This is the 15th year of continuous daily publication for 365Caws. All things considered, it's likely it will be the last year as it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to find interesting material. However, I hope that I may have inspired someone to a greater curiosity about the natural world with my natural history posts, or encouraged a novice weaver or needleworker. If so, I've done what I set out to do.
Sunday, March 16, 2025
Rigid Heddle Cats
Day 155: Between the linen cupboard and the door into the bathroom, there is a six-inch wide bit of wall which hosts an assortment of changeable bell-pull style fiberarts acknowledging the changing of the seasons. Aside from Christmas, it's the only seasonal decorating I do. Not all the pieces match to a specific holiday, but examples of those which do would include krokbragd sheep for spring, tvistsöm or woven birds for summer, satin stitch/hardanger acorns for autumn, and hardanger poinsettias for winter. Having developed a rigid-heddle pattern for cats, I thought it might be nice to acknowledge Merry's birthday with a cat panel. That said, the grey cats in this little design have tails. Merry only has a stub. Working at 15 epi using 8/2 cotton, the piece was woven with a pickup stick on alternate rows to provide the cat pattern. In between, I wove white tabby (over and under), using floating selvedge threads. The pattern threads must also be taken out to the edges, passing over or under the floating selvedges as appropriate. I had to place dividers between the cats to keep floats on the reverse from being too long. I found that taking both floating selvedge threads either "up" or "down" on each pick worked best for this design. Given the nature of the weave, sometimes a grey thread would get trapped under the tabby pass as they occasionally do in any overshot, but these were easily brought to the surface with a yarn needle and should not be problematic once the fibers have been fulled by washing (not yet done in the image).
Labels:
bell pull,
cats,
Merry's birthday,
rigid heddle,
weaving
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