3 Day Beginner Tablet Weaving Class with John Mullarkey

Tablet Woven Bands I created in John Mullarkey's Class

I didn't know where to start with my experience at my first Midwest Weaver's Conference, so I'll begin with the class I took. I have wanted to take a John Mullarkey class since I first saw his work with students (I think) back in 2014 at a Michigan League of Handweaver's Conference that I was also teaching at.  Tablet weaving on a small loom seemed like a kind of intricate technique that I'd love so when I noticed that he was teaching a 3 Day beginner class at Midwest Weavers Conference, and it wasn't going to overlap any of the classes I was teaching I signed up the minute registration opened. 

Day 1

My classes ended up being cancelled but Sarah had decided to join me for this conference so we were already good to go for a fiber vacation. I knew a little bit about tablet weaving from following John and Inge Dam's work but the concept of how it worked was totally foreign to me. I knew this was something I was never going to have the patience to teach myself and 3 days of working with this technique would be a good start. 

Day 2 playing

Makeshift "cones"

I didn't follow directions well from the supplies list, for the continuous warp (we learned how to do on day 2) I needed to be able to pull my cotton from 4 cones, 2 of each color. I had 1 cone of black, one of white. So the night before I took the coffee cups in the hotel room and created makeshift-cones which actually worked out pretty well. I did get the correct inkle loom and tablet weaving cards from Woven Art and ordered my 10/2 cotton from Yarn Barn of Kansas. I purchased some "John Mullarkey Official" tablet weaving cards from in class too. His cards are a little smaller and I'm wondering if they might be easier for my hands to twist them. 

Schacht Tablet Weaving Cards

Something that surprisingly helped me with this class was my earbuds. Once students got going on how to use the latest technique we had learned it was difficult for me to tune out conversations and chit chat. So when I was feeling frustrated I'd plug-in. Listening to music that I already knew all the words to helped me focus on the project. I don't like feeling like I'm being rude or trying to ignore people so I'd let my table-mate Kate know I was plugging in but to tap me if I needed to pay attention and that I wasn't trying to ignore her or John. It ended up helping my focus big-time. 

Day 3: Double Faced

I also totally lucked out with having my table-mate, Kate. She's John's self-proclaimed "stalker" as she's taken a ton of his classes but needed to brush up since her last few years had been rough and she was out of practice with her tablet weaving. She was there, focusing, like me but basically already knew the process and she was helpful when I didn't realize I should be asking for help. 

I also pointed out to her that if I wasn't sure I was doing something correctly I'd put my name on the board to have John come and check my work. I used to not like to bother instructors, but then when I became one, from that perspective, I'd always rather come check on a student's work than have them get so far off in left field that it's nearly impossible to backtrack. My biggest problem with tablet weaving so far is my tension. Way too tight (warp and weft) and then when I loosen up pulling my weft I go too loose.  This is another reason I want to practice regularly and pay attention to how my motifs are coming out. 

I love this new technique. I learned much more in 3 days than I would have ever thought possible. John is an excellent instructor, I'm excited to start practicing tablet weaving more at home. I have a few other things to get off of my plate before I can really get lost in it, but the inkle loom and 10/2 cotton has already found a spot in the house where I can pick it up and play with it for a few hours here and there.

Neutral Green with Fuchsia Pop Jewelry Grouping

I like to change up the colors that I'm using a few times a year.  I knew I needed a change but to break away I turned to Pinterest to get inspired by new colors. I still dabble in tracking current fashion so among my "pins" for 2023 a lovely blend of neutral greens with a pop of bright fuchsias called to me. It's not a big shift for me because I'm using my favorite greens, but it's a nice big break from navy blues and purples.

Tiny Pod Earrings for sale HERE

Tiny Pod Earrings 2 for sale HERE

I wear the tiny pod earrings at work all the time, so I seem to start there with my color play these days. I found a movement variation that I liked and made a simple St. Petersburg Chain bracelet with that same color flow. 

St. Petersburg Chain Simple Fade Bracelet for sale HERE

Medium Open Pod Earrings for sale HERE

Then on to leaves. I might still be playing with these colors but I wanted to get these posted and up for sale on my website. I'm getting very nice responses on my social media about this set, why let people wait? 

Leaf Clasp Bracelet for sale HERE

Mixed Stitches Curve Bangle (Experimental)

This piece started with my desire to get a curved St. Petersburg chain into my bangle design.  In it, not just attached to it. I started sketching and doodling, but at the end of the day I don't have a specific method of integrating these two ideas so I had to start making pieces.

