Plant Dyed Wool: Day 3-Weaving on the Brinkley Loom

 I wish I could tell you that I made this gorgeous wall hanging on my last day of Jane Meredith's plant dyed wool course. Alas, I did not. But I did spend most of that day learning how to weave using the Brinkley loom, on which this beauty was made. (Or perhaps it was in fact made on the peg loom, which I posted about earlier. I'll have to check with Jane on that.) I also had the opportunity to do some wet felting later on in the afternoon, photos of which are below.

 Here is the loom, warped up and ready to use. This one is a bit shorter than the ones Jane sells, and I managed to just about finish weaving an entire length. I stuck to blue and white wool for this project, because it's such an idiot proof color combination.

Though I kept my color palette very limited, I did experiment with different widths and textures of wool. In the photo above you can see some carded fleece I added, which gives a lovely texture to an otherwise very flat piece.

More blue. More white.

My next door loom mate Rachel very cleverly warped her loom in alternating blue and white yarn, so she was able to make a very awesome, advanced looking plaid.

After lunch I took a break from weaving to do some wet felting, which I'd only done once before many years ago. It was work! But I loved these beautiful earth tone merino wools and made a pretty wool bowl, pictured below on the left.

 That's me in the pink shirt. See? I like color.

And here is my very own Brinkley loom that I bought from Jane at the end of the course. Warped and ready to weave. With-what?! More brown and white wool. For Christmas this year, I'm going to be needing an alpaca or two. 

Plant Dyed Wool: Day 2, Peg Loom Weaving

On the second day of the plant dyed wool class I recently took, Jane Meredith taught us peg looming. I thought maybe all of those loom bands I'd been making with my kids all summer would give me a leg up on this craft, but weaving on a peg loom is actually easier than making a triple single rubber band bracelet. We had beautiful weather the last two days of the course; it was a proper Indian summer. Below is the view of the Wye river, which Jane's house overlooks. 

Peg looms are made from a simple strip of wood drilled with holes and pegged with dowels. It's incredible to think that such beautiful rugs, pillows, wall hangings, etc., can easily be made from such a basic tool. I loved this ragged Cotswold wool rug (below) that Jane showed us, and decided to make something using natural, undyed fleece straight from the sheep's back. 

The trickiest bit of weaving is warping up the loom, which wasn't all that hard to do. Below, my loom is warped and ready for weaving.

Jane demonstrates warping up.

I used a combination of brown, grey and white fleece. Most of the women around me (the course was inexplicable absent of any men) were using the colored wool we had dyed the day before. Because I worried I wind up with a tacky technicolor monstrosity if I started using colors, I decided to stick with the browns and whites.

Below, an example of the right way to use color. Each woman's weaving was so totally unique from anyone else's, it's a shame I didn't take more photos to illustrate the various possibilities.

Here is my finished weaving, which is about the size of a small bathmat. I still can't decide if I like it, but I loved making it!

By the way, if you ever find yourself looking for a place to stay near Hereford, may I enthusiastically recommend a lovely B & B called the Old Rectory in Byford. Audrey and Charles Mayson were lovely hosts, and my room was the perfect haven to return to in the evenings. 

My next and last post about this course will be about weaving on the Brinkley loom. I loved it so much a bought one from Jane, where it's currently in use on my dining room table. 

Plant Dyed Wool: Day 1

For Christmas last year my sweetie of a husband gave me the gift of a three day wool dyeing course with the amazing Jane Meredith. Nine months later I cashed in, and have just returned from a blissful long weekend in Herefordshire learning plant dyeing, carding, spinning, weaving and felting. It was completely enlightening and inspiring, and I came home with a beautiful brown fleece, a new Brinkley loom and a bunch of stuff that I made under Jane's expert tutelage.

Below are images from Day 1, was primarily about dyeing. Jane grows the dye plants in her own garden, and all of the wool you see pictured here was colored using these (apart from the indigo bath, which was synthetic, as indigo only grows in very hot climates). Among the plants we used were marigold, madder root, coreopsis, walnut leaves, damsons, dyers chamomile, woad and bilberries. As the wool was drying, Jane showed us how to examine and select a wool fleece (turns out the ones in my shed are pretty useless, as they come from sheep bred primarily for eating), gave a lesson in carding and demonstrated spinning on both a drop spindle loom and a wheel. Because Jane packs so much into each six and a half hour day, I'm dividing this post into three parts. Day two, which I'll post next, was spent weaving on a peg loom.

 Under the tarpaulin, the dye baths get heated up using gas canisters and large, portable burners.

 A sampling of the books Jane keeps on hand about plant dyeing. I've already placed my Amazon order.

 Beatrice and I picked a lot of coreopsis flowers!

 The humble marigold makes a lovely yellow dye.

 Damsons aren't just for jam. This bath gave the wool a very subtle pinkish-purple.

Madder root gives a vast array of reds, depending on the mordant agent used to pretreat the wool.

 We made a lot of yellows!

 Jane unrolls a huge fleece and shows us how to inspect one before buying.

 The takeaway: "Be very choosy about your fleece."

 The indigo bath. Once we got this going, we used it to dip some yellows to make green. Weirdly, you can't get a really good green dye from any single plant!

 Jane squeezing out the woad leaves to prepare the bath. This bath yielded both pale blue and pale green.

 Some of the post-indigo dipped greens.

Some nice carded wool, ready for spinning.

Jane demonstrates drop spindle spinning, something you're never, ever likely to see me do.