Description: Weave a 2″ wide cotton velvet ribbon using 30 pile units on an 8-shaft loom. Invent your own 10-block wide design or follow one of the profile drafts provided. Construct your velvet bobbin rack out of PVC pipe/fittings or rent one from Barbara for $20. She will mail you, a month before the workshop, those instructions, the ground warp, and the stand-in pile warp. Come to class with your loom dressed. Four shafts will control the ground weave and four shafts will manage the pile. For this project, a tableloom may be better than a treadle floorloom because you can easily select the desired pile shafts and not have the drudgery of retying treadles. To save time Barbara plans to fill half the EZ Bobs with different colors. You can choose to have all 10 pile blocks the same color or create a unique palette or spectrum. Explore the different velvet textures of cut, uncut, and voids. Try different ground weaves and a supplementary metallic weft. Weave velvet using a velvet knife and velvet wires. These tools can be borrowed for the duration of the workshop, or buy one of the precious kits for $200. Examine Barbara’s velvet collection and learn to identify Asian vs. European velvets.
Instructor: Barbara Setsu Pickett
Duration: 3-Day workshop
When: June 16, 17, 18
Level: Intermediate
Supplies that students will bring: Students will receive by mail the ground warp, the stand-in pile warps & instructions for dressing looms. Students should bring:
- 4 or 8 shaft table or floorloom dressed with ground warps, stand-in pile warps w/8-dent reed
- PVC velvet bobbin rack you’ve built yourself (cost approx. $65) or rent from Barbara (Students will be emailed instructions for building their velvet bobbin racks out of PVA pipe/fittings, or rent one from Barbara for $20).
- a smooth rod or boat shuttle bobbin to lift the pile above the ground warp on the back beam
- 32-64 (½ oz) tear-drop fishing lead weights or substitute steel washers
- bring as much sewing thread on spools as you can gather for the pile
- 4 empty cardboard cones for the floating selvages or your own system for floating selvages
- sley hook
- tapestry needle
- small scissors
- measuring tape
- short ruler
- belt shuttle with a tapered edge, not a blunt edge like in a stick shuttle for ground weft
- small shuttle or bobbin for supplementary metallic weft
- 6 brass slats for velvet rods (can buy from Barbara 6 velvet rods for $10 or borrow)
- scalpel handle/2 (#15) blades (can buy from Barbara scalpel handle & 2 blades for $10 or borrow)
- optional: bobbin winder with thick shaft like the Swedish LeClerc used to wind EZ Bobs with pile unit, if possible
Fee: $50
Materials Included: ground warp, dummy warp, cost of mailing warps 1-month before workshop, ground weft, supplementary metallic enrichment wefts, 32 EZ Bobs for pile warp units.