Monday, February 15, 2010

Stripping

I recently acquired 10 yards of this beautiful fabric. My plan is to make placemats and a table runner for the church bazaar.



To weave with the fabric, I first need to cut it into 1 1/2 inch strips. Weaving catalogs have a black cast iron strip cutter that seems to be the tool of choice. My choice is to not spend the $180 if I can avoid it.



I ordered this little gizmo on line. It uses various arrangements of sharp blades to create different width strips.



You then pull the fabric through it to cut strips. In this case, I got what I paid for. It's supposed to clamp on your table, but in actuality, it hooks and the only table I have with enough lip to hook it on is the coffee table. It worked pretty well with strips one yard long, but the 10 yard strips take too much start and stop. I have to get on my knees and pull about five feet through and then regrip it and pull another length. It doesn't come out perfectly straight but probably good enough.



Here's a view of a placemat on the loom. The blue on the ends is a header that will be turned under and stitched down.

3 comments:

Aunt Dinah said...

Wow, Mary, how creative and how cool! Amazing!

Vonita said...

Love the colors. Wish I were so ambitious. And the pictures above of the hawk are beautiful.

Far Side of Fifty said...

Great color. When we used to do strips for rugs my mother would measure off the width she wanted on a length of fabric..then she would clip it with a scissors and we would begin to tear off the strips..it worked:)