Cornerstones

The first version of Cornerstones is off the loom and ready to have the two panels sewn together. The warp for a second throw in shades of green is mounted on the loom, although I haven't started winding it on yet. I really like this pattern. It's a summer-and-winter, i.e., the back looks superficially like the reverse of the front, but in fact it isn't quite an exact opposite. The winning feature, however, is that the panels will join better than any overshot I've ever done. That's always a bit of a challenge for two reasons: one, the motifs are split down the center at the selvedges, and two, draw-in reduces the width of those outer motifs. Because the motifs are split, some threads which would carry across the center point in the interior of the work are "broken" at the halfway point at the selvedges. With care, panels can be stitched together so that the join isn't blatantly obvious, although a skilled eye would see it. Still, if your four-shaft loom isn't so wide it takes up half your house, panels are your only option for weaving coverlets or throws.

Warpsy-Daisy

With all that's been going on lately, this warp has been waiting to be strung for over a week, Daisy standing empty and reproaching my conscience every time I looked up. It's unusual for me to leave my primary loom idle for more than 24 hours, so I hope she'll forgive me. This project will be an experiment in colour or, as I put it to my weaving buddy Ed, "Read, 'I didn't have enough of the light grey for both warp and tabby, so I'll be using a pale blue weft against a dark blue for the pattern threads.'" The draft will be Bertha Gray Hayes' "Cornerstones" which, although she calls it a miniature overshot, that description looks to me like it could be refined to call it a summer-and-winter (technically, summer-and-winter is a type of overshot). I'll be weaving two panels roughly 22" wide and 64" long, to finish as a lap throw 44" x 56". I wound the warp on yesterday and threaded half the 399 heddles before bed. I only have to thread the remaining half of the reed (quick) before I can begin weaving.

Max Goes Home

Day 93: For all of having enjoyed the quiet, smooth operation of a countermarch loom, the time has come for Max to end his stay here, and go home to daddy. When Daisy arrived, I discovered why weaving on Max had been harder for me. Daisy's breast beam is a full two inches lower, and although I've enjoyed having more space in which to work, Max is significantly deeper between the breast beam and the shafts. I am a small person. No, that's an understatement. I am a very small person, and consequently, when I sat at Max, I had to keep my elbows raised to pass the shuttle. Likewise, I found myself stretching too far forward as I tried to squeeze one more motif in before advancing the warp, and that action taxed my back. While I had originally intended to keep Max, working with Daisy convinced me that he needed to be returned to my weaving partner Ed who, at 6' 4" has no problems with either height or reach. I finished the eighth placemat last night (wait...I thought I'd warped for six?), and today worked the little sample for my weaving files. That said, I'll miss you, Max. We had some good weaves in your short tenure here.

Uncut Cloth

Day 335: This is what a coverlet looks like, fresh off the loom. Well, and a little extra. The coverlet will consist of three panels sewn together, and the remaining section will be turned into a matching pillow or something. I'm actually surprised by how quickly this went, but then I really devoted myself to getting it done. My minimum goal was two motifs (squares) per day. Some days, I did as many as five, but that generally proved to be too much for my shoulders. Of course, I was working on other projects as well. Now the floor loom is empty. I had a project in mind, but once I did the calculations, I realized that my reed isn't wide enough, and because reeds aren't cheap, it's prudent for me to change my project plans instead. While I'm thinking about that, I can continue working on the false damask on the table loom. Actually, the first sample piece is almost done. I may cut it free before starting a new one, just so I have something to show my readers.

Busy Day

Day 326: Yesterday was a busy and very productive day on the fiberarts scene. Not only did I complete the third of the three panels for the summer-and-winter piece, I finished plying a four-ounce skein of yarn. If that doesn't sound like enough, I also devised a method for making tidy selvedges when weaving krokbragd on the frame loom which was a September Morn present-to-self. The system can be adapted to the rigid heddle as well. I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before: simply weave two or more selvedge threads in tabby. D'uh! As for the summer-and-winter, I still have quite a bit of warp left on the loom. I always add extra. There might even be enough for a fourth panel, although I wouldn't want to add it to the coverlet. I will probably use it for a matching pillow. It will be a week or ten days before I'm ready to take this weaving off the loom, but I feel I can rest on my laurels, knowing the coverlet panels are done and, I might add, in record time (August 10-September 3, i.e., 24 days). What's next? I'm considering another coverlet, this time in overshot. We'll see. I have a week or two to think about it.

Overshot Vs. Summer-and-Winter

Day 322: If I asked you to tell me how these two pieces of cloth are alike and how they are different, you would probably point out the obvious: that one is red, one is green, that they are different patterns, but that would only be superficially correct. An experienced weaver would reply, "The one on the left is summer-and-winter weave. The one on the right is overshot." Let's talk about that for a minute.

Summer-and-winter weave (left) produces a pattern which is not quite the exact opposite of itself on the reverse side. That's where the name comes from. One side is light (top), the other dark. In overshot (right), the pattern reverses, creating the inverse of the design. Compare the top and bottom images of the green coverlet. Neither side is dominated by the colour of the pattern threads. While the technique for weaving in both these styles employs a tabby thread on every other throw to bind the pattern threads in place, the threading and treadling sequences account for the difference. Either weave can be effected on a four-shaft loom, although eight shafts will provide more latitude in creating complex patterns. True overshot is woven in "blocks," i.e., throws are repeated multiple times to make squares or rectangles which are staggered to form a design like the one in the righthand photo. While summer-and-winter weaves occasionally use blocks, turning the cloth over to view the back will tell you whether or not a block-worked piece is true overshot.

