Weaving With Agnes

At the beginning of the year, the fabric weaving group that is a part of the Auckland Handweavers and Spinners Guild, (www.handweavers.org.nz) commissioned Agnes Hauptli, weaver extraordinaire, to write a course for us so that we learned more about using Fibreworks PCW to its potential.  Fibreworks is a weaving program that allows weavers to plan their weaving before they warp up the loom.

So far, I've completed the first module which was all about network drafting, which is something I'd always been meaning to try, but had never got around to.  I so enjoyed the playing around on the computer that I decided to weave one of my efforts.  One thing I wanted to know was how busy the pattern would be, as it looked really complicated on paper.This is the first effort.

 I wove this with an Alpaca/silk yarn and I deliberately chose a high contrast between the warp and the weft as I wanted to know see the pattern clearly.  As I had thought, the patteusy and relatively formless.  Quite a disappointment.  However, having had a chance to talk to Agnes about this at the Creative Fibre Festival, she felt the pattern might look better if I used colours that had a similar value.  So, I came home from Festival inspired to try this.  Here is the result.

 I used the same yarn, and you can see that there is still a lot of busyness and very little form.  So what I have to work out is how you work with the program to get a cleaner, more definite pattern.  the only probelem is I now have modules 2 and 3 waiting to be done. Sigh! So much exploring to do, so little time!