All posts by Gina

Fabric Blogette: Spinning- the hot new technology

We’ve already explored the first things that would count as ‘fabric’ and ‘thread’ in the past few articles. We even touched on how weaving plants together probably introduced early humans to weaving the cords and twines.

Sometime after the discovery of twisted thread, the earliest spinning tools were invented. A ‘drop spindle’ is very possibly the very first spinning tool. Essentially an early spindle was just a stick stuck slightly off center through a weight. This simple tool would allow a spinner to even walk while spinning, being a very very early multitasking capable tool. A distaff is the tool that would hold the fiber to be fed to the spindle.

Spinning became incredibly important. Before we domesticated animals and learned to spin their hair (or cocoons), we were finding long-fiber wild grasses nearly everywhere, and relatively easy to harvest and prep. Archeologists have found linen shards dating to about 30,000 years ago, long before agriculture.

This sort of spinning was done for tens of thousands of years, until only about 1000 years ago. Someone figured out how to make a machine that would speed up the spinning process, and the spinning wheel (still human powered) sped everything up. Spinning prior to that point was a long process that involved everyone in a household who could to spin constantly. Wheels allowed for far fewer people (normally women) to need to dedicate their time to it.

And yes, the term ‘spinster’ came out of the usefulness of unmarried women to sit and spin their days and help the households. However, so many men spun as well, in the 1600’s English speakers created the work ‘spinstress’ to distinguish between a male and female spinster (despite the — ster already being a female suffix)

In 1764, the Spinning Jenny was invented, which allowed one worker to spin eight separate spools at once. Adaptions continued to be made until the machines produced finer and stronger thread than humans could. Spinning is now both a hobby and a revolutionary act- Ghandi was known to spin his own thread to have clothes completely homemade.

Next week we will start to discuss weaving.

Quick Fabric Blogs: yarn and cords and twine oh my!

It’s not hard to see how tying clothes around you, sticking sharpened bone or sticks through coverings to keep them from falling off easily, or poking holes in them and threading sinew to hold them on was a logical next step. While woven plant matter has not survived the archaeological record well, there is good reason to believe that people were weaving grasses, stems and leaves long before there was thread. Far more complicated than conditioning skins, these weavings could also be used as mats, coverings, shelters, shoes, bags, and carrying tools. It’s not too much of a stretch to see how a simply playing with grasses could lead to weaving a flat matt which could then lead to weaving a three dimensional item. Playing and working with these grasses could very well led to the disintegration of the grass into long fibers in a similar way that drying and pounding sinew gave long fibers to work with. Unlike sinew, these grass fibers were not strong on their own.

At some point, about 30000 years ago, someone playing with or working with grass fibers rolled them on something. By rolling the fibers over and adding more fibers to the roll as the old ones were used up, they developed the very first string, a technological revolution that is often ignored in history. Craftspeople speculate some one was fiddling with plant or animal fibers and was rolling them on their thigh while fidgeting. This would twist the shorter fibers into longer ones, and was very possibly the way thread (yarn, cord, twine, string)  was invented. While it is obvious that this fiber could be used to tie and lace and sew much like sinew, it probably didn’t take long to realize that this worked much better for weaving than sinew or strips of fur would.

I adore checking the history and evolution of words, as they can tell us so much about human history. The word for sinew, very likely the first material used for binding things by humans, comes from the Proto Indo European root word ‘sai’ which means to tie and bind. You can almost hear someone asking ‘give me that thing that ties’ and the hearer knowing exactly what was meant, an example where the thing is named after what it does.

Yarn and cord come from the Proto Indo European root word ‘ghere’ for intestines/ guts!

Here the word harkens back to what these items came from or replaced. It’s also why we call it our spinal cord, and why instruments (made of animal organs for a very long time) allow you to play ‘chords’.

String is from the Proto Indo European root word ‘strenk’ which means tight or narrow. To me, this implies that it is a later appellation and refers to the fineness of the thread as opposed to the material or technique used to make it or its purpose.

