Mini projects and what I learned from them (part 1)

Dressmaker's dummy – I made it (with my daughter's help) with cardboard and duct tape using my own body as the form. I stuffed it with crumpled newspapers around an empty shoebox. I was exploring whether I could weave the JACKET right on the dummy. It became a useful object in its own right, but I couldn't immediately see how it would work to hold the warp for the JACKET.

At first I thought the way to hold the warp in place was with holding stitches on a cardboard form

First collar project – I combined a warp faced strip as an edge of the plain weave body of the project. I used a shaped cardboard loom on which I charted the warp and weft. Holding stitches held the warp threads in place. I tested a curved warp and the idea of leaving holes in the weft to be dealt with like drawn thread work. The method of joining the warp faced strip with the plain weave worked but was very cumbersome.

Slippers – From what I learned making the dressmaker's dummy, I built a form for each of my husband's feet. I then created cardboard pieces with holding stitches in them and which attached to the form. I used the slipper project to find out how to create shaping in both the warp and weft. It is necessary to add shaping by adding pairs of threads to maintain the over-under pattern, so shaping is done as wedges.