Fulled Vs. Raw

Day 303: First, a qualifier: these are two different shades of blue, so please factor that in while comparing the fulled version (left) to the raw (right). Fulling is what occurs when a woven item is wet-finished. The fibers, tightly spun for durability, plump up and fill in any small gaps left in the weaving process. Depending on fiber content (in this case, 100% cotton) there may also be varying amounts of shrinkage in the finished cloth. This is where experience with a specific fiber or manufacturer comes in handy for the weaver, in that they can better estimate what the finished dimensions of a piece will be. For example, I have learned that when I am using Valley cotton, a 16" warp width will give me a 12.5" width towel, and I need to weave a 24" length to obtain a long dimension of 21". Even when changing brands of the same fiber, your mileage may vary due to a number of factors. With cotton, the obvious reason would be how tightly the yarn is spun and plied, but plant species and regional growing conditions may also affect how the fiber will full. Although these latter two considerations are not something the weaver usually thinks about, they can account for differences in the way a yarn behaves when washed. How will drought conditions affect cotton grown in Brazil? Will stressed cells full more readily, hungry for moisture, or will the fiber be more harsh? I don't know, but I have a feeling that if I'm still weaving ten years from now, I may need to adjust my formula for the ideal towel.

Plan B

Day 301: Fiber artists frequently have to think on their feet when something fails to go according to plan. That was the situation in which I found myself when my order for 3/2 cotton arrived on Tuesday. Although I had specified that both cones were to be from the same dye lot, they were not, and they were sufficiently mismatched that I didn't feel I could disguise the fact in a piece I intended for competition. Naturally, I called my supplier and received assurance that they would rectify the problem. However, it will take 10-14 days for the new thread to arrive. That said, having put the 3/2 against my intended warp, I decided that in any event, it was too heavy for the look I wanted to achieve. I was quite pleased with the 8/2 as both warp and weft in the towels I just finished, so I checked my stockpile of weaving cones and found that I had enough "nautical blue" to complete the project. Plan B! Don't leave home without one!

Seasonal Change

Day 297: When I first described summer-and-winter weave in a post, I referred to the dark side as "winter" and the light as "summer," not really considering that there might be another way of looking at it. While my definition has its foundation in the amount of ambient light in the Pacific Northwest during those two seasons, friends elsewhere saw the lighter side as being frosty and the darker, lush with growth. I can see the logic in both views, and it makes me wonder if I had woven these towels during the winter months, would my choice of terms have been reversed? In any event, this was a very quick project as weaving goes. I strung 18 feet of warp on July 13, and here I am, done already. The towels have been fulled yet, i.e., put through the washing machine to plump up the fibers. Weaving yarns are tightly spun as a general rule so that they can withstand the friction of the heddles and reed and so that they have as little stretch as possible. Fulling relaxes the fiber and lets it expand into the small gaps between threads. Now the loom is naked, and will have to stay unclothed until Tuesday or Wednesday, waiting for the arrival of a new, heavier thread. The Plan is laid out, the calculations done, but the warp must be measured and hung before the shuttles can embark on their flight across the seasons of summer-and-winter again.

Traditional Red

Day 292: Well, I am rapidly coming to the end of this weaving project. I'm already into the fifth of six towels, having woven two of its eight motifs yesterday. The day before, I completed four motifs, the limiting factor being how long my bum shoulders can hold out. That said, this is my favourite summer-and-winter draft. I love working on it, so now I am having to ration myself with respect to how much I do each day in order to spread it out while waiting for an order of heavier thread to arrive. I want to use a 3/2 cotton for the pattern floats in my next project (a coverlet). The traditional colours for summer-and-winter are blue or red on a white/cream/natural ground. That's not to say you can't use other colours. In fact, the first two of these towels are green. I tend to lean toward the cooler shades in my weaving, and although I do find this red very striking, it wouldn't be my first choice for my own kitchen. The upcoming coverlet, destined to be an entry in next year's Washington State Fair, will be blue.

Summer-and-Winter Blues

Day 290: Yesterday was one of Those Days. The mind tends to wander while performing the mechanics of weaving, and I was lost in planning my next project, of which you will read more momentarily. I had nearly reached the end of the solid motif when something caught my eye. Immediately after the fourth or fifth coloured throw in the block, there were two white tabby threads crossing the same warps near the selvedge. "Dammit!" I said. "Mistake!" Fixing it would mean 10-15 minutes of back-picking, but in my opinion and practice, mistakes are not to be tolerated. With much further profane language, I set about unweaving my morning's work. When I reached the offending throw, I was surprised when the shuttle came entirely free from the cloth, the thread end dangling. Then I realized that my "mistake" had not been a mistake at all. Rather, it was where I had joined a new thread and the wefts overlapped. The fact that it was at the selvedge should have clued me in, but I had been wool-gathering. I had to laugh at myself even though I spouted a new geyser of profanity at that moment. After all, I had once made a sampler for my husband showing "The Faceter's Cuss-Code." One of the lines read, "Fixed a mistake that wasn't a mistake." Now back on track, I am halfway through the fourth towel, and the last to be worked in blue. Next up: red.

For my next project, I will be doing something I've never done before: weaving an item with the specific purpose of putting it in the Puyallup Fair next year. I will be using the same draft (it's a favourite), but expanded and with a colour change in the warp to accommodate joining three panels for a coverlet. The coloured pattern thread will be heavier, 3/2 against an 8/2 tabby. It will require 22 feet of warp, only six feet longer than what is on the loom presently. Given that I've only been working on these towels for two weeks and am almost two-thirds of the way done, the coverlet should only take a month or so to make. It won't be ready for this year's Fair, but I have plenty of time to get it done for next year.