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All the projects

Today I show you all the projects I have going on at the same time, perhaps as a way to get away for a second from stress at work and a world that isn’t always kind.

I cleaned out my bags and baskets of unfinished when I was putting together the last pieces of the manuscript for my book back in September. There was too much clutter in my mind. Once I had sent the manuscript to my editor I had time to craft, time that I had spent on writing for the past year, time I hadn’t allowed myself to craft anything other than words. Now I got that time back, a wave of projects came to me, many of which had lived in my mind for a while, projects I knew I wanted to explore. Techniques, designs or ideas that I needed to have gone through my mind.

Spedetröja/Danish night sweater

The spedetröja or Danish night sweater, a traditional sweater in Denmark and the southernmost regions of Sweden. A simple construction with patterns in panels and a knit and purl star pattern as the main event. I knit it in a handspun Svärdsjö yarn and I loved the result. Quite time consuming with the 2.5 millimeter needles and 700 grams of handspun yarn, but a lovely knit.

Two natural white sleeves mid-knit, with two bals of yarn between them. The sleeves are made in a knit and purl star motif.

A muddy dye bath

My new project within that project was to dye it, with extractions from my homegrown Japanese indigo. I hadn’t made a vat before and it turned out to be difficult. I gathered the 8 grams of extracted Maruba indigo from my 2023 and 2024 harvests and played the chemist all over the bathroom. In all the stress of getting things right I managed to get some of the proportions wrong and the many times dipped sweater stayed undyed, with perhaps a light tint of mud.

I shed a tear or two but reminded myself of my friend Cecilia’s kind words, “You can always overdye it”. And I did. I got commercially grown indigo and set up a new vat, with the right proportions this time. I dipped and I dipped and there was no blue in sight. More tears were shed. Cecilia guided me into making a fermentation vat out of my mud bath and that’s where I am at the moment. The whole project makes me sad, but I stick to Cecilia’s wise words and knowledge.

Apart from the sweater I had prepared a piece of wool/linen twill from a small Austrian mill that I wanted to dye. My plan is to sew a bodice. But I don’t want to dip it in the vat until I know I can rely on it. Time will tell. As will the mud bath.

A contemporary Victorian walking skirt

The same bolt of wool/linen twill is the material for a Victorian walking skirt I stumbled upon about a year ago. I have sewn for many years, mainly clothes for myself, but stopped when my first child was born. I didn’t want to risk having pins on the floor. He’s almost 22 now and has his own apartment. He may still crawl around on our floor from time to time, but he and his sister, are big enough now to handle more complicated things than pins on the floor. As it happens, he is sitting right in front of me, sewing a laundry bag out of an old seat cover. And he is wise enough to baste. Anyway, I have found my way back to sewing lately and I’m enjoying it tremendously.

A Victorian walking skirt in a wool/linen twill (I honestly don’t know which side to use as the right side they’re both so beautiful), and a cotton/linen rose fabric as lining.

I cut the fabric for the walking skirt – in a contemporary length –feeling giddy of the idea of sewing it. Just the concept of something called a walking skirt from a time and a social tier when women weren’t supposed to walk for the sake of walking and the fashion didn’t allow a comfortable stride. A world about to change, giving the vote to women just a couple of decades later, women taking more independent steps into the world. Who wouldn’t want a walking skirt then? Also, the model is just smashing with the flat front and the gathered back. I eBayed a linen/cotton fabric with pink roses for the lining. I’m definitely not a rose person, but I firmly believe in scrumptious lining patterns, and so roses it is.

Trousers in Japanese

There was enough fabric for more projects, and I decided on a pair of trousers. The idea came quite recently – I had made two pairs of pants this summer from vintage handwoven Chinese fabrics and bought more for another two pairs, and when I saw the remaining fabric after I had cut the pieces for the skirt I knew a pair of trousers would be the thing. My mother sew lots of clothes for me when I was growing up, but never trousers. She was of the opinion that they were complicated to make and rarely had a comfortable fit. So I didn’t sew trousers either. I’m making up for that trouserless sewing experience now!

Close-up of a sewing machine outdoors, with a hand steering a blue fabric underneath the presser foot. A rosy fabric in the background.
Josefin on the floor cutting out fabric. A spinning wheel by the window in the background.
Some trouser sewing on the balcony in July (left), with rosy pocket lining. The sewing machine is my 1965 Husqvarna 2000, weighing about 17 kilos [37.5 pounds], and she works like a dream. To the right I’m cutting out fabric for another pair of trousers.

I had bought a book of a modular system for trouser designs – different styles, fits and details you could match to build your trousers according to your own preferences. A challenge no doubt, and one I was glad to take on. The biggest challenge, though, was that the book and the patterns are written in Japanese… Instead of letting that stop me I crawled around on the floor, chasing the right pieces for the pants on the three gigantic pattern sheets, with my Google Translate app as my saviour.

A sewing pattern written in Japanese with a phone showing the Google Translate app.
Why make sewing easy when you can cut the pattern from a book in a language and a writing system you don’t know?

And oh, I just had to start a sashiko mending project for a pair of much loved jeans. Despite an aching left thumb after pushing the needle through the denim so many times I did it in just a couple of days. It’s finished now and I’m very pleased with it.

A walking leg, dressed in jeans. There is a grid on the thigh, marking where the stitches go in an ongoing sashiko mending.
A jean leg on a clothes line. There is a sashiko stitch star motif sewn onto the thigh.
I needed my trousers mid-mending and went for a walk. Now they are finished and the help lines are gone.

There is spinning too, don’t you worry. I have started spinning a z-plied yarn for two-end (or twined) knitting and I really love the result. I have spent many hours on the floor teasing the wool with my mini combs before carding and spinning.

Rose brown 2-ply yarn.
A rose brown Värmland fleece has turned into a sweet Z-plied yarn for two-end (twined) knitting.

Happy spinning!

You can find me in several social media:

  • This blog is my main channel. This is where I write weekly posts, mainly about spinning. Do subscribe!
  • I share essay-style writing on Substack. Come and have a look!
  • My youtube channel is where I release a lot of my videos. Subscribe to be sure not to miss anything!
  • I have a facebook page where I link to all my blog posts, you are welcome to follow me there.
  • I run an online spinning school, welcome to join a course! You can also check out my course page for courses in Sweden or to book me for a lecture.
  • On Patreon you can get early access to new videos and other Patreon only benefits. The contributions from my patrons are an important way to cover the costs, time and energy I put into the videos and blog posts I create. You can read more about my Patreon page here.
  • Follow me on Instagram.  I announce new blog posts, share images from behind the scenes and post lots of woolliness.
  • Read the book Knit (spin) Sweden! by Sara Wolf. I am a co-author and write in the fleece section about how I spin yarn from Swedish sheep breeds.
  • I am writing a book! In the later half of 2025 Listen to the wool: A why-to guide for mindful spinning will be available. Read more about the book here.
  • In all the social media I offer, you are more than welcome to contact me. Interacting with you helps me make better content. My private Facebook page, however, will remain private.
  • I support Centro de textiles tradicionales del Cusco, a group of talented textile artists in Cusco, Peru who dedicate their work to the empowerment of weavers through the revitalization and sustainable practice of Peruvian ancestral textiles in the Cusco region. Please consider supporting their work by donating to their causes.
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Walking waulking

In September my friend Cecilia and I visited the Skansen open air museum, where one of perhaps five fulling mills in Sweden is situated. Outside the mill the visitors were welcome into a wooden tub for some walking waulking.

We were thrilled when we saw the fulling mill, I knew it was there but I had never seen it. Cecilia hopped right into the wooden tub outside the mill and started waulking with her feet. I was reluctant at first, but Cecilia persuaded me to hop in the tub. I did, and feeling the wooden tub and the wet wool against my bare feet was surprisingly thrilling.

