Lab vs. Field

As any scientist will tell you, something which works perfectly in the lab still may not play out properly in the field. That was the case here. I did a careful "twill test" to determine that a sett of 26 ends per inch would give me a 45-degree angle (a balanced weave, same number of throws per inch as warp threads per inch). I even washed and dried the blankety-blank thing. Then I warped the loom accordingly, spacing out 26 threads in 12 slots, 2-2-2-2-2-3. My purple weft thread hasn't arrived yet, so I decided to do one more test. I put in a "slicky cord" header which was obviously not cooperating to give 26 throws per inch, but that was slicky cord. Even allowing for its slightly different behaviour, I thought it was prudent to do weave a bit with the real stuff, i.e., 8/2 cotton. If someone told you there'd been an explosion near Mount Rainier this morning, that would have been me. Sigh. I am now re-threading the reed at 24 epi. At least I didn't have to re-thread the heddles.

2/1 Twill on Rigid Heddle

I was sure it could be done, but after one full day and a sleepless night, I could not visualize how to effect a twill weave structure on my two-heddle rigid heddle loom. Although I'm trying to limit my internet time (to preserve my mental well-being!), the first thing I did the next morning was hit YouTube. I found a clear and easy to follow video from "Rigid Heddle Weaving in Brisbane" which told me everything I needed to know. She suggested warping in colour bundles of six threads to make it easier to understand the threading process which, I must admit, sounds daunting but is actually quite simple, so I dragged out all my partial cones of ancient dye lots and went a little mad with stripes. This is a 2/1 twill, meaning that the weft thread goes under one and over two in a progressive diagonal over three repeating passes of the shuttle. It is delightfully easy to weave. My plain coloured warp was a bundle of 65" super-long thrums from a project I'd cut off the floor loom early for some reason, and were the perfect length for two towels, allowing for loom waste. As I understand it, a 2/2 twill cannot be woven without adding a third heddle or using a pickup stick. That's fine. I'm happy with 1/2.

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.

Twill Weave

Day 225: The red-white-and-blue (and a little green) theme of this image was unintentional, if appropriate to Memorial Day. The real story is that there are a lot of things going on in the weaving room these days. Some projects are top-secret because they're destined to be gifts, but they have one thing in common: they are all designed around using up my copious stash of yarns and threads in preference to buying more. In this, lockdown and social distancing have driven me to do something I should have done long ago; the sheer mass of fiber in my crafts room was fast approaching critical mass. I'm being compelled to be creative in finding combinations which work well together, both for weight and colour, and this often means breaking out the pocket calculator and the gram scale in order to maximize usage. Last night I lay awake figuring in my head, "If the piece is 24" wide and weaves up at 12 throws per inch, and there are 830 yards in that solitary skein of slubby black-and-white cotton, how many inches can I weave if I use a different fiber for the warp?" The answer was roughly 2.5 yards, but it wasn't easy to reach in the wee hours of the morning when any person of normal habits would have been sleeping. More to the point then, the photo above shows two possibilities for colour pattern using the same threading. It is a simple 2/2 twill, meaning that the weft thread passes over two threads and under two, progressing on a diagonal as the sequence is treadled. The plaid repeats 16 blue, two white, two green, two white in both warp and weft, and the houndstooth is four by four, alternating white and red. Both pieces are standard knitting worsted.

Rainbow Tablecloth - Sneak Peek

Day 176: The vision is coming to life! Yesterday, I wove one full colour sequence, fifteen throws of each of seven colours shading from red to purple. This sequence will repeat ten times for each half of the tablecloth, i.e., I will weave a total of twenty repeats broken into two panels of ten each. In other words, this will be the last weaving post you see from me for a while because there won't be anything different going on. For now, though, I'd like to explain a couple tricks of the trade I'm using during the process.

First of all, you may notice a white section in the photo on the left (it's less apparent in the photo on the right). This is the header. It will be turned under when the tablecloth is ready to hem. It helps space out the warp threads uniformly. A similar band will be added at the end of each panel. Second, that short white thread isn't something I dropped there accidentally. It gives me a handy reference point for measuring the colour band currently in progress. Because I am striving for a 50/50 weave, each weft stripe needs to be made with fifteen throws of the shuttle and to measure exactly one inch to match the warp measurements. At the end of each colour, I pull the white thread from the beginning of the stripe and reinsert it at the end. If I've beaten the weft irregularly, I may need to pick back several throws and re-do them, although minor spacing deviations will be unnoticeable once the fabric is fulled.

When weaving a twill, special care must be taken with the selvedges (the outer edges of the fabric web). It is all too easy to wind up with a "floating" warp thread which never gets caught into the weft. At the selvedges, the weaver must be sure that the weft goes under or over the outer thread in the manner of a tabby (plain) weave. As I have learned to do over the years, I've added an extra thread of black cotton carpet warp on each side to minimize draw-in, spaced one dent apart from the actual fabric. These threads pass through heddles numbered identically with the first and last threads of the cloth. To identify these two strands of carpet warp and their adjacent coloured threads, I've tied a small, loose loop of string around them. By taking up the loop with one hand, I can easily raise or lower the two selvedge threads together in a tabby pattern while throwing the shuttle with my opposite hand. The carpet warp thread will be carefully drawn out of the fabric when the weaving is completed. It all sounds very complicated, but in practice, it is fairly simple and not overly "fiddly." A rhythmic pattern emerges as the weaver works which, accompanied by the soft clatter of heddles and repetitive footwork on the treadles, is almost meditational. Weaving is an enormously satisfying craft.