Group G meeting on Saturday, December 5, 2015, at Marti Teitlebaum’s house
Present: Anne S-W, Jeanne Jarvis, Ellen DeCarlo, Elizabeth Assink, Laritza Rodriguez, Pat Bingham, Carol
Brobst, Edith Isaacs, Kate Phelan
First we went over the calendar to incorporate some changes.
Date
January 16
Hostess
Carol Brobst
February 20
March 19
Susan Elliot
Pat Bingham
April 16
May 21 (?)
Jean Beaudry
Program
Carol will show sprang. She will send a supply list and if you bring
supplies, you can learn sprang! If you don’t bring supplies please
come and enjoy.
Pat will show us her barn loom! We learned at the meeting that
“barn” is an evolution of the original name (?) and it does not
refer to a barn.
For our May meeting, we hope to visit Tom Knisely and Sara
Bixler in their new workshop/studio/store: Red Stone Glen Fiber
Arts Retreat, 1785 York Road, Dover , PA, 17315
Carol showed us some of her sprang work. She has been making hats and has sold some at the gallery.
She passed around a hat she was still working on, small bags, and a larger piece with several different
techniques (sprangs?) shown. At our January meeting, we will be making the small bags. The
expandable string shopping bags are made by sprang(ing). Laritza has some sprang bags from Columbia,
her home country, that she will show us in January.
Some tips from Carol
 sprang is easier with two colors than with one because it easier to see
 smooth yarns work easier than sticky
 a ruler that is beveled makes a good beater
Next we talked about our 2015-16 challenge projects
 Carol made a very attractive sample by wrapping some of her yarns around a flat art canvas and
needle-weaving with other colors. This was to help decide what warp would look best with the
weft. It was a very attractive and compact sample and would be a good sampling technique for
saving and filing samples.
 Edith selected the colors from her stash and is considering what to make.
 Kate finished her project – a transparency gamp using three different transparency techniques.
She thought it was ugly in large part because of the unevenness of the open background fabric
made with finer threads. The first comment from wonderful Group G was, “How did you beat so
evenly?”
Lessons learned:
 laying the pattern threads in tabby sheds along with the background threads allows more
finely shaped patterns than laying the pattern threads in as a 3:1 twill
 laying in the pattern threads as floats that are anchored at each end by going through the
fabric gives the greatest pattern freedom, but the size of the patterns is limited by the float
length

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for better visibility of the pattern with the light on the surface side, higher contrast from the
background is good; low contrast only shows the pattern well when the light comes through
if you think your weaving is ugly, bring it to Group G to have your mind changed
We had a general discussion of color while looking at Carol’s sample. These points apply when the warp
and the weft are different colors.
 Plain weave has the most interlacement of threads, so blends the colors more than other
structures (optical blending)
 Colors can look very different in plain weave versus twill
 Floats catch the light, causing their colors to pop out more
 Crackle weave “sucks up the color”
A fun project would be to weave various structures using the same warp and weft colors (different from
each other) in all structures to see the effect on the colors.
Marti then showed us her Saori loom and her dobby loom.
 The Saori loom is very pretty. It is a four harness loom and the harnesses drop to create the
shed. It had some nice convenience factors, including a built-in bobbin winder and a small shelf
on the castle. The Soari loom can be used for all kinds of weaving, not only Soari.
 The dobby loom is 24 harness and is NON-compu. The pegs are set by hand based on a pattern
‘lift plan’ that can be created on Fiberworks software. Marti was weaving a twill that looked
rather complex and beautiful. The dobby loom is a very early computer – the pegs in the bars
work in the same way as holes in a computer punch card. 0 or 1 = up or down.
Anne asked us to notice any tips or techniques we use that may be new to others and bring them to
the group. As an example, she told us about a tip she learned: when tying on to the loom, tie the first
bundle, advance the tension one click, tie the second bundle, advance the tension on click, etc. In the
end, the tension will be even or close to even.
And after all that, we had show-and tell! I chose to enjoy rather than take notes but I will mention,
because the question was asked, that Ellen produced the nice color transitions in her scarf using
Fibonacci numbers.