A woman stand-ins in a wooden tub, trouser legs folded up. A clothes line behind her.
A woman walking in a wooden tub. Two women sitting beside her, dresser in historical costumes.
Outside the fulling mill at Skansen open air museum the visitors are welcome to try walking waulking in a wooden tub.

As I splashed my feet in the tub I thought of a failed fulling experience at another fulling mill.

Fulling mill in Dala-Floda

Back in May I visited the fulling mill in Dala-Floda with my wool traveling club. I had brought six fabrics to full, three of which were woven with my handspun yarn. The fabric I had the highest hopes for was woven with Gute wool. I spun it back in 2018, and made a woven swatch that I fulled, just to see how it behaved. It fulled very fast and beautifully and I decided to use the yarn to weave a fabric with the intention of fulling it.

A piece of stiff paper with staples of wool, yarn samples and woven and knitted swatches. One swatch has been fulled and is smaller and denser than the others.
My wool board for the fulling mill with the evenly fulled woven swatch top right.

The strange thing was that the Gute weave was the weave that was fulled the least in the fulling mill – only 23 per cent of the total area. This annoyed me since I knew it had fulled so evenly and easily when I first spun it. My theory was that the lanolin must have stiffened and worked as a barrier against the fulling.

A fabric in a very loose sett.
A fabric in a somewhat loose sett.
Enormous forces with only wood, wool and water at the fulling mill back in May. The Gute weave raw (center) and fulled at the fulling mill (right). The shrinkage was 23 per cent.

A tub in the living room

A couple of weeks after the tub waulking in the September sun, I decided to try it at home with my Gute weave, with the addition of soap. I figured that if the soap could clean the lanolin off the weave on top of acting as a fulling agent, chances were that the fabric would shrink properly.

Two feet walking in a pink plastic tub. On the floor a kettle, a bottle of soap and a water jug.
No wooden tub and no September sun, but still a fully functioning tub for waulking my Gute weave.

I had no wooden tub and no fulling mill backdrop. Instead I spent half an hour every evening for a week or so waulking while listening to the audio version of Jane Eyre. I was quite generous with both warm water and soap to speed the fulling process up a bit. After a total of perhaps three hours I was happy with the result. The fabric had shrunk 73 per cent from the raw weave, and very evenly, just like my original swatch had. What was once more of a net than a weave had now become a heavily fulled 4 millimeter thick fabric.

A densely fulled fabric.
The weave is finished after the walking waulking, 28 x 150 centimeters and 4 millimeters thick.

When I first got the idea to full the fabric my plan was to sew a vest from it. But now, at only 28 x 150 centimeters [11 x 60inches] there won’t be enough fabric for a vest. Even if there was, it would probably have been too dense and warm for me. Perhaps I’ll sew a pair of mittens and add some embroidery. The possibilities are many.

Read about the fulled pillowcases I made from three of the other weaves I waulked in the fulling mill in May.

Happy spinning!

You can find me in several social media:

  • This blog is my main channel. This is where I write weekly posts, mainly about spinning. Do subscribe!
  • I share essay-style writing on Substack. Come and have a look!
  • My youtube channel is where I release a lot of my videos. Subscribe to be sure not to miss anything!
  • I have a facebook page where I link to all my blog posts, you are welcome to follow me there.
  • I run an online spinning school, welcome to join a course! You can also check out my course page for courses in Sweden or to book me for a lecture.
  • On Patreon you can get early access to new videos and other Patreon only benefits. The contributions from my patrons are an important way to cover the costs, time and energy I put into the videos and blog posts I create. You can read more about my Patreon page here.
  • Follow me on Instagram.  I announce new blog posts, share images from behind the scenes and post lots of woolliness.
  • Read the book Knit (spin) Sweden! by Sara Wolf. I am a co-author and write in the fleece section about how I spin yarn from Swedish sheep breeds.
  • I am writing a book! In the later half of 2025 Listen to the wool: A why-to guide for mindful spinning will be available. Read more about the book here.
  • In all the social media I offer, you are more than welcome to contact me. Interacting with you helps me make better content. My private Facebook page, however, will remain private.
  • I support Centro de textiles tradicionales del Cusco, a group of talented textile artists in Cusco, Peru who dedicate their work to the empowerment of weavers through the revitalization and sustainable practice of Peruvian ancestral textiles in the Cusco region. Please consider supporting their work by donating to their causes.
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Embroidered tweed mittens

A few weeks ago I bought Lina Odell’s book “Broderade vantar” (Embroidered mittens) mainly for the scrumptious photography. I figured I would get lots of inspiration from the excellent folkcostume garment and Lina’s neverending creativity with traditional, modern and and take-what-you have, use what you want solutions. I was not disappointed and found myself making a pair of embroidered tweed mittens.

My original plan was to just look at the photos and be inspired by materials, designs and details. And while I was, I also wanted to make some of the mittens.

Embroidered mittens

In her book ”Broderade vantar”, Lina has studied old mittens from areas in Sweden with a rich folk costume heritage. Many of the saved or documented mittens are bridal mittens and part of a geographical folk costume tradition. Lina has interpreted old mittens and composed new designs inspired by details and techniques in regional folk costumes and offered as patterns in the book.

”Broderade vantar” (Embroidered mittens) by Lina Odell is a beautiful book with lots of patterns for embroidered mittens. I made the Kattis half-mitts.

The book is written in Swedish and although I hope it will be translated into English, I honestly think people who don’t read Swedish can understand the patterns. The images are clear and the templates straightforward. A while ago I actually bought a book with sewing patterns in Japanese. The many illustrations are very clear and with the Google Translate app I can easily translate the text into English.

Kattis half-mitts

I have no heritage from any area in Sweden with a folk costume tradition and I am not interested in making a folk costume for myself. I just want to investigate techniques and materials for my own pleasure and make things that work with a modern wardrobe.

Embroidered tweed mittens with cashmere details. The pocket comes from the same Harris Tweed jacket. You can see the difference between the fulled sleeves I used for the mittens and the original fabric in the pocket.

For my first project I chose the Kattis half-mitts. They are inspired by patterns typical for Dala-Floda in country Dalarna and sewn in dyed leather, but I chose other materials.

Tweed

I like to use material I already have, and my mind went to an eBayed Harris Tweed jacket I had butchered two years ago to sew a tie-on pocket (which you can also see in the image above). I had used the side pocket of the jacket for the opening of my tie-on pocket. Just to make it a little bit more interesting, I had cut it on the bias, placing the pocket at a diagonal. To make the most of the sleeves I used for my mittens, I cut the pieces for the mittens lengthwise. I giggled at the mischief of cutting the fabric in unconventional ways.

Cashmere

Ten years ago or so, my mother got a bright red cashmere sweater from my father. Her joy didn’t last long, though, since the sweater was washed too warm and shrunk to the size of my daughter’s who was then around 9. My mother gave it to her, but as the felted material was too dense and warm, she never wore it. It was stuffed into the back of her closet and later into my fabric cabinet.

Second-hand butchered and fulled Harris Tweed + accidentally felted cashmere + fleamarket silk thread = perfect mitten love. The cashmere is the end of the sleeves, including the cuff. The sweater cuffs are just folded over the tweed cuffs (and sewn in place over the thumb and finger openings). The tweed comes from the lengths of the jacket sleeves.

When I planned the mittens I realized the fabric would be perfect for the inner mittens. Originally I had planned to cut the fabric from the torso, but when I looked at the sleeves I realized how perfect it would be to use them, with the sleeve cuffs as mitten cuffs folded over the tweed as a design detail.

