2010 - Bumberet

“New Rep Weave” Workshop with Joanne Tallarovic, October 2010.

At our November 2010 meeting, we briefly examined the bumberet weave when we were required to make a last minute program change because of the wet, snowy weather and treacherous driving conditions. Jo-Anne and Susan recalled that bumberet was one of the weaves in the Robyn Spady workshop a couple of years ago.

Jo-Anne’s (unwashed) sample from the workshop is shown here. The red weft is 5/2 mercerized cotton and the blue weft is a novelty thread.

Bumberet is a stable fabric with ribs on both sides. Texture is one of its main characteristics. It offers lots of opportunity to use different weights of threads and also to experiment with colour combinations. Treadling variations further expand its design possibilities.  I even like it for its name!

Articles published in Weaver’s magazine in 1991and 1996 (see links to these in the references below) show this weave used for jacket fabrics, and these articles are a good starting point for examining this interesting weave structure. They also put it into an historical context, noting that bumberet, velveret, thickset, and ducape were four of the weaves included in John Hargrove’s 1792 publication, “The Weavers Draft Book and Clothiers Assistant.” Yes – that’s 1792!!

Daryl Lancaster ‘s Fabric Forecast, Fashions for Fall/Winter ’04-05, in Handwoven, Issue 119, March/April 2004, features a vest woven in bumberet by Ruby Leslie, using mercerised cotton. The swatch pictured there shows a Retro Blue background with four different colours used in the texture stripes. The Project-at-a-Glance note for the article describes bumberet as a “warp-dominant texture weave”.

A couple of posts by amyfibre on Weavolution.com show bumberet towels woven in both 2/8 and 2/16 cotton.

At our November 2010 meeting, we briefly examined the bumberet weave when we were required to make a last-minute program change because of the wet, snowy weather and treacherous driving conditions.  Jo-Anne and Susan recalled that bumberet was one of the weaves in the Robyn Spady workshop a couple of years ago.

2003 In the Community

Ross House Museum is an historic site in Winnipeg. It is a log house, and it was the home of Alexander Ross, the first post-master in Lower Fort Garry. Outfitted with items suitable to the 1850’s when the home was the post office, it was decorated with rag rugs. In 2000, these rugs looked appropriately old, even though they could have been woven as recently as 1940-50, and they were wearing out. After all, even 1950 is awhile ago! It was time for new rugs.

At the invitation of the curator of Ross House, I examined the existing rugs. It was apparent that two were sewn together to make one bigger rug, and the other two were identical to each other but a separate warp from the first. They were warp-faced, the warp being a mixture of wool and cottons with a rag weft.

It seemed appropriate to use the existing rugs as colour patterns, since the Historical Society wanted to replace them pretty much exactly as they were.

As background research, I looked at the rugs in the first part of Dorothy Burnham’s “Keep Me Warm One Night.” The rugs shown there were from about the same time period as the house, and they were from Eastern Canada. Resources for weaving here in the colony were limited. When there were rugs, it seemed plausible that they might have come from Upper or Lower Canada and would resemble those in the book. I suggested that to be more historically accurate, I would make the warp all wool. My proposal for creating the rugs was accepted.

Thinking that I could avoid the arduous task of cutting rags into strips, I ordered 20 lbs. of cotton rags from Maurice Brassard. Oops! They were knit cotton strips. A subsequent visit to a liquidation outlet yielded six all-cotton sheets, and I raided my Dad’s closet for a few more old ones in case I ran out. The strips from Maurice Brassard have since been used up in five other weft-faced rag rugs.

First, I designed and wove the rug with the red stripes (shown at right). Taken off the loom, it was cut into two rugs, each 88 inches long by 36 inches wide. The ends were bound with a heavy beige denim border, and the two rugs were sewn together and delivered to Ross House in July.

The second set of two rugs had a pink stripe down the middle. No shade of pink that I could find seemed suitable. I put on a sample using another set of colors, wove a sample and then re-arranged the colors. This time, I made the predominant stripe a rust with green accents — the exhibit room where this rug would be used was green, and I think the floor was orange.

Fussing with the colours had taken longer than I had intended, and the second pair of rugs was delivered after the Labour Day weekend. That was too late for the 2000 season, since Ross House is unheated and therefore open only in the summer. However, the rugs were there in time for the next year, and hopefully for a good fifty years to come!