If you have spun, my small discussion may have made you say ‘you forgot to double it!’ Single cords were used for ages, but allowing the cord to twist back on itself makes for a stronger and thicker tread or twine. Thread literally means twisted (from the Proto Indo European root word ‘tere’  to rub or turn) and twine means doubled (from the Proto Indo European root word ‘dwo’ for two. All these words are very old, which is fitting for such an important invention and variations. I love seeing how the words changed so logically, and I assume the roots for the Proto Indo European for at least sinew and cord were carried by early explorers into the Levant.

Quick Fabric Blogs: The earliest of the early

Last week we talked a little about how humans have been adorning their bodies with various coverings. This week we will start to discuss the different types of coverings humans started to develop.

As far as archaeologists have been able to figure out so far (giving hard answers to such things is pretty impossible, especially as textiles and coverings are so hard to find intact in the archaeological record),   the earliest materials our ancestors used would have been long grasses, large leaves, fur, leather, and sinew. The very first non decorative items humans made out of these materials were likely shoes and carrying items. You can probably imagine how to tie leaves around your feet or even wrap food in leaves to make it easier to carry and stop it from decaying quite as quickly.

It’s also easy to imagine our ancestors carefully removing all the edible flesh from the animals they killed to eat. Scrapers have been found nearly everywhere, proving that early people were cleaning the skins of animals thoroughly. As untreated skins become hard and rot, but chemically altered skins do not, it probably didn’t take long for people to realize that using a common product all humans carried with them (urine) and working the skin to keep it flexible while it was curing, and people had fur: to line sleeping areas, tie to their feet, use as decoration, create bags to carry things in, form walls to block sun and wind, and bundle up in as it got cold. Making leather was simply scraping the fur off the other side.

Internal organs of animals also found uses not as food. Bladders were easy to hold liquid in when clean (and formed early balls for play when filled with air), and the tendons and the ‘silverskin’ of the animals, which were not very edible, were treated much as the skins were. They were cleaned and dried and them pounded until they were flexible and stringy. Between this sinew (which we still use today) and naturally forming vegetation, people were able to create items that could be shaped permanently or made into larger items by using sinew to stitch (the earliest needed found to date is 30000 years old) several pieces of fur or leather together. Knowing how much humans like to decorate ourselves, many archaeologists are sure these items were held together with rudimentary embroidery stitches and decorative items.

Quick Fabric Blogs: the beginnings and the basics

It is very difficult to have proof of anything that happened tens of thousands of years ago, especially when it’s as transient as clothing and fiber.

For many thousands of years our ancestors lived in areas where covering the body in protective items were not needed at all. Areas to sleep in could have leaves and vines and animal products like skins or fur and feathers as cushioning and covering.

But humans love decorating themselves. Early hominid finds nearly always include beads and jewelry and bits we tied around ourselves.

So the start of clothing is most likely an embellishment not *just* a need for protection from the environment. The fact that shells with holes drilled through them dating to 150,000 years ago, shows exactly how much early humans cared for decorating themselves. These shell beads have been found in at least 5 caves throughout northern Africa, allowing experts to speculate about communication, trade, and the very human desire to adorn in the extremely early world.

Dating has shown that shortly after the caches of beads were lost or left behind, humans were skinning animals. They could have used their skins merely in their beds, but knowing that we already adorned ourselves, is it unlikely to see us adorning our bodies with skins? A strange and possibly uncomfortable way to track the use of clothing- something that rarely lasts anytime as long as shell and bone- is to track the evolution of lice.
Humans have suffered from head lice for a very very long time. Long enough that the lice that like living on human heads evolved to be a different louse than is its closest relative on our closest relatives— the chimpanzees and the bonobos. Pretty much the same is true for pubic lice.
Body lice, also known as ‘clothing lice’, is *specific to humans* and tracing the genes of body lice and when they split from the other lice can basically tell us when humans started to wear clothing. And what that tells us is that, about the same time we were drilling holes in shells to adorn ourselves, we were decorating our bodies with coverings. While even Africa can have inclement weather humans wanted to protect our bodies from, the history of the body louse shows that we were consistently wearing body coverings before any one left Africa to explore the other parts of the world.