Embroidery

I like to hunt on Swedish eBay (Tradera) for old haberdashery boxes with needles and notions in it. I bought one a few years ago and still see it as my treasure box. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that my son, who recently moved to his own apartment, had saved the same eBay ad as I had – a haberdashery box with lots of needles, buttons and sewing silk. We decided to bid for the auction and share the content.. And so I have an assortment of silk thread, perfect for mitten embroidery. None of us wanted the box, though, it was hideous – although with a charming touch – and in plastic.

Old haberdashery boxes can reveal true gold. I mean, nylon mending thread, isn’t that to die for?

Embroidery with silk thread was a bit tricky, though, especially since I held the thread double. I had marked the pattern by basting it onto the mittens, which wasn’t the best choice. And hearts are really, really difficult to embroider! I don’t know why, but I struggled a lot with them.

Wonky

Lots of the details in this project are wonky. The hearts as I mentioned, but also seams and fit. The herringbone stitches over the thumb seams is not a pretty sight and there is a colour change in the chain stitch. But overall, it’s a beautiful pair of mittens, wonkiness included.

A colour change in a chain stitch.c
An embroidery with wonky hearts at the edges.
Colour changes and wonky hearts. Lilac and blue/teal are my handspun silk dyed with my homegrown fresh indigo leaves.

Lina writes about this in the introduction to the book – none of the old mittens she made her interpretations of were symmetrical or complete. All had their peculiarities like sudden changes of colours, assymetries, a missed mirroring in a pattern. She says that it is the wonkiness that shows the person behind the craft. The mittens are really just reflections of our own wonkiness. I embrace the beauty of both.

You can find me in several social media:

  • This blog is my main channel. This is where I write weekly posts, mainly about spinning. Do subscribe!
  • I share essay-style writing on Substack. Come and have a look!
  • My youtube channel is where I release a lot of my videos. Subscribe to be sure not to miss anything!
  • I have a facebook page where I link to all my blog posts, you are welcome to follow me there.
  • I run an online spinning school, welcome to join a course! You can also check out my course page for courses in Sweden or to book me for a lecture.
  • On Patreon you can get early access to new videos and other Patreon only benefits. The contributions from my patrons are an important way to cover the costs, time and energy I put into the videos and blog posts I create. You can read more about my Patreon page here.
  • Follow me on Instagram.  I announce new blog posts, share images from behind the scenes and post lots of woolliness.
  • Read the book Knit (spin) Sweden! by Sara Wolf. I am a co-author and write in the fleece section about how I spin yarn from Swedish sheep breeds.
  • I am writing a book! In the later half of 2025 Listen to the wool: A why-to guide for mindful spinning will be available. Read more about the book here.
  • In all the social media I offer, you are more than welcome to contact me. Interacting with you helps me make better content. My private Facebook page, however, will remain private.
  • I support Centro de textiles tradicionales del Cusco, a group of talented textile artists in Cusco, Peru who dedicate their work to the empowerment of weavers through the revitalization and sustainable practice of Peruvian ancestral textiles in the Cusco region. Please consider supporting their work by donating to their causes.
Posted on

Sashiko pocket

Tie-on pockets are lovely projects for exploring new techniques without it taking forever to finish. I have made several pockets through the years in different techniques and materials. Today I have finished a sashiko pocket.

Making pockets is also a perfect opportunity to use scraps and material you already have. I have used a butchered tweed jacket, a couple of eBayed linen towels and a vintage evening clutch for some of mine.

Fabrics

I have had a sashiko pocket on my crafting list for a couple of years now. I found Chen, an Etsy seller in France who imports vintage handwoven fabrics from eastern China and I realized her fabrics would be perfect for my pocket. I had some scraps of her fabrics at home, and also ordered a sample pack of Indigo resist dyed fabrics.

I drew a shape for the pocket and arranged the fabrics until I was happy with shapes and composition.

Once I got the fabrics (Chen is super fast!), I had a hard time deciding what fabrics to use and how to arrange them. I wanted solid colour fabrics for the sashiko stitching and resist dyed for contrast—some for the pocket front and some to peek out above the pocket opening. I played a bit with shapes and patterns and landed in a combination I liked.

Sashiko stitching

The sashiko stitching was of course the main event of the pocket. I drew the grids and started the first thread and put it reluctantly aside. I wanted to bring it to the writing retreat I had coming up. It was hard, but I perservered.

Front and back ready to baste .

Hand sewing is deeply calming, helps me clear my head and open it for new ideas. As such it’s the perfect companion for writing. With the needle in one hand and the sturdy fabric in the other I stitched away in straight lines and geometrical patterns of endless interpretations. Vertical lines, wide and shallow angled figure-eights and finally horizontal lines. I still pull a bit, making the fabric pucker, but I’m learning.

Assembling

When I had woven in the final end I made a border between the sashiko and the resist dyed fabrics. I had woven a band from scraps of handspun yarn dyed with fresh Indigo leaves, which was the perfect candidate for the job. I even had some of the yarn left for the stitching.

Front and back of the finished pocket. I added some indigo leaf pounding to the back just for fun.

The other pockets I have made have been tie-on ones, menaing that the band was part of the straight top of the pocket. For this one I had bought a pocket hook. Therefore I wanted the top rounded. To make the shape sturdy I made a bias tape from scraps from a pair of pants I sew a couple of months ago.

A bias tape for the opening and the outer edge of the pocket.

Making your own bias tape is a lot of fun if you have sharp scissors and the discipline to draw straight and orderly lines. I added the band to the pocket opening and around the five layers—the front with a lining, the back with two.

A silk band and a hook and the pocket is done!

I stitched the hook at the top and a tassel at the bottom. I made the tassel a couple of weeks ago from thrums I found in a bag of finished projects. It was the perfect fit for a Japanese-style pocket!

The finished sashiko pocket fits perfectly with my handsewn pants. The pant fabric is from Indigoloom and the pattern is a traditional Chinese model.

Flaunting

The other morning the mist had draped itself over the lake and the morning swim was magical. When I got home I changed quickly and came back to the dock before the mist had disappeared entirely. Of course I paired the pocket with pants that I sew from Chen’s fabrics in a Chinese style pattern she provided me with. The fit was perfect and I giggled of joy at my mixed heritage pocket.

I love wearing my pockets, especially in the summer when I don’t wear a jacket. Even if most of my pants and skirts have pockets of their own, no garment is sturdy enough to house a smart phone without weighing down the garment.

Materials I used:

  • Handwoven vintage (1930–1970) cotton fabrics from China for front, inside, mini pocket and bias tape, from Indigoloom.
  • Remnants from antique cotton sheet for (double) back lining.
  • Indigo leaves for pounding on lining.
  • Band made from my handspun silk yarn, dyed with fresh indigo leaves.
  • Tassel made from thrums in handspun silk yarn, same as the band.
  • Pocket hook made by Emma Frost.
  • Sashiko thread, needles, thimble and stencils from Indigoloom.

Pocket collection

Five pockets and a belt bag, lovely projects where I have played with material I have and new techniques.

Here are my previous pockets, together with the new addition:

Happy spinning!

