Tablecloth In Two Parts

Day 196: I have never had a problem keeping myself amused when alone. I've spent a large portion of my life alone, if perhaps not in quite the isolated state I find myself in lately, but alone nevertheless and sometimes for protracted periods of time. After several days of planning, on April 2, I measured out the warp for a tablecloth to be woven in two panels to be joined side-by-side. The next couple of days were spent dressing the loom, i.e., hanging the warp according to a strict draft and preparing to weave. On April 5, I began the actual weaving.

One of the things I've learned about myself over the years is that I tend to attack a project with great vigour at the beginning, a practice which usually results in burn-out and having to force myself to finish. To combat that, I decided to ration myself to one colour sequence each day. I found myself getting up every morning looking forward to my stint at the loom, and was often tempted to work into the next day's ration in the evening. I only allowed myself that luxury twice when I was particularly furious at some piece of public covidiocy and wanted to work off my frustrations. Of course, this meant that my following day's allotment was cut short, so I busied myself with planning for my next weaving. I finished the panels on April 24, and yesterday wove one final sequence as a sample before removing the tablecloth from the loom. All that remains to finish the piece is to hand-weave the panels together (a tedious process at best, but not one I will postpone for any great length of time).

The fiber I chose for the tablecoth was an 8/2 cotton with a soft finish. Fortunately, I had all the colours on hand. In the upper photo, you can see the unwoven space between the panels at the center of the piece. In order to achieve perfect squares, I had to exercise some restraint in beating the threads into place, stopping to measure every half inch so that I could compensate, or to pick back if absolutely necessary. The squares are 1", in a sequence of seven colours repeating five times across the width. The sample on the left shows the raw fabric, the one on the right shows it after "fulling," i.e., washing it to expand the fibers and then shrinking it by drying. Fulling also resolves any minor gaps left by uneven beating (something even the best weavers can't fully prevent).

As I mentioned a little earlier in this post, I devoted some time between bouts of weaving in planning my next project, a shawl in knitting worsted using the sett for my ancestral tartan, MacLeod of Lewis, also known as "the loud MacLeod." I had the colours on hand, having used them to make bee and ladybug hats: rich yellow, black and red. Before I went to bed last night, I had warped the loom for the shawl and had woven one yellow and one black sequence, and this piece will progress much more rapidly even with careful rationing.