Weaving Double

Day 335: Just prior to the footstool cover project, I set up an experiment on the loom which failed miserably: weaving a double width of cloth. The technique allows you to make a wider piece (a tablecloth, for example) without having to seam the center. The same principle can be used to make seamless bags or to make a double-thick fabric with bound layers, but my intention was to weave a continuous cloth with selvedges. The experiment failed for a couple of reasons which I'll go into later in this post.

A major difference between a table loom and a floor loom is the method by which the harnesses are raised. A floor loom has treadles which operate jacks as the weaver depresses them with the feet. On a table loom, the jacks are operated manually (literally by hand) and remain in place once pulled down. Since human beings are only equipped with two feet, it's awkward and difficult to depress more than two treadles on a floor loom, but on a table loom, it's quite easy to pull down three levers. We get around this problem with a floor loom by means of the "tie-up," i.e., by attaching one treadle to more than one jack. For this reason, floor looms are usually equipped with six treadles. The most common tie-up is to have treadles 5 and 6 set up to create the sheds used in plain (tabby) weave, i.e., treadle 5 operates harnesses 1 and 3 simultaneously, and treadle 6 operates harnesses 2 and 4. The remaining treadles operate harnesses 1, 2, 3 and 4 individually (aka a "direct tie-up"). These can also be used to weave tabby by raising harnesses 1 and 3 alternately with 2 and 4, using two feet instead of one. The choice is a matter of preference and convenience.

That said, sometimes you need to alter the tie-up. In the case of double-width weaving, you need to lift harnesses 1 and 2 out of the way as you weave the lower layer of fabric on 3 and 4. Otherwise, the layers of cloth will be bound together in a double thickness. To this end, I needed to change the tie-up of treadle 5 to lift harnesses 1 and 2. Crawling around under a loom trying to see what you're doing through trifocals in a poorly-lit room is a recipe for error, and that's where I made the first one. My second mistake came when I automatically started weaving with a throw from left to right. It should have been right to left in order to have the selvedges on the left of the work. I might have spotted the tie-up error if I had made my first throw from the right side, but that's hindsight. The experimental weave was bound together as surely as night follows day.

Having used the technique successfully on my table loom, I wasn't about to give up. I dragged out the "other" book (Mary Black's "Key to Weaving") and studied up. Rather than simply showing drafts like "Handweaver's Pattern Book," Ms. Black explains the mechanics, and through her description, I was able to see where I might have gone wrong. She gives a slightly different draft than HPB and in order to follow her instructions, I needed to change the tie-up again. As I was crawling around in the wool fuzzies under the loom to change the ties, I discovered that I'd tied treadle 5 to jacks 1 and 3 instead of 1 and 2. Once that was remedied, I used a handful of old warp ends to sley a few inches for a second experiment, which I am happy to say worked out exactly as planned. Now for the big project!