You can find me in several social media:

  • This blog is my main channel. This is where I write weekly posts, mainly about spinning. Do subscribe!
  • I share essay-style writing on Substack. Come and have a look!
  • My youtube channel is where I release a lot of my videos. Subscribe to be sure not to miss anything!
  • I have a facebook page where I link to all my blog posts, you are welcome to follow me there.
  • I run an online spinning school, welcome to join a course! You can also check out my course page for courses in Sweden or to book me for a lecture.
  • On Patreon you can get early access to new videos and other Patreon only benefits. The contributions from my patrons are an important way to cover the costs, time and energy I put into the videos and blog posts I create. You can read more about my Patreon page here.
  • Follow me on Instagram.  I announce new blog posts, share images from behind the scenes and post lots of woolliness.
  • Read the book Knit (spin) Sweden! by Sara Wolf. I am a co-author and write in the fleece section about how I spin yarn from Swedish sheep breeds.
  • I am writing a book! In the later half of 2025 Listen to the wool: A why-to guide for mindful spinning will be available. Read more about the book here.
  • In all the social media I offer, you are more than welcome to contact me. Interacting with you helps me make better content. My private Facebook page, however, will remain private.
  • I support Centro de textiles tradicionales del Cusco, a group of talented textile artists in Cusco, Peru who dedicate their work to the empowerment of weavers through the revitalization and sustainable practice of Peruvian ancestral textiles in the Cusco region. Please consider supporting their work by donating to their causes.
Posted on

Fulled pillow cases

Six woven pillows in a corner sofa. A photo on the wall with a spinning wheel in the snow.

I love weaving pillow cases. They are the perfect project for new techniques, especially for wobbly weavers like me. Today I share three new fulled pillow cases.

I have made three pillow cases before, all of which keep our backs comfy in the sofa. All of them have been firsts in some way, and they have taught me a lot about weaving, spinning for weaving, making proper joins and mending broken warp threads. Lots of broken warp threads.

The yarn in these three new ones, is commercial though. For no other reason than that I had the yarns. I bought a couple of kilos in different colours a few years ago at a final sale from a woman who was the first to import Shetland yarns to Sweden back in the 1980’s. I stored the skeins in my yarn cabinet and they were honestly mostly in the way.

Test weaves

When the idea of fulling weaves in a fulling mill took shape, my mind brought me back to the skeins stuffed in the cabinet. They were the perfect practice yarns for fulling. If I failed at the fulling process it wouldn’t be precious handspuns. I picked out three colours that contrasted enough against each other. To play with them I wove my three loose sett weaves with different dominating colours and different plaid patterns. The plan was to weave to full 50 x 50 centimeter pillow cases on my 60 centimeter rigid heddle loom, to match pillows we had in the sofa.

Three plaid woolen fabrics woven in a loose sett.
Three fulled plaid fabrics.
The three pillowcases unfulled to the left and fulled to the right.

All three weaves fulled beautifully in the mill. I confess I was secretly bothered that these weaves in commercial yarns fulled better than my handspuns.

A simple design

The weaves fulled just a bit too much for the dimensions I had planned for, so I bought three 40 x 40 centimeter inner pillows instead, filled with wool of course. I decided on a simple envelope construction – I folded the weaves off-center and folded the remaining piece again to form a pocket to slide the pillow in and close around it. The unfinished edge had been fulled in the mill, and I kept it raw for a simple design element.

Buttons!

Even if the envelope solution did its job to hold the pillow in the case, I wanted a closure that was a little more secure, so I started looking at buttons. After some browsing for buttons in natural materials like bone, horn and wood, I found Maud Enerman who makes made-to-order wooden buttons. I sent her photos of my pillow cases and she was happy to make three sets of buttons, in juniper, plum and beech.

Close-up of a woolen pillow with handmade wooden buttons. The buttonholes are hand sewn with silk thread.
Close-up of a woolen pillow with handmade wooden buttons. The buttonholes are hand sewn with silk thread.
Close-up of a woolen pillow with handmade wooden buttons. The buttonholes are hand sewn with silk thread.
Wooden buttons in juniper left, beech center and plum right.

The buttons arrived this week and I read up on sewing buttonholes by hand and chose three different colours from my box of silk thread. To strengthen I tacked a small piece of cotton fabric to the back of both the buttonhole and the button. Cutting the hole was a bit scary, but neither buttonhole nor skin was injured.

A woman sitting on a garden bench with three plaid woolen pillows in it.
My three pillowcases paired up with the bench I made for my husband a few years ago and the matching rya bench pad I wove to match it.

Not one of the nine buttonholes turned out without wonkiness, but I guess it’s a learning curve. I do love the result, though, and want to dive into the sea of pillows every time I see them. When my husband and I meet in the sofa every evening at 9 pm sharp to watch a series (Ripley at the moment), I grab one for the back, one for the neck and one just to cuddle with while I hold his hand.

Happy spinning!

You can find me in several social media:

  • This blog is my main channel. This is where I write weekly posts, mainly about spinning. Do subscribe!
  • I share essay-style writing on Substack. Come and have a look!
  • My youtube channel is where I release a lot of my videos. Subscribe to be sure not to miss anything!
  • I have a facebook page where I link to all my blog posts, you are welcome to follow me there.
  • I run an online spinning school, welcome to join a course! You can also check out my course page for courses in Sweden or to book me for a lecture.
  • On Patreon you can get early access to new videos and other Patreon only benefits. The contributions from my patrons are an important way to cover the costs, time and energy I put into the videos and blog posts I create. You can read more about my Patreon page here.
  • Follow me on Instagram.  I announce new blog posts, share images from behind the scenes and post lots of woolliness.
  • Read the book Knit (spin) Sweden! by Sara Wolf. I am a co-author and write in the fleece section about how I spin yarn from Swedish sheep breeds.
  • I am writing a book! In the later half of 2025 Listen to the wool: A why-to guide for mindful spinning will be available. Read more about the book here.
  • In all the social media I offer, you are more than welcome to contact me. Interacting with you helps me make better content. My private Facebook page, however, will remain private.
  • I support Centro de textiles tradicionales del Cusco, a group of talented textile artists in Cusco, Peru who dedicate their work to the empowerment of weavers through the revitalization and sustainable practice of Peruvian ancestral textiles in the Cusco region. Please consider supporting their work by donating to their causes.
Posted on

Pinafore dress

Last summer I did lots of flower pounding with cosmos, coreopsis and purple pincushion flowers for a pinafore dress I had planned. I sew the dress a couple of weeks ago to wear for my daughter’s graduation.

Several things came upon me for this dress to happen. First, I had somewhat of a dyeing and printing frenzy last year, with lots of fresh leaf indigo dyeing and flower pounding. Second, I found an intreaguing modular dress that I wanted to make. I put the two together and made me a pinafore dress with pounded flowers on the yoke and skirt borders.

Tataki zome: Flower pounding

To learn more about the Japanese indigo I planted last year I took lots of courses, both online and in person. The Dogwood Dyer has lots of online courses in most things indigo and natural dyeing, as well as botanical prints. She shared all her favourite cosmos types for tataki zome, or flower pounding, and I planted them.

A flower in a hand. A flower printed piece of fabric in the background.
A flower printed fabric.
Flower printed fabrics on the ground.
Cosmos Rubenza is on the pounding table today and it results in a periwinkle print.

As soon as a bud opened I was there with my snips and kidnapped the flower to my project. Pounding them onto fabric was lots of fun and I giggled like a school girl at the beautiful colours that emerged on my swatches.

Enter pinafore dress

A textile artist I follow on Instagram, Anna Sjösvärd showed a pinafore dress she had made, inspired by a tutorial from another Instagram profile. It was the simplest model, basically two aprons joined at the shoulders and tied at the back and the front. The result was a lovely dress with a snug wrapped bodice and flouncy skirt. I decided to make one for myself, and combine it with my need to pound innocent flowers onto fabric.

I cut the yoke and skirt border and pounded away all summer – cosmos flowers of all colours, orange coreopsis and rich purple pincushion flowers. To save flower material and to create some depth in the prints I pounded the flowers between the pieces. This way one piece got the back and the other got the front of the print.

Sewing

There weren’t many pieces for this dress. Two skirt pieces, one for the back and one for the front. A front and a back bodice piece, divided above the bust for the flower prints. Two bands to tie the back apron to the front and finally a handwoven band for the tie of the front apron at the back.

