Kindle books

Help for These Trying Times

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I’m amazed at how people are checking on and helping each other as we deal with the Covid-19 virus and stay in our homes.

I spent the day cutting fabrics for making 200 masks for our staff. Thank goodness for a rotary cutter! I can’t tell you how good it felt to be doing something. We have a whole team. It’s amazing how people have all we needed—except for the elastic and filter. We needed to search deeply for elastic—everyone seemed out of stock. I had a spool of wire and good cutters, others had fabric—lots of quilting material. Tonight those with sewing machines are busily sewing them up. Our team leader made miniature samples to go along with the directions.

I’d like to help in another way by offering a free book with the purchase of a book. It’s the same sale I have offered during the holidays.

If you can weave or not now, perhaps reading about it will make for some pleasant time—maybe even inspire you to get to the loom.

Many of you know my book, Weaving for Beginners (as a pdf or in print). However, the other books offer more depth and are like reference books. They have all the illustrations you expect. Order your free books on my website: www.peggyosterkamp.com

Here’s what you might be interested in knowing more in depth about in Winding a Warp & Using a Paddle: how to use a paddle, plan projects, understand sett for different projects as well as different yarns, and make perfect warps.

Warping Your Loom & Tying On New Warps is only available as a pdf but has lots of information that isn’t readily available to weavers—especially in one place. How to beam perfectly tensioned warps by yourself, use sectional warping, adjust looms, tie on new warps, learn how different types of looms work, and how to adjust them.

Weaving & Drafting Your Own Cloth has in-depth information on drafting, analyzing fabric, creating your own designs, burn tests, multi shaft weaving, besides efficient weaving motions, information about different types of shuttles, making perfect selvedges and weighting them separately. There is a big chapter on troubleshooting as well.

My DVD is available on Vimeo as well as on a DVD. How to warp the loom from back-to-front is what it shows. It’s just like what’s in all the books.

Reminding Myself How to Hemstitch with My Kindle Book

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I needed to hemstitch the other day and had to get out my big book, Weaving for Beginners, which was so big that it made it impossible to do the stitching. So I got out my Mini iPad and opened up my Kindle book on hemstitching. Perfect–then I taught myself again how to make the stitches. I was all thumbs at first but when I got it, it was quick and easy.

Then I got out my iPhone and it worked better than ever. What fun! I learned to hemstitch way late in my weaving life so on one piece I even forgot to use it.

So, I got it! Since this will be on the hem on the back of the piece, I didn’t need to be careful about having every group of threads the same size. The reason here is to keep the last wefts from unravelling. You should leave at least an inch of warp on the piece before cutting it off the loom.

You can get a copy of my Kindle Hemstitching booklet for just $2.99 HERE.
Next month I’ll publish my third booklet. This one will be about a unique way of “Tying On New Warps”. FYI: the second booklet is “Weaver’s Knots“.

Coming Soon: My Second Kindle Book – Weaver’s Knots

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Last year we were surprised to find that my most popular weaving tip on my website was the hemstitching tip. To date out of 94,000 views of the list of tips, 47,000 are for hemstitching alone. That’s why about a year ago we published our first Kindle book called Hemstitching. It is really a reference/instructional booklet. We decided people were needing more on the basics.  

Now we are about to publish our second Kindle book called, Weaver’s Knots. There are 6,000 words and 67 illustrations. showing every step in the tying of each knot.  Of course there will be directions to tie a weaver’s knot, but did you know there are several different ways to tie it? How to tell you have made it correctly and equally important, how to undo them. There is also a double weaver’s knot included. Special knots are given for slippery threads, hanging and adjusting shafts, tying up treadles. There is a chart for different situations and what knots to use. I’m very excited about it. When my technical proof reader finished it she was amazed that even though she had a big fear of knots, she could do every one successfully. I’ll let you know when it is published.

In the mean time you can check out my Hemstitching book by clicking it’s cover below.

Hooray! My First Kindle Booklet: Hemstitching

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I’m excited to announce that my first Kindle book (booklet) is now available on Amazon. It is in response to My Top Ten List of the most popular of my weaving tips. The most viewed tip was for Hemstitching! Almost 34,000 people have viewed this tip in the 5 years that my new website has been up. That amazes me and thrills me.

Hemstitching is a way to begin and end weaving on the loom without having to sew hems or knot fringes later, after the cloth has been taken off. For years I thought I couldn’t do it but when I was taught it I’ve loved the technique. 

I’ve updated the material in the Kindle book and added a gallery of variations from old embroidery books. What makes my instructions special is that there are 9 step-by-step illustrations and text whereas most weaving sources only show one illustration and no text. There are directions for hemstitching at the beginning of your weaving and also at the end.

It is available for download on Amazon for $2.99. Of course it can be viewed on all Kindle readers and on most smart phones, tablets, and computers if you install the free Kindle reading app on your device.

You can buy the book from Amazon here: Peggy’s Weaving Tips: Hemstitching. I’d love it if you would give it a good review. If this is successful I’ll publish more  Kindle booklets of weaving tip collections.