Leftovers

Day 82: You know how it goes with casseroles: sometimes they're better on the second day. Faced with roughly 18" of leftover warp trailing the two panels of the waffle-weave lap robe, I decided to play around with a different pattern sequence. Normally, I'd weave a sample to include in my files, discarding the remaining thrums or cycling them out for a shorter project, but there was too much potential here. After thinking about several ways I could treadle, I opted for horizontal stripes, alternating 7 throws of tabby ("over-and-under," the simplest weave of all) with a single waffle (8 throws). After a few inchest, the Casserole Effect set in, and as luck would have it, I found myself preferring the pattern over the original all-waffle repeat. Although I won't set it up immediately after I take the throw off the loom (I have another project planned), there's still an abundant supply of tag-end yarns to use up, so at some point in the future, I'll use this treadling sequence for another blanket.

Weave Structure

Day 115: Now that you have some idea how a loom works, let's examine some of the weave structures you can create. Then I want you to look at the fabrics in your home. I think you'll gain a greater appreciation of what can be done simply by laying one set of threads acoss another.

The upper left photo shows plain weave, also known as tabby. It's your basic over-and-under weave, one over one, similar to weaving a basket. However, the term "basket weave" is usually used by weavers to signify multiple threads in the same ratio, i.e., two over two, three over three and so on. Did you make potholders on a Looper Loom when you were in grade school? That was tabby weave. The piece in the upper right corner is also tabby weave, although if you zoom in, you will see slight gaps separating groups of three threads. The threads came through the heddles as "one up, one down," but because the linen asked for a finer sett (45 ends per inch) and my smallest reed is 15 dents per inch, I had to pull them through in groups. This separation would be less obvious once the piece was washed and "fulled" to plump up the fibers. The sample came from my weaving files; the finished pieces were given as a gift to some fortunate soul whose name I did not record (bad me).

Center top is a piece of krokbragd woven on a rigid heddle. As mentioned in an earlier post, this is a weft-faced weave. The warp used in this piece was 8/4 cotton, aka "rug warp." The 8 denotes the weight of each strand and the 4 indicates that four strands were plied together to make the final product. You will see numbers like this on any yarn designed for weaving. Most of my weaving is done with 8/2 cotton with a softer twist. The tablecloth (center left) is an example of 8/2. Note the diagonal structure of the weave. This is known as a four-shaft twill.

The center image showcases a bedspread woven in overshot. To many weavers, overshot is the ultimate test of a weaver's skill. The heavier fiber (here, a green wool) floats above a background of cotton tabby. The weaver makes one pass with the background material, then one with the pattern thread, then another background pass to bind the pattern thread in place, then another pattern thread throw. Meticulous attention must be paid to the sequence, and also to the firmness with which each thread is beaten into place. The goal is to achieve perfectly square repeats. Below it (center bottom, blue on white) is a related structure, called simply "A German Pattern" of block weave in the Handweaver's Pattern Book (the bible of weaving). Again, the pattern should form a perfect square.

Right center is "Summer and Winter," woven in heavy cotton. Summer and Winter weaves are reversible, the back showing the exact opposite of the front.

The curious weave in the lower left corner was executed by my mother on a rigid-heddle loom. It was something of a puzzle to me until recently when I discovered one of her books in my library, a book I didn't realize I had. There, to my surprise, was the draft for what she called "little guys." I haven't woven it yet, but it's on my agenda. As a sidebar here, I should mention that my mother did not teach me to weave. We each took it up at roughly the same time. She elected to work on rigid-heddle, and I bought my four-shaft Schacht table loom. Her preference was for heavier fibers and quick results, while I usually settled in for the long term with longer warps and finer threads.

The image in the lower right shows an unusual boundweave technique in which two layers of cloth are woven together to form a double-thick fabric, reversible with the pattern being exactly opposite on the back. It is tedious to weave, to say the least, and not particularly interesting in the end.

Weaving Terms

Day 110: Several of my loyal and faithful readers have remarked to me recently that they feel like they're reading a foreign language when I'm talking about weaving. I find it odd that this didn't surface as I rambled on about fungi, slime molds, lichens or some rare plant I'd stumbled across in the backcountry, but there ya go: no accounting for how a writer's efforts are received by their audience, and I'm just happy to know that my work is being read. All things considered (not the least of which might be the paucity of bloggable material during isolation), I have decided that over the next several days, I will present a few weaving terms with explanatory photographs which hopefully will help folks follow along.

Let's start at the very beginning (a very good place to start, do-re-mi). If you look at a piece of woven cloth, you will see that it is comprised of threads running both vertically and horizontally. Turn it so that the selvedges (edges) are on your left and right. The threads which run lengthwise are the warp threads (left), and those running across are the weft (a patterned weft is shown top right). The warp threads are held taut by the loom, tied down on either end. Today, we'll just concern ourselves with the weft (the "active" thread controlled by the weaver's shuttle) and how it passes through the warp.

In order to make cloth, some sort of over-under pattern must be established. The simplest is tabby weave: one thread up, one down across the entire width of the cloth. The first looms were established to make this easier by raising or lowering every other thread simultaneously rather than picking them up one at a time by hand. On a floor loom, this is done by depressing a treadle which in turn operates a mechanical device in which that half of the threads are held. This device (harness and heddles) will be explained in a future post. When the alternate threads are raised or lowered and the developing cloth is viewed from the side, it will be seen that there is a triangular gap between the two layers of "up" and "down" threads. This is called the shed (lower right photo). Doesn't it remind you of a woodshed? See how the "roof" slopes down toward the front? The shuttle carrying the weaving thread (weft) is passed through the shed, and the "throw" is beaten into place. Then the weaver depresses a different treadle and the opposite threads are raised or lowered, forming the alternate shed. The shuttle goes through again, the thread is beaten into place, and the first two rows of cloth have been formed, interlaced over-and-under like weaving a basket. In the top right photo, the lavender threads are woven in that over-and-under (tabby) pattern. Indeed, much of the cloth on the market today as both yardage and finished goods is woven either as tabby or as twill (a sequence of four threads progressing on the diagonal), but as you can see in the dark blue pattern above, there are many other possibilities to be made by simply raising or lowering different threads. That's where heddles come in, and for that, you'll have to tune in tomorrow.

Weaving With Tabby

Day 256: After finishing up the table runners which I'll be entering in the Washington State Fair, I decided that my next weaving project should be something more complex. I opted for a simple, reversible overshot pattern executed in three colours on a black ground. In this type of weaving, two shuttles are used. One carries the surface floats and the other the background. Each float throw is followed by one background throw, aka the "tabby." Consequently, an over-and-under weave results in the main colour spaces between the longer float threads of the weft. The treadle action is something of a dance: tabby left, pattern, tabby right, pattern, changing the pattern throws according to the design. Too complicated to write out fully in a weaving draft, this method is usually abbreviated with the notation, "use tabby" for a specified number of throws. The technique of overshot can be an exciting adventure for the patient and detail-conscious weaver. Unfortunately, I ran short of black, and instead of making a full tablecloth, this piece will be another runner.