A woven band in blue and natural linen.
Close-up of a person hemming by hand using a silver thimble. A blue fabric in the background.
A handwoven linen band and some hand stitching and I’m almost done!

Since I had cut and zigzaged the pieces during the summer, all that was left when I came back to the dress this spring was the montage of the pieces. I did the joining seams on my 17 kilo Husqvarna 2000 from the 1960’s that I got for my 21st birthday, and the hems by hand. The skirt was just two 150 centimeter wide rectangles that I added running gathers to to fit the bodice parts.

A person tyeing a dress at the back.
A person tyeing a dress from the side.
A person tyeing a dress to the front.
One apron in front tied in the back, one in the back tied in the front. And voilá, a dress!

The last thing I did was to add bust darts. The sides of the bodice flared and I couldn’t live with that. I did them daringly off the cuff. A little wonky, but quite pleasing and still better than before.

A woman wearing a blue dress. The yoke and the skirt hem are natural white with printed flowers.
Photo by Isak Waltin
A woman wearing a blue dress. The yoke and the skirt hem are natural white with printed flowers.
A woman wearing a blue dress. The yoke and the skirt hem are natural white with printed flowers. A blue bag at her waist.
Front, flair and back. And the perfectly fitting bag.

I wore the dress on my daughter’s graduation and I felt very comfortable in it. The antique linen shift comes from the Berta’s flax project and it was perfect underneath the dress. I used a clutch from Onni design as a tie-on pocket.

So, the first child all grown up, at the university and in his own apartment and the second ready to meet the post-school-system world. Now what?

Happy spinning!

You can find me in several social media:

  • This blog is my main channel. This is where I write weekly posts, mainly about spinning. Do subscribe!
  • I share essay-style writing on Substack. Come and have a look!
  • My youtube channel is where I release a lot of my videos. Subscribe to be sure not to miss anything!
  • I have a facebook page where I link to all my blog posts, you are welcome to follow me there.
  • I run an online spinning school, welcome to join a course! You can also check out my course page for courses in Sweden or to book me for a lecture.
  • On Patreon you can get early access to new videos and other Patreon only benefits. The contributions from my patrons are an important way to cover the costs, time and energy I put into the videos and blog posts I create. You can read more about my Patreon page here.
  • Follow me on Instagram.  I announce new blog posts, share images from behind the scenes and post lots of woolliness.
  • Read the book Knit (spin) Sweden! by Sara Wolf. I am a co-author and write in the fleece section about how I spin yarn from Swedish sheep breeds.
  • I am writing a book! In the later half of 2025 Listen to the wool: A why-to guide for mindful spinning will be available. Read more about the book here.
  • In all the social media I offer, you are more than welcome to contact me. Interacting with you helps me make better content. My private Facebook page, however, will remain private.
  • I support Centro de textiles tradicionales del Cusco, a group of talented textile artists in Cusco, Peru who dedicate their work to the empowerment of weavers through the revitalization and sustainable practice of Peruvian ancestral textiles in the Cusco region. Please consider supporting their work by donating to their causes.
Posted on

2024 wool journey: At the fulling mill

For many years I have wanted to full my weaves in a fulling mill. Two years ago my wool traveling club decided to weave on the 2023 wool journey with the aim of a 2024 wool journey to a fulling mill.

The day finally came. With one of the members of the club sick in the last minute we ended up with four wool travelers and around 30 meters of woven fabric between us. Boel with one 9 meter weave and the rest of us with shorter lengths. I brought three shorter weaves with my handspun and three with commercial yarns that I bought years ago on a clearance. You can read about my fulling candidates here.

An old wooden building by a creek.
The fulling mill in Dala-Floda looks like an oil painting.

17th century industrial site

The mill is situated just outside Dala-Floda in county Dalarna in Sweden, an area with a rich textile heritage. There have been buildings marked on old maps since at least the 17th century here. In the mid-19th century the fulling mill was installed in what had been a flour mill until then. The fulling mill was in process in the spring and the fall when there is enough water in the creek to drive the mill, until 1941. Nowadays Anna-Karin opens it for courses and demonstrations.

A miniature fulling mill with water wheel and fulling beams.
The miniature fulling mill was made in 1998.

We were welcomed by Anna-Karin Jobs Arnberg, who manages the mill, just as her forefathers did a couple of centuries ago. On the top floor is a miniature of the mill, that Anna-Karin uses to show the function and demonstrate the enormous powers that are involved in the fulling process. It’s amazing what can be achieved with just water, wood and wool.

Vadmalsstamp

The Swedish word for a fulling mill is vadmalsstamp. Vadmal is a heavily fulled fabric, and stamp means something that stomps. Before and parallel with the mill, vadmal was also stomped by foot in a tub for up to a week to get the final fabric.

A mill wheel in the water.
An old wooden board in different colours.
The back of a fulling mill, with a horizontal beam lifting vertical ones.
The water wheel, the beautiful old wood and the back of the stomping beams.

Wet fabric is placed in a trough underneath two massive stomping beams. The troughs are slanted backwards, so that the fabrics are slowly rotated by the stomping beams, as if browsing through a book, wool page by wool page. Anna-Karin talked passionately about letting the mill do its work, and about listening to the sound and the song of the beams. Too little fabric and the stomping beams go wood on wood onto the bottom of the trough. Around 20 meters is perfect, with the total capacity of around 60 meters in the three troughs. Everywhere we went as Anna-Karin showed us the site, she listened to the mill to make sure everything was running smoothly.

A woman squatting by an old wooden door opening.
Kristin listens to the wood.

Complete fulling takes ten hours, half fulling five and three quarters somewhere in between.

Let’s stomp!

To prepare the fabrics for fulling we soaked them overnight so that they would be evenly dampened. After Anna-Karin had showed us how to operate the mill we folded each fabric into an accordion so that they all would be easy to browse through in the troughs.

A board leaned against another board to lift a massive beam. Fabrics in a trough beneath it.
Two massive beams above a trough with fabrics. One of the beams against the fabrics, the other one a bit above them.
Wet woolen fabrics.
The fabrics are folded into accordions before we place them in the troughs. Two people work together to start the stomping and the beams begin to browse through the fabrics. We take them out to check the stomping every two hours or so.

To start the stomping, one person pulls out the stopping plugs and another lifts the stomping beams. The sound was just right and we could hang out in the sun with various crafting projects for the next hour.

A woman sitting by a stream, weaving a narrow band on a backstrap loom, warp tied between her waist and her stretched out foot.
A person carrying neatly folded fabrics.
We wait and we fold.

Every hour we check and perhaps add some water. Every second hour we stop the stomping, lift the fabrics out of the troughs and check the fulling process. The first ones were finished after five hours and the rest after another hour.

Rinsing and stretching

When we decided the fabrics were fulled enough we stopped the stomping for the last time and rinsed the fabrics in the creek. Holding the fabrics in the running stream was quite an experience.

A person sitting on a board laid across a creek, rinsing a fabric in the streaming water.
Three people cooperating in stretching fabric over a wooden roll with a crank in the end.
Woolen fabrics rolled onto a plastic pipe.
Rinsing and stretching.

The last thing we did before we were done was to stretch the fabrics under pressure on a round roll with a crank in one end. The stretching also squeezed out a lot of water. To avoid biasing the fabrics we rolled them the other way on rolls we had brought from home. I used a suage pipe (new and unused) and the others yoga mats.

We had all been looking forward to this so much and we had the most fantastic day. I was quite intriguing to just place the fabrics in the hands of the process and see what came out of it. I think we all agree that we will do this again.

The results

Fulled soon-to-be pillow cases woven in commercial Shetland yarn.

I was fully aware of the fact that a lot could go wrong with my weaves. The commercial yarns were old and brittle and could potentially break. The twill was an experiment that could turn out in a variety of ways. I had high hopes for the dark grey Gute weave, since I had fulled a swatch years ago. I was quite wrong about most of the weaves, though.

