I’ve been working with Donna and Gary McFarland of Dewberry Ridge Looms to create some absolutely lovely new Heart Looms.
They are 4 inches and 6 inches and have a wider sett than the tiny 2 inch looms.
This means that you can weave thicker yarns, roving, fabric strips, t shirt yarn on them. Lots of eco-friendly options!
And on the 6 inch Heart loom, you can even weave potholder loops, too.
One of the first things that I did with them was to mend my much loved, and very well worn woven jacket by stitching and felting one of the hearts to repair a frayed section on the sleeve.
Tottie Talks Crafts Blog 