Illustrating With Yarn : Weaving

1. Intro: My name is Lisa, and I'm a designer and illustrator. If you're anything like me, it's been a lot of times through this class. I want to get off the screen and doing illustration with yard. I'll teach you the basics of leaving and how to take your illustrations down to the You need no prior waiting Dallas for this class that you will need to materials to get started . What, you gather your materials, I'll show you every step to making your first leaving. 2. How To Make A Loom: what you need. A ruler, a tap Eastern Neil paper and pencil for sketching cardboard, various colors of yarn in a pair of scissors. Once you gather your materials, you'll start putting marks on 1/4 inch apart on your cardboard. You'll do this across the whole top of the cardboard and leave about half an inch on either side. You want to make sure that you haven't even number of marks. Once you finish that side, you'll flip it over and do it again on the other side, making sure that the lines from the side you just did line up with the ones that you're about to do. So now that we have these marks all done and making sure that we haven't even amount, we're gonna start cutting them. Oops, one extra. We're gonna start cutting, and we're just gonna cut down maybe about 1/4 or or half inch down the's sluts. They're gonna hold our yarn in place. Good job. So now that we have all over cuts done, we're going to take our yard that we're gonna work our live with and I've chosen a cotton yard. You want to use a good, sturdy yarn. And typically it's a cotton yarn for this part. So we're gonna take our thread going to start in the top through the first lot. Make sure you hold that pretty steady. I'm gonna start putting it round and inside this slots until you get to the very making. Not too tight, but, um, you don't want it to be lose. All right, Once you've got this all done and you're on the very last one, you wanna cut it. And if you want, you can secure the loose into the back. I usually leave the loosens in and out of the disrupted the top and that's it. You just walked your first loom here, almost ready to start waving. 3. Concepting Your design: So now we're gonna start sketching out ideas for this project. Um, just do, uh, 46 thumbnail sketches of some simple designs for this project. I want you to do just a simple shape. Uh, so you don't get discouraged by this process. Triangles and geometric shapes are really good to start with. You want to skip sketching altogether and go straight to weaving bigness? There's stripes. Stripes is the easiest thing you can dio. - So now that we've finished our thumbnail sketches, I'm gonna pick one of them. I'm gonna get a larger sheet of paper big enough that you can fit on my limb and I'm going to cut it to size just a 10 smaller than and the movie it's once I've got it cut out, I'm going to copy the design that I chose onto this sheet of paper. - Been a place the design under my warp threads so I can see it as I work. This is one way to do it if you wanted to. Since we're using cardboard, you can draw your design directly on the cardboard before you him warped your lives. Now I'm going to secure the paper with a couple pieces of tape, just in case it decides to move. Now you've got your design ready and that's it. 4. Choosing Colors & Fibers: So you have the cotton yarn that you use for your warped, and I have a few acrylics here that I'm gonna use, and that's totally fine. You can even use small pieces, and I also have some will. And this was It's just twisted, and it gives him really nice texture in the weaving. It's almost like we were Ah, well, roving. And this is Chunky Yard, and it gives a lot of texture also, and it speeds up the weaving, So I'm gonna pick the colors that I want to use for my design. I recommend 2 to 3 colors just for this project. If you want to use more later, that's totally fine. So I'm gonna pick three colors for my design. Since I had reshapes who? No, that doesn't quite right. I think I'll go with the year Mustard Yellow War with that top part. So I have my three colors paid, and then I'm ready to start weaving 5. How to Weave: So now we're gonna take our first color. No, I want to use three. And are tapestry needle tapestry needles have a pretty big hall, so you shouldn't have a problem. Um, if you don't have a dentistry needle and you don't want to go buy one If you have a ruler with a hole in it, you can use it straight in the same way. - Take up for his color, and I'm gonna Europe. Where would you start? And you're just gonna go under over, under, over, under over until you get to the other side. You're gonna pull that three all the way through. Now you're gonna go back through. You're gonna do the opposite of what you deal. That's so could go over that first for it and under continue all the way through some during the opposite of what I just did. And you'll see if you did it right. You'll see that there is believing the basket leave type thing happening. We're gonna go back again through the opposite of what you just did. You're going to keep doing this until you have filled up here space that you wanted to fill up with that color. So now that I have this color done, I wanted to show you how to add the second color, making sure that you are using the same over under pattern. Stir adding your second color. You'll see here that I'm adding, I'm pulling it through o top of first road on that thread where they meet. This part can be a little tricky, but if you have any questions, you can just ask. And don't worry too much about getting your shape exactly the way you drawn it. Things could change along the way. Just do what's right. 6. How to Finish Your Weaving: so going to show you how to finish the top. This is just a tiny one that I have made already. The haven't finished can a Well, it was on the loom. I just cut it off the back it now the's ins are loose, sunny to put inside. We've been thes loose ends, so you stick the needle through first row and then take thes second string and put it through the needle. And now cool that through minutes woven in. And so you put you repeat this again on the next row and then take the first string can pull it through. You do this each time you'll take the second string and then the first street. That way, everything's crossed over. - Now that's that. So finished. You have these loose ends that need to get woven in, and you can do that the same way as you just did that with the top ones. So start with this yellow one. I'm just gonna leave it down, making sure that it will make a gap we've in town. And then now all that through tree looks good before I pull it tight, and then I'm gonna leave it through, so it's just secure. And then I could just cut that that piece off, - and I'm gonna do the same thing with one on the end. Just gonna leave it, Just gonna put the needle down in that row that it's on. Just just put my needle all way down and pull that through, and then I can cut that off, and you just leave the rest of those loose and so I can cut thes that I put through earlier offs. You want to try and make sure that you put all your all these through on the bed Whichever side you deem is the backside, just in case this is how you him stitch. And this is how you get, uh, fringe looking thing of the bottom like I have here. So did the hem stitch on here and you can see the diagonal lines clear this the hymns ditch . So what you do is you're gonna go under first to pull through, go reald again and you're gonna go up on the other side about who rose up on the other side of the next two. You gonna wrap it around again again? You better pull it through on the other side of the next. It's that's it. And you keep doing that until you get to the end. So getting down to the last ones, all this last one you're gonna pull through but you're going to do and not at the end silly . Keep all of its secure. Now you finish that, you'll just turn it over and cut the threads and then take it off the loop and then you'll have your finished piece on this one. Um, I didn't turn into a wall hanging. I just added a copper pipe that I found pre cut at close. 7. Recap: I hope you all enjoy taking this cuts and I can't wait to see what you come up with. It's good to get off the computer and try something different. You guys have any questions? I'll be your answer. And if you decide that you want to be waiting, our thanks so much for taking this class and I hope you have a good day by