April 4, 2014

Footstool

My footstool went together laughably out of square. The dowels fit into the pre-drilled holes fairly loosely, so I used a generous amount of glue and hoped for the best. The very first dowel I glued in place is the offender. But I didn't realize it in time to start over, the glue set very quickly. Oh well. The frame sits flat on the floor, and that's what matters. I figured the wonkiness wouldn't be noticeable once the weaving was added. I filled the more egregious blemishes with wood filler, lightly sanded the rough spots, painted with one coat of primer and two coats of paint. The final color is like the square on the bottom left.
The warp (grey) required two t-shirts. I cut off the bottom hem of the shirts then cut in a spiral fashion from the bottom up to the arms, roughly 1.5 inches wide, to create a single long cord. Each large t-shirt yielded over 12 yards of "yarn." The yellow (weft) was a bit unwieldy so I made a couple of cardboard shuttles to corral the yarn while weaving. I followed a traditional twill pattern. In the diagram, the black squares represent the warp, the white squares the weft. After struggling for a bit, it dawned on me to find something to use as a shed. A 14 inch knitting needle did the trick. One yellow t-shirt was enough to complete the stool.


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