First I didn't know what I wanted the middle accent bead of the curved pieces to be so I started there.  I knew I wanted to use the navy blue 15/0's as the main color and just started stitching rows with the different accent beads I had chosen.

I picked a middle faceted seed bead for the navy St. Petersburg chain and proceeded to start making short strips of it.  I had figured how much arching it could possibly take in this size and about the right length.  I also figured only 4 total would fit within the bangle structure I was planning, 2 on each side. This was way more planning than I usually like to do with my beading but I really really needed this design idea to get out of my head and into an actual form. I didn't know if it would "work" or not.

I tried to keep the bangles designs for the outside parts easy and not too busy. Working a kind-of blended horizontal stripe in the colors of the dress I was matching, I prepared these pieces separately. Eventually it was pieced together and its...ok.  I stopped before I got to filling in the whole piece with beads (which was my original plan). Leaving it open allowed for the St. Petersburg Chain arches to try to hold their own. If I kept beading and filled it in the chain would have gotten lost and there would have been no point putting in all the extra effort to make it in this way. I think. I could be wrong. 

It was as finished as I thought it should be. I let it sit, I wore it to Abigail's wedding layered with some other beaded pieces. It's fine but I'm not in love with it. I thought it had the potential to be a piece I could submit to exhibits but it's not there and the design kind-of fell flat for me. Sometimes our ideas are much more glorious in our minds and the reality isn't as exciting. I'm perfectly fine with not-exciting though. I think it's going to grow on me a bit more and it could be that start to something else in the future. It is time to move on to another project with different colors. I think I've been looking a blends of blues and purples for too long now and they're wearing on me. Onward and upward.

Abigail's Wedding Hair Pins

I dabble in bead embroidery when it's needed for specific pieces. In these cases I'm usually matching or complimenting some other design.  For example the bead embroidered Tiara piece that I created for Helen a few years ago. When some of my dear friends announce that they are getting married I offer to bead something for them for their wedding outfit if it calls for it. Not everyone takes me up on it, and if I don't think I can do what they want I let them know. 

Detail photo I was working off of from Abigail

Abigail asked if it was possible to do some beadwork for her hair that went with her dress. She sent me plenty of photos of the beadwork on her dress and sizes of beads and sequins to work with. I wasn't sure I could do it since I've never worked with sequins before but I started researching and playing. As I went down the sequin rabbit-hole I found this fabulous website to purchase sequins. 

I stitched a few pieces at a time on one piece of satin

I compiled white, off white and silver beads from my stash along with ordering a few different sequins that I thought would hopefully work. I mailed the sequin samples to Abigail to compare to her dress...whites and the various finishes are so hard to photograph and guess at! Once I had enough information and color options I started stitching. 

I always think that I don't like bead embroidery but these were super-fun. I was really amazed at how well they clustered together in Abigail's hair for her wedding. Her hair dresser did an amazing job at making the ones she chose to use look like they were all one piece. Her hair dresser had requested I put them on 2 inch U-pins which I ordered from Amazon. 

Abigail's Wedding Hair!

We had such a great time at all of the wedding festivities and getting to catch up with friends old and new. I'm always honored to have something that I handmade as part of a friend's wedding. Thank you for including us and congrats Abigail and Juan!

Lastly, I loved photographing these. I wished I had a macro lens to really get better detail of the sequins and beads together.  I'm am by no means a professional photographer but I took a lot of photos as close as I could get.  The shapes drew me in. So this blog post has extra photos!

Sampling for the Anger Weaving

I don't often sample before I start in on a new large piece but I've decided to try to work with a "stash" yarn from a collection that I call "Sally's Mom's Stash." I started by making sure it would dye over the "hornet blue" color that it's label says it is. I had a lot of fun playing with dyeing again and had to keep reminding myself that it was just for a sample. Not that I wouldn't possibly be using excess weft yarn for the final piece, but I needed to not be too hard on myself about re-dyeing colors until they felt right.

I posted a lot of video of this process and my weaving, teaching myself how to use Instagram reels (with some help from WeaverBee) and encouragement from other colleagues and friends. I hate posting video but I'm getting more comfortable with it. Some of these videos even make it over to my YouTube Channel:

I have to admit, after finishing this sample piece, which doesn't look like much, I was no longer excited about having this warp on my loom. This is why I prefer to put on a fresh warp for every new piece. The colors aren't right for the final project and I've gotten what I need from the sample weaving. What to do now?  I fixed a warping error in the reed and decided to try creating a smaller piece with another idea I've been trying to work out.

