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Karl & Catalina were here yesterday, and we spent a lot of time around the kitchen table. Favorite tools: scissors and staple gun. Glue stick runs a close second.
In the afternoon I had a very brief visit from Tommye. There was just enough time to swap thoughts about our current projects, and then she had to zoom off. Hurry back, Tommye!
Monday we hit the road to western South Carolina, across Lake Keowee and through Walhalla, and visited Issaqueena Falls. If you'd like to read about the legend of the Indian maiden, and the South's first blue cheese in Stumphouse Tunnel, click here. But if you're in a hurry, you can just enjoy my photo of the upper third of the falls. It's a majestic sight, and the temperature there was about 15 degrees cooler than it was back home in Greenville. By the way, the rhododendrons were in bloom, too.
Back home, the new black and white warp is now lashed on to the cloth beam.
Baseball madness is here. We picked Karl up Friday after a week of baseball camp. When we arrived,Coach Ron Smith was giving his final pep talk. The boys were pretty tired, because they had practiced hard during an especially hot and humid week, but they listened patiently to Coach as he briefly enumerated the three important points of the week's practice: set goals, work hard, and have resilience. Pretty good stuff!
The week's instruction had quite an effect on Karl; at Saturday's Little League game his hitting and fielding was greatly improved. He is to totally into baseball. Even when he's waiting his turn at bat, his body language suggests intense concentration. Here he is (number 11):
There's something so tough and yet so vulnerable about his posture. I love this picture!
It's warping week around here. The TC-1 is bare, and I will be having a studio visitor next week, so I think a new warp for that loom is in order. It will be a repeat of the former warp, black & white for double twill, with one small change. Instead of white, I will use a linen-color, which will change the palette slightly. Perhaps the colors won't be so garish. We'll see.
I use the warping wheel for this warp, as the loom has a sectional beam. Here the new warp is partially wound, and the old warp is loosely knotted behind the heddles, waiting for the tying-on.
A glamour close-up:
Bruce is ready for a new warp and I would like a new kimono-style bathrobe. Good timing! I've assembled four cones of cotton and two of tencel for a mixed warp.
My warping paddle has 30 holes; only once have I used all 30 of them, just to see if I could. It was not a happy experience. This time around I'm using six.
Here's a bird's eye view of the loaded warping board:
The warp chains, ready for beaming:
I think this will be a plain 2/2 twill with one of the warp yarns as weft. Not sure when I'll get around to putting this on the loom, but you'll be the first to know.
A couple of these benches arrived months ago, and sat in my carport in their cartons, waiting for the right alignment of the planets. According to the ad, some assembly would be required. I got tired of looking at the cartons, and on Wednesday, a real scorcher, I opened the cartons on the deck and commenced assembly at high noon. What was I thinking.
The first bench went together in less than half an hour, and aside from a lot of "insert A into B with C facing to the front," all I really needed to do was tap a handful of dowels into holes and drive them home with a hammer. The second bench was a little harder, as the months in the damp carport had slightly warped some of the parts, and I had to struggle to make all of the pegs and holes line up. But eventually both benches were complete. In the process I acquired a mild sunburn and a huge thirst. Also an enormous sense of accomplishment.
The process felt familiar. Assembling the benches reminded me of the many looms that have passed through my studio over the years. Some were harder to build than others. Some came with excellent instructions, some with terrible instructions, and some with no instructions at all. All eventually got built. I wove cloth on all of them.
Several weavers have suggested warp brocade as a way of avoiding the two-shuttle dilemma. If the weft brocade drafts are turned so that the brocading is in the warp, the threading would have to alternate pattern/ground, and the weft would be reduced to a single shuttle weave. This has advantages and disadvantages. The advantage would be one-shuttle weaving. The disadvantage would be that the loom would have to be rewarped and the flexibility and versatility of a single warp would be lost. Another factor to consider is the repeat size. The new (turned) weave structure would have to occupy twice as many ends in width, because the ground cloth is now included in the warp setup. Here is what one structure repeat of an overlay might look like for a warp brocade based on 8-end satin on a plain weave ground (the gray squares represent transparency):
This pattern preset is 16 ends wide. So for dobby work, one would need a shaft repeat of 16 ends: a 16-shaft loom or a 32-shaft loom, for example. This is somewhat limiting. Other structures could be used, of course. A 4-end broken twill would require 8 shafts per repeat in a warp brocade. This all assumes a straight threading. But if one were to confine the plain weave to 2 shafts, the remainder could be used for the brocading warps; this would mean an entirely different approach to the construction of the pattern presets. Another topic for another day!
Meanwhile, the preset pictured above would be very useful for a jacquard warp of alternating pattern and ground warps. Here's an image reduced to black and white:
…and with the pattern presets applied (click to view more detail):
…and a color & weave simulation:
I guess my preference for straight dobby threadings is evident by now. Moving back and forth between jacquard and dobby makes more sense to me this way. Of course other dobby threading systems for warp brocade should be studied. Divided threadings? Parallel threadings? All ideas welcome.
The leaves are now woven. Fabric details: warp is 20/2 black cotton sett at 30 epi. Plain weave ground weft, fine dark blue silk noil singles. Brocade weft, rayon cord (dyed by Roz Houseknecht). The ties for the brocade are based on 8-end satin. Fabric reversible.
After washing and a hard steam pressing, this fabric is sumptuously drapey, and would make a nice unlined jacket. Here are both sides of the sample.
I also wet finished the earlier samples in this brocade set. The bamboo brocade had a nice hand, too, but I decided that I wanted the fabric reversible, and the floats on the wrong side were too long. Click to enlarge the following, and you will be able to see the excessively long floats on the reverse.
The revised draft, woven with wool/silk brocade weft, was a success. The floats are tamed.
The final sample, in 20/2 cotton for warp and plain weave ground weft, and a heavy singles tow linen for the brocade weft, was harsh and wiry on the loom, but after washing and steam pressing it is tamed down to a pleasant fabric suitable for place mats or other household items.
All the fabrics were designed in Photoshop, and the weave structures were also applied in Photoshop. For more information on how to do this on your dobby loom, see The Liftplan Connection.
Another brocade design for 40 shafts. The brocade weft is tied with 8-end satin, front & back. This one's reversible. Ground cloth is plain weave.
First the design minus weave structure, then the structure added:
Next, the Photoshop liftplan copied to pixeLoom (click to enlarge):
…and a single repeat of the fabric:
I started sampling the first draft from yesterday's post. The warp is 20/2 cotton; for the first inch (bottom of picture) the twill weft is fine red cotton, and for the rest the twill weft is green rayon. The brocade weft is a heavier pale peach bamboo for both. As I explained yesterday, the tacking points for the brocade are closer together on the face and farther apart on the reverse, as this will not be a reversible fabric.
I was disappointed in that the point twill of the background cloth hardly showed up at all, so I went to plan B, which was to use plain weave for the ground cloth. Here's a sample; the brocade is still bamboo, and the plain weave picks are a fine blue silk noil singles.
Here's the reverse (you can see the longer floats):
I thought the bamboo looked a little sleazy; I also wanted to try a version with shorter floats on both sides, to make a reversible cloth. So I redrafted this design with 8-end satin as the tiedown structure on both sides. I wove this version with Jagger Spun Zephyr (wool/silk) as the brocade weft, and the fine blue silk as the plain weave weft. I like this version a lot better. The Zephyr fills in just right. I think it will make a nice drapable scarf after it's wet finished.