Cool Cross

I've been sharing on Facebook a piece of weaving that I've been experimenting with this week.  The technique is called Cool Cross and involves making a 3D fabric out of a flat piece of weaving.  The finished weave results in a fabric that opens out and sits at right angles to itself.

Hopefully you can see that the two halves of the cloth loop through each other across the middle.

On the loom it looks like this

It looks really complicated but effectively you are weaving to get two separate pieces with two selvedges each by going underneath the warps.  You can see this in the photo above.  When you set up the warp you can leave a couple of empty dents in the reed to delineate the sections and make life easier when you take the shuttle through.  It is very easy to snag the wrong warps.  Just as I have lifted up the left hand purply strip I can also lift the pink side, they both sit free of the fabric below.

I will get round to trying this again and have a hankering to use wintery colours to make a sparkly mobile.  You could do this on any kind of loom.

Wells Art Trail II

We pottered off to Norfolk after seeing a video clip on Facebook of the Lifeboat Horse sculpture by Rachel Long here.  The cottage we stayed in looked out over the marshes and we could see the horse from an upstairs window.

The tide only covered the feet on our last day as the tides were all very low while we were there. 

I've still not managed to see the Anthony Gormley metal sculptures in Lancashire but I'm delighted to have seen this Lifeboat Horse.  You can really feel the wight of the horse and I have been fascinated by the rendering of the head which is a beautiful shape.

The other work I really wanted to see was View From the Shipwrights by Debbie Lyddon whose work I have followed on't internet for some time.  I got rather carried away trying to capture the piece in various lights and in many states of movement, especially as the wind was trying to rip it from its masts.

You can read more about Debbie's work for the Art Trail here.  Do click on the photos in this post to see them in a larger format.  There's also an interview with Debbie Lyddon here.

Seeing Debbie's work and the way she has used spaces in the fabric has sparked off potential thoughts for weaving techniques and ways of making see-through areas in my cloth.  I've already experimented with something called cool cross which enables you to open out the fabric and create movement so there may be more to come.   (Excuse the vibrant colour in this otherwise calm post).

Watch this space (no pun intended).

The cottage we stayed in was right on the quay so we could enjoy the changing views from our bedroom window.  You can't beat Norfolk skies.

 Not exactly from our cottage but the iconic Wells view across to the Granary.

TAST

Please excuse me if I'm a bit terse today but I am not feeling too well and I'm not sure whether it's my usual problem or whether I've picked up a virus. Either way I had a couple of fainty turns yesterday and I feel washed out today so I shall be brief.

~

I haven't a lot to show in the way of craftyness but I have been trying to catch up on my Take a Stitch stitches over on Stitching Fingers. The latest three are shown below and are pretty much self-explanatory. I bought the base cloth in a charity (op) shop a couple of weeks ago and thought its open weave would be ideal for doing these stitches on. Unfortunately it's a bit of a bright colour and doesn't photograph too well, it doesn't go with many colour either........

I really like featherstitch and I'm sure there are lots of other variations I could use.

I didn't know fly stitch at all before this exercise but I can see it has lots of possibilities. There is a lot more yellow in the original colours of these threads, blame my laptop.

I know I could exploit this stitch much more but I was tired when I did it so more work required.

I have been given 2 blog awards but I will post them later as I am off for a little snooze zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Ooh! I just have to say, thank goodness Gustav was bad enough but not the terrible disaster everyone was dreading. My thoughts are with all those who now have to deal with its aftermath.