Weaving Stick Project Update

I've been having a pretty nice day today. The sun is warming things up here in central Arizona and after three rainy weekends in a row, we are being treated to some days of perfect bliss.

I sat outside in the sun for a while and worked on my weaving sticks. I'm up to about 4' of fabric now and after the black I'll be weaving the colors in reverse back to the light blue. These colors may seem a bit dull, but the plan is for this to become a felted sculpture for my studio wall. My studio is painted a fairly strong green which I think will make these more neutral shades stand out.

Now I had a basic plan for my project which involved having each section of color a particular length. I've been able to come close to my plan, but as I've been weaving, I've been thinking. How could you make something to more exact specifications? Then I had an idea. If the sticks were marked, each in the same place towards their points and again near the ends, you could keep track of your length. It would also make it easier to make more than one strip of equal lengths. I made this little picture on Skitch to illustrate:


This picture isn't perfect, but I think it will serve my purpose. See what I mean? If you stained either end of the wooden sticks a darker color, or somehow made a line, it could become a measuring tool.

I'm pretending that the section of lighter wood in my picture is 4". If I start weaving at the bottom line and work up to the top line, I'll have 4" of fabric. Then I'll pull the sticks back up through the completed weft until I see the bottom line again. If I'm making something like a place mat, I may repeat this process 4 times to give me a strip 16" long. Than I can finish off and make several more strips the same way.

I realize this isn't the grandest stroke of genius. There may even be someone making weaving sticks in exactly this fashion. Then there is the real possibility that not too many people even care about weaving sticks. *cringe* Oh, please care... at least a little. Still, I just wanted to pass on my notion of the day.