To see all the links for the ‘How To’ posts for the “Imagine” Banner Weave along, please go to L I N K S
To order the loom, book and extras kit for the Weave Along from Mirrix, please go K I T
ASSEMBLING THE BANNER:
Place Einstein behind the narrow band.
Stitch his hands to the front of the banner and then stitch the banner to his sweater.
Enjoy and be inspired!
To see all the links for the ‘How To’ posts for the “Imagine” Banner Weave along, please go to L I N K S
To order the loom, book and extras kit for the Weave Along from Mirrix, please go to K I T
FREE FORM WEAVING: HOMAGE TO ALBERT EINSTEIN:
Albert Einstein is woven (with a few extrapolations and a slight adjustment to the waistline) following the instructions for the Woven Dancer on page 30 of “Innovative Weaving on the Frame Loom”.
In order to hold the pattern onto the loom, a backing board is needed.
INSTRUCTIONS:
HOW TO MAKE THE CARDBOARD BACKING BOARD FOR THE SAFFRON LOOM:
1: With the corrugations running the length of the piece: Cut 2 pieces of corrugated cardboard that are 13 inches/32.5 cm long by 5 1/2 inches/13.75 cm wide.
2: Tape or glue the 2 pieces of cardboard together.
3: Score a line with a ballpoint pen or knitting needle 1 inch/2.5 cm from each end.
4: Cut a notch out of the center of each end piece that is 1 inch/2.5 cm by 1 inch/2.5 cm.
5: Trace the pattern for the largest Woven Dancer onto plain paper or graph paper and center it on the backing board.
6: Tape it in place, then tape a piece of clear plastic, either from recycled plastic or a plastic page protector over the pattern.
“IMAGINE” BANNER
Woven on the Mirrix Saffron loom, using techniques from “Innovative Weaving on the Frame Loom”
A Weave Along by Noreen Crone-Findlay
The “Imagine” banner is a reminder about the power of creativity. Noreen Crone-Findlay, author of “Innovative Weaving on the Frame Loom”, has designed this banner as a weave along, featuring the delightful Mirrix Saffron Loom.
Albert Einstein has been credited with saying that he valued imagination over knowledge.
Now is certainly the time for us all to imagine that we can make things better, so hurrah for creativity, resiliency and imagination!
The 3 components of the ‘Imagine’ banner are all based on techniques that are featured in ‘Innovative Weaving on the Frame Loom’, with little tweaks so that you can make a unique and one of a kind celebration of creativity to inspire yourself and other people, too.
You will need the Mirrix Saffron Loom and ‘Innovative Weaving on the Frame Loom’ by Noreen Crone-Findlay (that’s me, of course) to participate in the weave along.
Mirrix is offering a kit that includes both, as well as other tools that are used to create the ‘Imagine’ banner.
HERE IS A LINK TO THE BOOK AND SAFFRON LOOM KIT that is available on the Mirrix website. LINK
You can use whatever yarn (#4 Medium weight yarn) that you like to weave the banner.
I will be posting the instructions for the Weave Along in 6 separate posts here on Tottie Talks Crafts,
beginning on Sept 13, 2021 .
PART ONE: How to weave the narrow band L I N K
PART TWO: How to embroider the narrow band L I N K
PART THREE: How to weave the 2 small triangles L I N K
PART FOUR: How to make the cardboard backing board for doing freeform weaving L I N K
PART FIVE: How to weave the homage to Albert Einstein figure L I N K
PART SIX: Assembling the banner L I N K
After I carved and wove 3 dolls that didn’t fit the doll furniture that I already had, (see Brown Paper Yarn Dolls) ,
I decided that I had to build them each a chair.
And so I built them each their own little chair with a seat woven on the Mirrix Saffron Loom, using instructions from my book: Innovative Weaving on the Frame Loom.
HERE IS A LINK TO THE BOOK AND SAFFRON LOOM KIT that is available on the Mirrix website. LINK
The Chairs are not in the book, but the weaving patterns are. See pages: 68, 50 and 45.
Here are the dimensions for the wooden parts of the chair:
The wooden pieces are all 1 cm thick and 2 cm wide.
Pieces A are 24 cm long (cut 2)
Pieces B are 20 cm long (cut 2)
Pieces C are 11 cm long (cut 2)
The Dowels are 1/4 inch in diameter:
A: Cut 2 that are 11 cm long
B: Cut 2 that are 9 cm long
C: Cut 1 that is 13 cm long
The Seat: Weave a piece of fabric that is 20 cm long by 7 cm wide and stitch through the end of the warp loops, over the top dowel of A and the front dowel of B.
