LIMITED EDITION 8-Shaft, "A Luminous Stream (ALS)" Silk Scarves Weaving Kit  

Featured in Heddlecraft May/June 2020--the "Turned Beiderwand" issue.

Treenway Silks donates a minimum of 10% of sales of the "A Luminous Stream (ALS)" silk scarves kit to ALS Association, to help find a cure.

KIT:
This is Turned Beiderwand with Supplemental Warp.  Never done supplemental warp before (and scared of it?)  Not to worry--it's not difficult--and you don't need a second beam--when you have great instructions by Karen Donde.

Your kit includes instructions, but if you've never used a supplemental warp before, I highly recommend getting the May/June 2020 Heddlecraft issue--it's like having your own personal instructor beside you at your loom!  You can purchase the Heddlecraft issue here

Karen provides two one threading and two tie ups/treadlings (Turned Beiderwand and Turned Half Dukagang), but with the M/J 2020 Heddlecraft issue, you can apply any of the structures to your scarves, making your scarves uniquely "you".

Your Limited Edition "A Luminous Stream (ALS)" 2-Scarves Kit makes two scarves, each about 9.25" wide and 65" long, finished with hand-rolled hem. 

The kit includes:
       900 yds ( 90g) of Kiku (20/2 Bombyx silk, aka 'mulberry' silk), Limited Edition Hand-painted colorway "Mountain Stream"
    2,973 yds (169g) of Silken Cloud (60/2x2, 70% silk/30% cotton), color #956 Periwinkle

Karen recommends a 12 dent reed for your 8-shaft loom. 

COLOR:

I wanted to make this kit extra special. Inspired by the Rocky Mountains, I created "Mountain Stream" colorway (blues for the stream, plus greens and periwinkle, reflecting the trees and mountains) for the supplemental warp. 

The luminous silk stripes (streams) of supplemental warp, on Karen's beautifully designed scarf, against the "purple mountains majesty," Silken Cloud ground cloth, inspired the name "A Luminous Stream (ALS)"

THE BACK STORY (yup, there's always a story!):

Our collaboration (Heddlecraft magazine, Karen Donde and Treenway Silks) began July 2019 at Intermountain Weavers Conference in Durango, Colorado.

I signed up for Karen Donde's workshop Turned Beiderwand: One Threading, Multiple Structures because I love being able to weave different structures on the same warp. And after 20-some years of weaving, it was time to "get over" my fear of supplemental warps.

In advance of the workshop, Karen assigned each of the 15 students one of three ways to manage two-layers of warp and provided terrific Back-to-Front warping instructions so we could arrive with our looms warped, but not tied onto front apron rod.

True Confessions:  I've only warped Front-to-Back, so I read over the instructions multiple times to understand the objectives, and then applied that to my Front-to-Back method and it went smoothly (thank goodness!)  I had a silk ground warp and silk supplemental warp.

Weavers are so inventive...it was an education to see how "single back beam" loom owners (like me) used various supplies from the hardware store to separate the ground warp layer from the supplemental warp layer as they passed over the back beam.

The first morning, Karen walked us through the tie-on method for each of the three ways she had assigned us.  And then we were weaving, just like that!  Silly me to have been afriad of supplemental warps for so many years!

The workshop was SO MUCH FUN!!  Turned Beiderwand just begs to use silk, so I suggested we collaborate. Robyn Spady (Heddlecraft publisher/editor) was also teaching a workshop at the conference and was interested in Karen's take on Turned Beiderwand. The three of us had dinner, hatched the idea of a Turned Beiderwand themed Heddlecraft issue supported with a Treenway Silks scarves kit.

The ALS Connection:

The three of us agreed that we wanted a philanthropic aspect to the Treenway Silks' scarves kit.

At the time, Treenway Silks' dyer, Anne, was on bereavement leave.  Her US veteran husband had been diagnosed with ALS in February 2017. Dennis passed away January 13, 2019.

Robyn Spady's paternal grandfather passed away from ALS while relatively young.  He didn't live to see his children marry or have children of their own.  In the last days of his life at the hospital, his oldest son met a young nursing student.  They would go on to marry and have children.  These were Robyn's parents. 

A few months after Robyn's father passed away in 2015, she was informed that he had lived his entire adult life in fear of developing ALS after watching how it had ravaged not only his father's life but affected many other family members. 

Karen, with no direct connection to ALS, readily supported the cause.

Scarves designed and woven by Karen Donde
photos 1 & 2 are Turned Beiderwand.  Photos 3 & 4 are Turned Half Dukagang...this one has the small periwinkle 'lines" crossing the streams. 
images taken by Treenway Silks' photographer Thom Harrod.