Fulled handspun fabrics. Gute/Icelandic (left), Icelandic twill (center) and Gute (right).

The weaves in commercial yarns fulled evenly and beautifully – 11 % and 19 % on width and length respectively. They will be perfect for the pillow cases I had planned for them. The Gute/Icelandic weave also fulled beautifully (5% and 22 %). It hasn’t told me what it wants to become yet. The Icelandic twill did shrink (13 % and 7 %), but in sort of a pleated way. I’m not sure what to make of it. Finally, the dark grey Gute did shrink too (11 % and 12 %), but is still very much unfulled. This puzzled me and I have no idea why it wouldn’t full when the swatch did. I will try and full it manually with warm water, soap and my waulking board.

Coming up: A video

I have my phone full of video footage, over 50 clips that I will eventually edit and publish on my YouTube channel. I can’t wait to show you this magical place!

Happy spinning!

You can find me in several social media:

  • This blog is my main channel. This is where I write weekly posts, mainly about spinning. Do subscribe!
  • I share essay-style writing on Substack. Come and have a look!
  • My youtube channel is where I release a lot of my videos. Subscribe to be sure not to miss anything!
  • I have a facebook page where I link to all my blog posts, you are welcome to follow me there.
  • I run an online spinning school, welcome to join a course! You can also check out my course page for courses in Sweden or to book me for a lecture.
  • On Patreon you can get early access to new videos and other Patreon only benefits. The contributions from my patrons are an important way to cover the costs, time and energy I put into the videos and blog posts I create. You can read more about my Patreon page here.
  • Follow me on Instagram.  I announce new blog posts, share images from behind the scenes and post lots of woolliness.
  • Read the book Knit (spin) Sweden! by Sara Wolf. I am a co-author and write in the fleece section about how I spin yarn from Swedish sheep breeds.
  • I am writing a book! In the later half of 2025 Listen to the wool: A why-to guide for mindful spinning will be available. Read more about the book here.
  • In all the social media I offer, you are more than welcome to contact me. Interacting with you helps me make better content. My private Facebook page, however, will remain private.
  • I support Centro de textiles tradicionales del Cusco, a group of talented textile artists in Cusco, Peru who dedicate their work to the empowerment of weavers through the revitalization and sustainable practice of Peruvian ancestral textiles in the Cusco region. Please consider supporting their work by donating to their causes.
Posted on

Fulling candidates

In just a few weeks my wool traveling club and I will go on our 2024 wool journey to a fulling mill. We have all woven fabrics to full and today I’m presenting my fulling candidates.

I love planning our wool journeys. We have planned this one for over two years. On the 2022 wool journey we learned påsöm embroidery by Anna-Karin Jobs Arnberg in beautiful Dala-Floda. She also teaches fulling at the nearby fulling mill (one of perhaps five working fulling mills in Sweden), and we decided to spend the upcoming year and the 2023 wool journey weaving projects to full in the 2024 wool journey.

What to full

The fabric to full needs to be woven in a wool that actually will felt. The Scandinavian breeds usually felt very well. The wool needs to be evenly blended, spun and woven, and the sett needs to be loose. It is a good idea to add extra twist to the warp yarn to hold, and let the weft yarn be looser spun to enhance the fulling process.

Fulling mill

The Dala-Floda fulling mill is situated in Kvarna, a 17th century industrial site with several different types of mills. It is operated on courses and workshops, and by people who have the knowledge to use it.

The inside of a fulling mill. Large beams above water troughs, ready to full woven wool fabric.
The Dala-Floda fulling mill, photo by Dan Waltin in 2018.

Fulling candidates

I have woven five fabrics during the past four years, two of which are woven with my handspun yarns. If I’m lucky, a sixth weave (handspun) will be finished in time. All the weaves are different and I hope at least one of them will turn into something I can use. I have woven them all on my 60 cm wide rigid heddle loom.

Rough Gute

When I first learned about fulling fabrics and saw a weekend course in fulling at a fulling mill I started to plan for a weave to full. I had bought a lovely rough gute fleece back in 2018 and made a few woven swatches. It turned out that they fulled beautifully and very evenly. I had just spun a woolen 2-ply yarn that I used as both warp and weft and it was quite a fast weave. The finished weave has been waiting in my yarn closet for the past four years.

A greay weave in a loose sett, a skein of grey yarn on top of it.
Plain Gute wool in warp and weft. Hand-carded woolen spun and 2-plied.

I think this weave might be the most straightforward of the weaves. It has the same fleece and the same yarn in both weft and warp. I’m sure I can make something out of it, perhaps a vest.

Raw weave size: 56 x 275 centimeters.

3 x 3 x 3 pillow cases

Pillow cases are one of my favourite test projects for weaving. They are small enough to finish, large enough to actually become something, and quite swift to sew. Usually I weave with my handspun yarn, but in this case (pun intended) I had lots of skeins of Shetland wool from a clearance sale a few years ago, and I thought I might as well weave something out of them. I used the same three colours in three different checquered patterns in three different weaves.

A woman weaving a checquered fabric on a rigid heddle loom. Sheep outside are grazing.
I wove the first commercial yarn pillow case at the 2023 wool journey at Boel’s house.

The yarns are quite old and brittle, and there is a risk that they will tear in the fulling process. There is also a risk that the colours will full differently, one of the yarns turned out to be finer than the others. If the fulling shrinks the fabrics too much, I can either get smaller pillows or weave bands (from a failed first warping) to join in the sides.

Three weaves in different checquered fabrics in navy, blue and teal.
Three weaves in three colours and three patterns.

Raw weave size

  • Teal main colour: 54 x 128 centimeters
  • Fawn main colour: 55 x 128 centimeters
  • Navy main colour: 54 x 132 centimeters.

Icelandic twill

Mmm… my beauty. I think this is the weave I’m the most excited about. Last year I bought two Icelandic fleeces from Uppspuni mini mill in Iceland, one light and one dark. I separated tog and thel (outercoat and undercoat in Icelandic fleece) and colours. To enhance the characteristics of the fiber types I spun the tog worsted and the thel woolen, both as singles yarns and in different directions. To ease the energy of the warp singles I wound them up on tennis balls a couple of months before I warped. I set my rigid heddle loom up for twill and wove 2.25 meters. This may be my best twill project so far, it’s also my best singles warp project so far.

Three round balls of singles yarns, two natural white and one natural dark grey.
A light grey weave with dark grey stripes on a loom in a weaving room.
A finished light grey weave with dark grey stripes. The two sides of the fabric are slightly different.
Worsted spun Icelandic singles tog as warp, woolen Spun Icelandic singles thel as weft. A few months before I warped, I wound the warp yarn onto tennis balls to ease the singles energy a bit.

I expect the weft to full more than the warp, so that the finished fabric will be a lot narrower and just a little bit shorter. The twill construction might also add to the sideways shrinkage. The fabric will have two different sides – the weft facing side will be soft and warm and the warp facing side will be strong and shiny. I have no specific plans for this fabric, the result will point me in the right direction.

Raw weave size: 54 x 209 centimeters.

Gute/Icelandic/sari silk

I finished the twill just a week ago, took a breath and warped for the final project. The warp yarn is a 2-ply woolen spun Gute lamb’s wool with recycled sari silk in it, and the warp is woolen spun Icelandic thel, also with recycled sari silk. I have no idea what will happen here, with one plied yarn and one singles, and with two different breeds. I expect the silk to full a little, but still leave some eye-catching colour specks in the fabric.

A staple, an opened staple, a carded rolag and a skein of yarn.
A weave on a loom, a shuttle on top of the warp.
A staple, an opened staple, a carded rolag and a skein of yarn.
2-ply woolen spun Gute lamb’s wool with recycled sari silk as warp, singles woolen spun Icelandic wool with recycled sari silk as weft.