The finished size of the chair is:
Height: 20 cm (8 inches)
From front to back: 18 cm (almost 7 inches)
Width: 13 cm at widest point (about 5 inches)
The dolls are very happy in their new chairs!
I have made a video, showing how to build the chairs- but please note that I forgot to show how I sew the weaving to the chair.
Oops.
I simply lifted the weaving off the loom and stitched through the warp loops with 2 strands of yarn, going over the dowel.
I hope that you will have fun making doll chairs for your dolls and teddy bears, too. ❤
Here’s the link:
Happy Chairmaking!
Yesterday, a dear friend helped me to hang some of my ‘Woven Women’ tapestries at the Blue Chair Cafe in Edmonton AB.
They will be hanging at the Blue Chair for the months of September and October 2014.
I took a small video after the show was hung….
One of my most favorite prayers is Dame Julian of Norwich’s …
“And All Shall Be Well, and All Shall Be Well, and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well….”
This prayer is a mantra that I repeat to myself through thick and thin, through the darkest nights and hardest moments- we all have them, and they are transformed into a wellspring of compassion, but, oh my, how incredibly challenging it can be at times to navigate them.
Thank you, Dame Julian, for these words to live by…..
I love weaving words, and have done many woven homages to Dame Julian.
But, this is the first time I have woven her prayer in tapestry-
copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay http://www.crone-findlay.com
copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay http://www.crone-findlay.com
copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay http://www.crone-findlay.com
She is approximately 36 inches tall.
I wove the central tapestry panel on my Mirrix 8 inch tapestry loom at 6 epi.
The side and back panels were woven on my 4 harness floor loom at 12 epi.
On her face, there are bits of sea glass, fragments of pottery and seashells, as well as driftwood.
Night and day for the last couple of weeks, I have been weaving up a storm, finishing Part 3 of Rebecca Mezoff’s online tapestry workshop.
And, I have just finished: Woven Women- Asking For Miracles, which is built around the sampler that I wove for Part 3:
copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay http://www.tottietalkscrafts.com
The dragon ship on her chest is based on images in the Bayeux tapestries, and the tree of life is based on a fragment of the Overhogdal tapestry fragments that I saw in the Viking exhibition at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, BC in July.
The Overhogdal tapestry was woven with a linen background, with the figures outlined in soumak and the colors filled in with colored weft in a kind of brocade technique.
The imagery in these tapestries is just so marvelous that I find them really inspiring and love sketching elements from them.
For her head dress, bodice construction, cuffs and hem, I used narrow bands that I wove on my double slotted Swedish rigid heddle loom.
Her head, hands, shoulder medalions, and feet are plywood.
I drew, cut out and burned and painted all the wooden elements.
copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay http://www.tottietalkscrafts.com
Her earrings are made from beads, vintage buttons and reproductions of Viking coins that I bought in the Museum gift shop.
copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay http://www.tottietalkscrafts.com
copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay http://www.tottietalkscrafts.com
‘Asking for Miracles’ was woven on my 16 inch Mirrix tapestry loom and is about 36 inches tall.
And, that title?
Well…. there are a lot of things happening these days that could use some miraculous energy to set them to rights…
you know, the wars, the devastations that are being wrought on so many levels and in so many ways on our precious little planet.
As I weave, I often meditate on sending out peaceful, healing energy…. the stuff that miracles are made of, after all, so to be honest, I think that when I am doing this, I am asking for miracles…..
and may your life be full of miracles of healing, wholeness, wonderfulness in every way!
Miracles.
Yes, please.
When we went on holidays in July, I took along 4 small looms- My Norwegian Cradle loom, my 8 inch Mirrix tapestry loom, my wee copper pipe loom and my tiny peg loom.
I warped up my Norwegian Cradle loom with fine cotton to weave a narrow band, using my Swedish double slotted rigid heddle.
The heddle is actually too wide for the Cradle loom, but oddly enough, this worked well in a quirky way.
I wove and wove and wove and wove as we drove for many, many days, with the Norwegian Cradle loom in my lap:
copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay http://www.tottietalkscrafts.com
The cotton thread in the narrow band is in the same colors that I was using to weave the sampler for Part 2 of the online tapestry course offered by Rebecca Mezoff.
