My first attempt at weaving on a loom, and boy do I wish
my dear Äiti could see this, I know my Äiti would be so proud of me.
When I was a child I remember watching my mother cutting and then
rolling into a balls old sheets, old shirts, dresses etc. She would
spend hour upon hour doing this on our balcony. Once she had a large
pile of rolled fabrics, she would then go to the "Matto Lady" who then
would weave these into beautifully coloured carpets. As children it was
so fun to see my old used cloths woven into our carpets.
So,
when I had the chance to try this craft at my school I was so excited.
Please do not zoom in too much on this picture. There are alot of
mistakes, but hopefully with teaching and practice, I will learn this beautiful craft.
CHRISTMAS RUG
In this course we had to make a weaving project of some sorts. Last fall I found this lovely red Table runner in a Kirppis ( used clothing store). I loved the pattern and colours. It was so very traditionally "Finnish". So, I decided that the project I wanted to weave was a red Christmas carpet with the same colours and designs.
In the above two pictures you can see the start of my carpet. It took along time to set up the loom, and figure out the pattern for my design.
I struggled with making the carpet for the first day. I thought about it over the weekend, and wondered how can I make weaving this carpet easier for me. I went and redrew my pattern on a paper, and then put the right colours to the right peddles, so when I wove I knew exactly which colour I am doing next. When I started to weave on Tuesday morning, the weaving just became so easy and I suddenly was making the carpet much much faster.
I constantly rechecked my work, to make sure I didn't miss any of the design etc. I did find a few mistakes as I wove, but the mistakes were so small that I decided to leave them.
So, as you can see in the picture below, the carpet turned out great. I was really nervous taking it off the loom. Not sure what I would find, was my mistakes visible, was my carpet edges going all nice and straight. etc.etc. Anyways, I can't wait to put it on my kitchen floor for Christmas.
