Friday, May 25, 2012

Spinning Cotton with Joan Ruane

I was lucky to sign up for a class with Joan Ruane who is know for cotton spinning.  I learned to spin cotton on a wheel instead of the normal takhli and charkha.

We had a bunch of samples of ginned cotton and cotton sliver.  There were also different qualities of cotton.  The samples included Pima, Acala, and Sea Island sliver with new cleaner varieties.  We also received ginned cotton samples of colored Pima cotton, white Pima cotton, and Sea Island cotton.

I also learned how to card cotton into tight punis.
We spun some of the white ginned cotton punis we prepared and then moved onto cotton sliver.  After spinning punis, the sliver spun like butter.

We spun a single of white pima sliver and another single of brown pima sliver and plied the two together.
After washing in super hot water, the brown will darken and the white will become brighter.  Cotton is stronger when it is wet.

Kay with Strawbale Barn Weaving Studio brought some colored ginned cotton that we were allowed to play with.  I made punis of all of the colors she brought. The green is on the top.
I also spun up some of the green and plied it with the left over brown and came up with this.  I can't wait to see the colors after washing.
I ended up buying the rest of the green and red/brown fiber from her when class ended.

I also got some seeds from Joan and am ready to start planting.  I'm pretty sure that the plants will grow in San Diego.
The fuzzy seeds are green cotton.  As you can see of the other two seeds - one is fuzzy and one is naked.  The naked one is Pima cotton and is creamier in color and has a longer staple relatively to the Upland cotton which is whiter and has a hairy seed.

Joan was also wearing a blouse she spun and wove.
The amazing thing is the the total weight of the blouse is 3.5 ounces.  Great for super hot weather locations.

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