I let this warp sit for a few days and then did a quick draft of this idea that I've been struggling to get the imagery on. It'll end up being a finished piece rather than another sample and I'm surprised at just how much I like how it's turning out. More to come on that piece. For now, I'll be weaving on this warp while I start to break down and print out the large cartoon for the anger weaving to be taped together. I'm still working on a final title which is why it's just called the anger weaving right now. 

Denim Skirt, Because I can't stop starting new projects!

Over the past few years, as our concert-going has picked up, I have missed having a dark denim skirt in my collection as an option. Sometime in February, as I thought about what I wanted to wear to our next show (Anti-Flag and Flogging Molly) the stack of old jeans in my studio started calling to me.  I started in on this skirt a week before the show.

Cutting, pinning, dyeing, stitching and more pinning and stitching.  I have piles of beads all over my sewing table (a few too many projects going) and I didn't feel like relocating them to get to my sewing machine so I decided to finger-press and hand stitch this skirt. 

I caught most of it on hyper-lapse video.  The seam ripping and stitching at least. I compiled it into the following video with a rambling voice-over:

(I do not pretend to be good at video or editing, 

I figure the more I make myself do it, hopefully I'll get a little better)

I also threw it in a black dye bath with over double black dye I think that it should need and it still only came out dark blue. I'm not sure if maybe the fiber content isn't 100% cotton (as the label says) or if I just need to keep dyeing. There was no time, and, lets face it, I wanted to do some black sashiko stitching on it before it's first concert.

2 nights before the concert my brain wouldn't let me go back to sleep at 4am.  I had been looking at a lot of denim skirts and patches were on my brain.  I added a patch added at about 5:30am, I hated it, asked Bryan when he thought, then I cut the patch out around the spiral stitching that afternoon...I felt really off from not sleeping and for whatever reason, not being able to nap, so I just stitched. I'm going to continue to do various types of black stitching on this skirt so that it'll get darker from the embroidery floss even if I can't get the denim to fully dye black. Thus I have created another personal piece that will probably never quite be done, it'll morph and be a little different every time I wear it. Which is pretty fun. 

I have been getting into a different head space about hand stitching. It's not "too slow" its meditative and controlled. I no longer look at the time that it takes and, just like beads, one stitch at a time...one bead at a time...all of the work that I create is slow and builds up over time to become something wonderful. Everything good takes time and patience. I'm pretty over how fast everything is moving. The days and projects have been flying by despite my attempt to go slower.  How the heck did I finish a hand-stitched skirt in a week in the mornings and my lunch breaks?? It just...happened...and I enjoyed every stitch. 

standard concert dirty bathroom mirror selfie

What a great show!  It was worth being tired.

It turns out I had forgotten how to dye black and I needed to move my bucket dyeing to stove-top.  I need black for my next weaving so figuring out where I flubbed up became important...and I got it. Now I can put it in the closet for the next show or whenever I feel like stitching black again. 

I think it's going to go with most of my wardrobe..

Sequin Circle Chain Earrings

Sequin Circle Chain Earrings

1.25W x 2T x .4D

When I finished up the blue/purple versions of my original Open Circle Chain Earrings I was on to a beading project that involved sequin. That project is for a friend's wedding so that will remain a surprise. Now I have a bunch of sequin in my stash and I didn't want to stop playing with them. I had gotten some really big ones and they called to me. 

I woke up at 4am one morning and it dawned on me that I should try putting them in the middle of my beaded circles (basically mini bangles). I didn't have my sketchbook on my night stand, I haven't needed it there in quite a long time so I was up and drawing out ideas before it became a fleeting dream. 

This first pair with only 2 sequins in the middle was definitely a learning experience, I broke a few beads trying to place the sequins. They didn't dangle quite like I had expected, but on the other hand they are so tight in the middle of the circle they stay put even when circle spins and they jut up from the bottom. 

Dress print for this set

I went with this color choice based on a dress I purchased that I thought I would wear to the wedding mentioned above.  Then I found a second dress (which is the color scheme from the first round of Open Circle Earrings), so we'll see what pans out for that. I like to have options 

Sequin Circle Chain Earrings

1.6W x 3T x .4D

This second, much larger pair I did want to dangle and see what more sequins would do. To keep them towards the top of the circle the next chain sets in the middle of them. I'm thinking about working with some of the smaller sequins but they are much more lightweight and static-y so they will function in slightly different ways and now I have to go sketch out those ideas that are popping up as I type!

All of my most recent circle chain earring (from this post and the last) will be at my Artist Pop-Up this Saturday, March 18th, at the Gutman Gallery, 118 N. 4th Ave, in Kerrytown Ann Arbor, 11am-5pm