The warping went so well, the warp behaved and I managed to roll it onto the warp beam very evenly. Once I had threaded the heddle I realized I had warped backwards, though. I tied the ends on the warp beam, rolled the whole warp out again, fiddled, cut the cloth beam ends and tied them to the apron rod. I was very grateful that this wasn’t a singles warp. As I wove I looked at the thousand sari silk stars that lit underneath my hands and felt the warmth of the lanolin. I also noticed large quantities of Gute yarn kemp all over my top.

If I finish this weave in time I hope to be able to full it just slightly. I swatched a similar weave a few years ago and found that a lightly fulled fabric was just perfect, with both the fulling qualities and some drape.

Things I can’t control

There are endless factors that can go wrong here and that I can’t control. And that’s the beauty of fulling. I have no idea how much the fabrics will shrink. I have no idea if I can ask to stop the fulling for one of the fabrics or if they all need to go the same length of time. Perhaps my dyed commercial yarns will be banned if there is a risk of bleeding. Perhaps my gute fabrics will be banned because their kemp fibers may contaminate the other fabrics. One or more of the fabrics may have been woven in too loose a sett. I will find all this out sooner or later.

The fabrics will probably shrink in different amounts, and I am also quite certain that something will go wrong. I am convinced that I will learn a lot and that I will take another weekend further down the line to full some more.

I am so excited about the fulling mill wool journey and my weaves. My wool traveling club friends have woven a lot too, I’m particularly excited about Boel’s 5 meter twill woven on a grown up floor loom.

Happy spinning!

You can find me in several social media:

  • This blog is my main channel. This is where I write weekly posts, mainly about spinning. So subscribe!
  • My youtube channel is where I release a lot of my videos. Subscribe to be sure not to miss anything!
  • I have a facebook page where I link to all my blog posts, you are welcome to follow me there.
  • I run an online spinning school, welcome to join a course! You can also check out my course page for courses in Sweden or to book me for a lecture.
  • On Patreon you can get early access to new videos and other Patreon only benefits. The contributions from my patrons are an important way to cover the costs, time and energy I put into the videos and blog posts I create. You can read more about my Patreon page here.
  • Follow me on Instagram.  I announce new blog posts, share images from behind the scenes and post lots of woolliness.
  • Read the book Knit (spin) Sweden! by Sara Wolf. I am a co-author and write in the fleece section about how I spin yarn from Swedish sheep breeds.
  • I am writing a book! In the later half of 2025 Listen to the wool: A why-to guide for mindful spinning will be available. Read more about the book here.
  • In all the social media I offer, you are more than welcome to contact me. Interacting with you helps me make better content. My private Facebook page, however, will remain private.
  • I support Centro de textiles tradicionales del Cusco, a group of talented textile artists in Cusco, Peru who dedicate their work to the empowerment of weavers through the revitalization and sustainable practice of Peruvian ancestral textiles in the Cusco region. Please consider supporting their work by donating to their causes.
Posted on

Silk shawl

Last summer I spun a lot of singles silk yarn on a supported spindle. I used the small skeins as dye samples in my experimental dyeing with fresh Japanese indigo and woad. I started a striped weave in January and this week I finished my silk shawl.

If you are a patron (or want to become one) you can see more from my writing retreat in my January 2024 video postcard.

I must have been in the weaving room every weekend since I warped this weave, and it has just taken forever. I am used to weaving with wool, which is flexible, forgiving and reasonably predictable. Silk however, is not.

Spin, dye and weave. And then weave some more.

It pains me to say it, but this was just not a fun weave. I loved spinning the yarn and dyeing the skeins and I love the resulting shawl. But the weaving, not so much.

A tabby shawl with a loose sett, woven from spindle spun silk singles dyed with my homegrown fresh indigo.

Slow and fiddly

In a previous post about weaving this silk shawl I embraced the slowness of the process, but now I take it all back. Compared to wool, weaving with silk is inelastic, slippery and unforgiving. So many threads broke, and joining them once I had passed the break was fiddly and the slippery and fine ends slithered their way out or broke over and over.

Close-up of silk warp threads in light blue and gold. One blue warp thread has spiraled up in a join. The golden threads are fuzzy.
Insufficiently spun joins lead to broken warp threads. The muga silk fibers are shorter and the warp threads fuzzier. Still, I love the irregularities the woven joins make in the fabric.

The golden muga silk threads I used to separate the blue stripes had shorter fibers and broke more often than the mulberry silk threads, and got quite fuzzy. I do have a history of making insufficient joins as I spin, and it was very obvious here too. How hard can it be to spin proper joins? I don’t mind the joins in the weave, they do add to the character of the fabric, but I could live without the sweat of watching them get gradually thinner and breaking.

Tight sheds

This weave has a sett of 80 picks per 10 centimeters, but the smallest heddle on my loom is 60/10. So to obtain the smaller sett, I used two 40/10 heddles. I have used a double heddle several times before, for double layered weaving and for twill. I know from these experiences that the sheds are tighter compared to a single heddle, and it was true here too. Due to the inelasticity of the silk warp, the opening of the shed was fiddly and took a lot of time. To make it a little easier, I opened up the shed with a weaving sword before I inserted the shuttle.

Deadline

Usually I don’t have a problem with projects that take time. Only, I have an appointment with a fulling mill in late May and two wool weaves waiting to be woven and fulled at the mill, so I needed to get the silk shawl off the loom and warp one of the wool weaves. I managed to weave around 5 centimeters every visit to the weaving room and after thinking ”this will be the last session” for five sessions, I was close to giving up. And I did, actually – when the umpteenth warp thread broke and I had only 30 centimeters left I abandoned my stubbornness and went for the scissors.

Loose sett

When I planned the weave I had a vision of quite a loose sett – I wanted the shawl to be light and sheer and the irregularities of the yarn to add to the character if the weave.

The sett in the silk shawl is loose to emphasize the sheerness and lightness of it.

Due to the inflexibility of the yarn, the threads didn’t fill out the empty spaces when I cut it off the loom. I actually managed to create the shawl according to my vision, and I really like the result.

The fringe twister

When I had finally finished the weave I asked myself what kind of fringe I wanted. I was learning towards just tyeing the loose warp, but then I realized the warp was single, and that loose threads would probably warp and tangle. So I decided on a twisted fringe. I do own a fringe twister that I don’t use very often, but when I need it I thank the fringe twisting goddesses for its convenience. Twisting 90 long fringes is not my idea of a good time, only strained fingers.

Close-up of a person fringing the end of a silk weave. Four twisted sections of warp threads are stretched attached to metal clips on a wooden base.
The fringe twister is my friend.

Plant, spin, dye, weave

And so I made it. I spent last summer spinning fine singles of mulberry silk and dyeing it in small batches with my home-grown fresh indigo and woad leaves, and I spent the winter weaving a silk shawl for this summer. In December I harvested my own Japanese Indigo seeds and my sweet indigo plants for this season are thriving in the kitchen window.

A neatly folded silk shawl on a table, fringes hanging down over the edge.
A finished silk shawl, 40 x 210 centimeter (including 20 + 20 centimeter fringe).

The circle is full, and so is the year and I can’t wait to wear my breezy silk shawl.

Happy spinning!

