Our recent cold spell interrupted my weaving plans. It was so cold we closed off my sewing room to conserve heat in the rest of the house. So I couldn't get to my table loom. I finally got my bookmarks done, but I lost weaving momentum and mentally set the crackle pine tree table runner aside for now. I'd like to rethink it anyway. The bookmarks were interesting, but for the tree motif, I think I like 8-shaft summer-and-winter designs better.
Even though I couldn't get to my loom, I had plenty of time to start thinking about my genealogy weaving project. And I made some decisions on how to approach it (my list of decisions to be made is in this post.)
- I want to use the correct fiber types for the time period, but I don't want to spin my own yarns.
- Ditto for the colors. I want to approximate them but without dyeing my own yarns.
- I'm not going to worry about period equipment, I'll use what I've got.
- Size of samples will be standard notebook size. The plan is to weave 3 of each sample, and make 3 notebooks, one for myself and one for each of my kids.
Another decision to be made is sample order in the notebook. I plan to start with the present and work my way back. But there is some overlap of years. For example, my American ancestors date from 1620 to present, while my Irish ancestor arrived in Canada around 1825. My Prussian ancestor arrived in 1783 to fight for the British in the American Revolution. So, overlapping of dates.
There's no time table for this project, but I suspect it will take quite awhile. I'm starting with research for American weaving, but I'll put all that in a separate post.