I knew that I wanted to have narrow bands as part of the figure that I was weaving, using the sampler as the body.
And here she is: Her name is:
“Small Bird Sang and All Was Forgiven”.
copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay http://www.tottietalkscrafts.com
Her body is the sampler that includes the techniques that were covered in Part Two of the course.
I wove her arms separately, using techniques from Part 2 as well.
I have included driftwood from our beachcombing at the ocean, as well as found objects.
Her hands, head, feet and the archway panel are cut from Baltic birch plywood. (Lovely stuff!)
copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay http://www.tottietalkscrafts.com
I burned the features with a wood burning tool, and then painted and embellished with encaustic.
She is 36 inches/90 cm tall.
copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay http://www.tottietalkscrafts.com
I wove her body first, then re-warped the loom and wove the arms separately.
copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay http://www.tottietalkscrafts.com
Her body and arms were woven on my 8 inch Mirrix tapestry loom, which I also took along on holidays, as it’s a fabulous little traveling loom.
I’ve just finished weaving a new piece that I have called: ‘Edith’s Song: No Regrets’:
copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay http://www.crone-findlay.com
For the last 3 weeks, I have been weaving away, loving working on a sampler for Part One of Rebecca Mezoff’s online tapestry weaving workshop. LINK to her course outlines. (Love the course, highly recommend it!)
While I was weaving it, I got inspired to weave the last section in 3 panels- one for the torso, and 2 for the arms.
I shaped the upper edge in a semi circle to be the neckline of her bodice, and left empty triangles at the elbows so I could shape bent arms.
I pulled the warp strands to bend the arms and to shape her torso.
copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay http://www.crone-findlay.com
I chose to leave the slits unstitched in the lower panel so I could weave in narrow bands that I had previously woven on my double hole rigid heddle loom.
copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay http://www.crone-findlay.com
I also used the narrow bands as the hem and other embellishments.
I cut the head, hands and feet from 1/4 inch plywood.
copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay http://www.crone-findlay.com
The wings were a serendipitous thrift shop find.
The beads around her face are a peyote stitch tube that I made a couple of years ago and have been waiting for the perfect project.
Woven on my 16 inch Mirrix loom, using Paternayan tapestry yarn that I inherited from my mother and handspun from my daughter in law.
She makes me feel happy. 🙂
Even though I haven’t been posting about my solo show of tapestries and woven works (Woven Women) that is opening in August 2014 (eep…. tick tock, tick tock…. eep), I have been working away on new pieces for it.
I noticed that the Tapestry weaving group on Ravelry (the facebook of the fibre arts world) is having a weave along in which people are weaving ‘Tapestry Diaries’.
That means that they are weaving daily, weekly or monthly, on pieces that reflect their lives in those given moments.
I have wanted to do this for several years, but just have never started one…. until, the other day, I had an ‘Aha!’ moment.
I have been contemplating a series of small woven figures- I’ve woven the faces for them, but haven’t started the bodies.
It struck me that weaving the bodies for these figures would work beautifully as a Tapestry Diary.
I got all excited about doing this, and then took the plunge and asked the moderator if I could join, even if I am late to the party.
She graciously said that I could, and so I am!
I love that the online community creates ‘Virtual Guilds’ with members from all over the planet inspiring and encouraging each other. It’s just awesome.
I decided to warp up my 8 inch Mirrix tapestry loom to get started, but I can see that I may want to warp up my 16 inch Mirrix for this, too.
Some people choose to weave very specific shapes in their tapestry diaries, like little squares or rectangles, that are quite uniform in size.
I have decided that my shape is going to be one that I have loved working with over the decades.
It’s an hourglass motif that has shown up in embroidery, weaving, stitchery, stone and metal work for thousands of years.
It’s sometimes called. ‘The Shepherdess’ motif.
I did a bunch of drawings, until I was happy with a very simple, basic shape that I think will give me lots of options for experimenting with color and pattern. Of course, I have no idea how they will turn out. 🙂
I chose to weave these figures in a fairly narrow configuration- only 3 inches wide, set at 8 ends per inch.
Here’s my loom warped up, heddled, and with the first little bit woven.
copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay http://www.crone-findlay.com
I inherited my mother’s stash of embroidery floss and threads, and will be using them in this series.
Thanks, Mom….. hope you like what I am doing with your treasures……
Noreen Crone-Findlay, designer and author
Tottie Talks Crafts Blog 