Another Tail Project

Day 37: The technical term is "thrums," lengths of loom waste which, by virtue of weaving mechanics, occur at both the start and the end of a piece of fabric. They can be minimized using any of a number of techniques, but I prefer to "half-life" them, moving gradually downward from the floor loom where they are longest through the table loom and thence to a rigid heddle where very little waste occurs at all. In this case, I have taken the thrums from the rainbow tablecloth (still to be hemmed, much to my shame!), each a little under six feet in length, and will be using them as weft for two small perhaps-bags. The fabric will be turned sideways so that the six-throw stripes are vertical, and the bags will be lined with a lightweight cotton. No particular order will be observed in the placement of the stripes other than to keep each pair of colours separated by a cream band of equal width. The warp uses thrums as well, leftovers from either side of the black slub still mounted on the floor loom. I cut them so that I could weave a narrower table runner without having to re-warp the big loom. Unless my chosen fibers are in short supply, I almost always warp extra so that the thrums can be "stepped down" until I've pushed them to their maximum yield. If you think you hear bagpipes, yep, that's my Scots thriftiness showing through.