Quick Fabric Blogs: Intro

I don’t have as many cool tips as I wanted to have for finishing projects to have a Finishing Friday. I do, however, probably have a decades worth of small infodumps on various ‘fabrics’, so Fridays will be Finishing and Fabric Fridays now, if that’s ok. There is so much fun stuff about fabric (I will be using that word for a ground which is used either for embellishing or wearing.) I will also be going through different dyes and fibers as well. This will not be a comprehensive listing of all fibers, dyes, and backgrounds, but I hope it will give a wide enough base the length of time spent and confusion encountered when trying to choose a fabric will be minimized.
I will roughly be starting out with as early as we know about, and end with the most modern fabrics we have as of yet. I will try to keep it in chronological order, but that will not be completely possible. 
So I hope you will have fun joining me!

Information every needle worker can use: RSN Stitch Bank

Sometimes, it makes no sense to ‘reinvent the needle’. There are some amazing resources on the web for needle workers of all types, and I am going to share some of the best and most useful ones I have found over the past few decades of needle working. Search the keyword ‘needlethread’ for all my posts showcasing helpful sites.

First is the RSN (Royal School of Needlework) Stitch Bank. This is a digital stitch dictionary for both surface work and counted work, as well as specialties such as mirror work. They are endeavoring to catalogue stitches old and new to make sure there is a record of them. So this is inherently a huge stitch dictionary, where you can search via technique, or stitch use, or merely browse the collection. And you can create your *own* library of stitches you can access on the site.

Each entry has a photo of the completed stitch, its name, some information about it, the stitched worked *with a click to flip* to see how it would be worked left handed! It also has a video showing how it is worked, and then what category stitch it is, common uses for it, what techniques use it, variants of the stitch, and related stitches. It also has each stitch documented, and examples of the stitch in use.


Please check it out.

It is wonderful to live in the future.

Brick Stitch Rainbow earrings

Small rainbow earrings
Side Rainbow Earrings
Diamond Rainbow Earrings
Simple Rainbow Earrings

Happy Pride! Here’s a free PDF to download with instructions on how to make all four sets of these earrings.
These earrings will also be given away. You can subscribe here and follow on my facebook . Or follow on my insta and tag two friends who would like rainbow earrings, your choice! I will notify the winners for addresses by June 10th.

Ribbon Sunflower

The finished sunflower

I like ribbon work, regardless of it it’s silk and in a needle or three-inch wide grosgrain. It’s all wonderful to create with. Ribbon is fun to play with and there is an almost never-ending variety of materials and colors and results.
And years ago, I bought this 7/8 inch wide yellow ribbon to make sunflowers with. It just seemed right to do it now.
If you have a yellow ribbon of that exact size in your stash, you can make one my size. If you have *any* yellow ribbon, you can make a sunflower of any size.

The center of the flower is black felt. For this flower, I used a toilet tissue roll as a pattern, and traced around it with chalk. I then rand a basting line through the drawn line and pulled it up. Knot the threads on the back and shape it to be the center of your flower. I do have some 1/8 inch brown ribbon put aside to make a center with French Knots, but there was an urgency to make this.

My pattern and the felt center
Basting the center. Using a long black thread because it will stitch on the petals as well.
ready to go.

I used 7 6 inch strips of ribbon to form the flower You can add petals to make it thicker, or cut shorter ones to make a double petal flower as well.

All you need to do is fold your ribbon half way, and secure the base. I just pinned it to the center.

the simple fold to make this type of petal.
pinned petals being stitched down.
Completed flower from back.

That’s it. It’s all done now. I have made a few of these to pin to jackets and hang in windows and even to give away.
Enjoy making a sunflower.
And let there be peace on earth.

Sigil to Protect Protestors Graph

This is a sigil created by  LAURA TEMPEST ZAKROFF to protect protestors.

Her post about it is here:
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/tempest/2018/07/a-sigil-to-protect-protesters-those-detained-by-ice.html#disqus_thread

At this point in time, I thought people who enjoy working with thread may want to have this graphed to make.
All credit to Ms Zakroff. Feel free to use this for any use except commecial or for profit using these rules: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/