You can find me in several social media:

  • This blog is my main channel. This is where I write weekly posts, mainly about spinning. So subscribe!
  • My youtube channel is where I release a lot of my videos. Subscribe to be sure not to miss anything!
  • I have a facebook page where I link to all my blog posts, you are welcome to follow me there.
  • I run an online spinning school, welcome to join a course! You can also check out my course page for courses in Sweden or to book me for a lecture.
  • On Patreon you can get early access to new videos and other Patreon only benefits. The contributions from my patrons are an important way to cover the costs, time and energy I put into the videos and blog posts I create. You can read more about my Patreon page here.
  • Follow me on Instagram.  I announce new blog posts, share images from behind the scenes and post lots of woolliness.
  • Read the book Knit (spin) Sweden! by Sara Wolf. I am a co-author and write in the fleece section about how I spin yarn from Swedish sheep breeds.
  • I am writing a book! In the later half of 2025 Listen to the wool: A why-to guide for mindful spinning will be available. Read more about the book here.
  • In all the social media I offer, you are more than welcome to contact me. Interacting with you helps me make better content. My private Facebook page, however, will remain private.
  • I support Centro de textiles tradicionales del Cusco, a group of talented textile artists in Cusco, Peru who dedicate their work to the empowerment of weavers through the revitalization and sustainable practice of Peruvian ancestral textiles in the Cusco region. Please consider supporting their work by donating to their causes.
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Slot-slot-hole-slot

I don’t know how to weave. Still, I do it. Join me as I move through warping a shawl in my handspun and hand dyed silk singles, in a slot-slot-hole-slot dance across the heddles.

Slot-slot-hole-slot. My hands move mindfully between the heddles, picking one thread at a time from the back heddle to the front. 40 + 40 threads per 10 centimeters for a width of 40 centimeters is a lot, all slinky, single, silk threads.

A drawstring bag full of marbles

A drawstring bag full of marbles was the key to keeping the yarn taught for warping. I spent a few evenings on the couch winding all of my 16 skeins onto medium sized marbles from the treasure box my now grown children had stored in the attic. The yellow cotton bag crowned with a red drawstring made me suspect that my husband had stored his marbles in it back in the late -70’s and early -80’s. Perhaps some of the marbles had been his too. The marbles can’t have been anything but surprised by being wrapped in shiny silk goodness.

Round balls of shiny yarn in shades of blue and teal, next to a speckled glass marble.
A drawstring full of marbles came to my rescue as I warped my silk singles.

A couple of days ago I had brought the yarn marbles to my local weaving room to warp. Transferring the fine threads to the loom, and inviting them to an adventure neither they nor I knew anything about, had scared me. Marbles had rolled across the floor in a jumble as I walked back and forth, counting the turns.

The stories in my hands

I go to the weaving room again. As my hands concentrate on separating the threads I realize they are the same hands that danced the fibers onto the spindle through the summer, and the same hands that rubbed fresh indigo leaves into the finished skeins, to receive a glittering row of blues and teals. As I look across the heddle I see the sparkle in each and every one of them. Some are fuzzier from heavy rubbing in the dye bath, some smoother from just having been soaked in an ice and leaf blend. It’s also the same hands that planted the indigo seeds back in March, and pruned the sweet stalks as they emerged from the wool topped soil. So many stories are vibrating in my hands through this process, and more will come.

A warp beam filled with shiny stripes of blue, teal and gold.
My hands remember all the processes they have been part of through sowing, pruning, dyeing, spinning and now warping.

Just as the fibers had spread their wings like fairies from the static charge as I spun it, the warp ends rise in the dry indoor air when I thread the heddles. I tie the warp ends from one broad and one narrow stripe together to prevent them from getting tangled. Through the static charge and their singlehood they are desperate to jumble and move.

Memories of a missed weaver

Slot-slot-hole-slot. One broad blue stripe, one narrow golden muga silk stripe. Kerstin comes into the weaving room and turns the radio on. The reporter talks about the dramatic wintery weather, cancelled bus departures and people helping their neighbous ploughing their garage driveways.

A rigid heddle with silky single threads hanging out of holes and slots.
Slot-slot-hole-slot across the heddle.

I ask Kerstin for general silk weaving advice, she is an experienced weaver. She says she’s never woven with silk. “But Joyce would have known, she wove with every possible material.” My mind takes me to the plastic totes Joyce had woven from recycled plastic bags and sold at the spring fair. Kerstin looks at the empty spot where Joyce’s loom used to stand and we both remember her fondly. Kerstin and Joyce, two widows, spent every day of the pandemic together in the weaving room, drinking coffee at 2. The last time I saw Joyce she came in with the basket of her walking frame loaded with vital medicinal equipment, parked it beside her countermarch loom and crawled underneath the warp to tie the treadles.

Slot-slot-hole-slot (and a beat-beat from Kerstin’s loom). The weather report is followed quite suitably by Madonna’s Frost. It’s been a while since I heard it.

I don’t know how to weave

I don’t know how to weave. Still I do it. The knowledge of not knowing helps me discover through my mistakes – since I never learned the rules of weaving I don’t know when I break them. And I am grateful. Every new weave is a thousand new experiences.

A sketch of the colour sequence in a weave. Broader blue stripes separated by thinner golden stripes, a pink and two purple stripes in the center.
I draw my planned colour sequence to understand how I need to warp.

I have planned this warp based on the sixteen skeins in different shades of blue and one purple, calculated width and length. I warp one stripe at a time from the center out. And yet, my calculated 40 centimeter width quickly turn to 60 and I have skeins left. I scratch my head, shrug my shoulders and thank my miscalculations for having the good taste of going in the right direction.

As I add the second heddle I realize the first one was a 30/10 instead of the 40/10 I had based my calculations on. Slot-slot-hole-slot all over again, with the correct heddle. I wonder whether my 60 centimeter width on the warp beam will mean trouble for my now 40 centimeter width on the cloth beam. My answer is that I will learn from whatever the outcome.

Twists and tangles

I notice that the golden muga silk threads tangle more than the mulberry silk, twisting around each other. This will be a challenge, I note to myself, remembering my last weaving project with a singles warp yarn. And I will learn from this one too. In my next breath I spot a missing muga silk stripe.

A row of warp thread bundles tied onto the warp beam bar.
Slinky little knots add to the challenge I face through the weaving process.

Slot-slot-hole and the last slot. All done and my hands are blue. I tie the ends around the cloth beam bar. It feels different than tying wool – the slippery surface makes the knots glide and I have to retie some of them several times.

Warp threads between two heddles. A hand reaches down to separate and lift the threads.
I need to fiddle between the heddles for a clean down shed.

This is it. This is when I find out if I have threaded the heddles correctly. While I have worked with double heddles before, I haven’t done it to double the thread count, only for a double layered weave and for twill. The lower shed is fiddly and I need to lift and separate the threads between the heddles to find the shed. But it works. This will be a slow weave, and I embrace the slowness.

A striped weave on the bias.
Close/up of a loose weave.
Close-up of a loose weave.
Slowly but steadily my silk shawl emerges.

The first golden thread breaks. This is my cue to call it a day. I will deal with it with a fresh mind and deblued hands tomorrow. I loosen the warp beam handle to relax the threads, pet the weave and thank it for the company and a good day’s work. Kerstin is on the floor tyeing her treadles. As I leave I hear the 2 o’clock news jingle behind me and Kerstin’s footsteps toward the coffee maker.

Happy spinning!

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  • Read the book Knit (spin) Sweden! by Sara Wolf. I am a co-author and write in the fleece section about how I spin yarn from Swedish sheep breeds.
  • I am writing a book! In the later half of 2025 Listen to the wool: A why-to guide for mindful spinning will be available. Read more about the book here.
  • In all the social media I offer, you are more than welcome to contact me. Interacting with you helps me make better content. My private Facebook page, however, will remain private.
  • I support Centro de textiles tradicionales del Cusco, a group of talented textile artists in Cusco, Peru who dedicate their work to the empowerment of weavers through the revitalization and sustainable practice of Peruvian ancestral textiles in the Cusco region. Please consider supporting their work by donating to their causes