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Didn't quite make it in one day. After an extra three hours Tuesday morning, I did complete the tying on of the new warp. It's now ready to weave.
Job One will be weaving a sample blanket of the new lampas structures. Here's a color-and-weave simulation of the blanket:
The differences in the small circles are quite subtle, but I'm hoping they will show up more in the actual weaving.
The new lampas warp is beamed: two ends ground (black cotton), one end pattern (peach silk), repeat.
Now the tying of the new warp to the old begins. It looks like there's a great chasm between the two pairs of lease sticks, but I vow that before the sun sets on Greenville today the chasm will be bridged.
Still the same threading from yesterday. Now adding a second pattern weft, the weft sequence (reading the treadling draft from bottom to top, as it is woven) is ground, pattern, pattern, repeat. The following drafts are paired, both examples in a set weaving exactly the same cloth. The lefthand example uses more treadles but the tieup is easier to read; the righthand example is more economical of treadles but harder to decipher at first glance. Click to enlarge.
Pattern weft 1 weaves on face:
Pattern weft 2 weaves on face:
Both pattern wefts weave on face:
Ground weaves on face (neither pattern weft shows on face):
OK, that's enough lampas for today. I'd just like to show you what happened to those little drawings I executed in plain doubleweave, coated both sides in multiple coats of acrylic medium and then sliced apart. I glued pins to their reverse sides, and voilà! This is one of those awful self-portraits taken in the bathroom mirror, but you get the idea.
It's been a while since I wove lampas, and I need to refresh my thinking about it. I usually find it helpful to go back to simple drafts on as few shafts as possible, and look at threadings, tieups, and treadlings before I proceed to cloth diagrams for jacquard or dobby. I think of these as my basic raw materials.
In the two drafts above, the ground cloth is a 5-shaft satin and the pattern cloth is a 2/1 (jeans) twill. Pattern is threaded on shafts 1-3, ground on shafts 4-8. Ground warp is yellow, ground weft is peach. Pattern warp is red, pattern weft is purple. The ratio of pattern to ground in the warp is 2:1. In the weft, ground and pattern alternate 1:1. The draft on the left shows pattern on the face; the draft on the right shows ground on the face. When pattern weaves on the face, the two layers are tied; when ground weaves on the face, the two layers are separate (It's also possible to tie the two layers together when ground weaves on top. Such is not the case in this example).
The above drafts were generated in ProWeave for Mac. Click to enlarge. In the coming days, I'll continue to explore lampas a little at a time as I organize my thoughts for a new warp. Come along for the journey!
Spring, the best time of the year in the Piedmont (and in all of South Carolina, actually) is upon us, calendar be damned. On my walk this morning the birds were in a frenzy of song. I'd like to share the experience with you:
My neighborhood is criscrossed with streams, all of which are running high after all the recent rains. They make beautiful music. Here's one of them, in a photo and a sound file:
Wintertree is hemmed & ready for the public.
It's approximately 30" x 14", and will be in a group show entitled "Black & White."
Here's a closeup; click to enlarge.
I've been posting about this project over the past few months, but to summarize: it's double plain weave woven on the TC-1 (jacquard) loom with cotton warp and weft. The central image is from an original photo of a bare-branched tree, and the surrounding pattern was generated in Repper and manipulated with Photoshop filters. The frame was hand drawn on a graphics tablet. The entire composition was assembled in Photoshop, and the weaves applied as Pattern Presets, also in Photoshop.
The doubleweave warp has finally come to its end, and all the weaving is cut off. I cut some pieces apart, and steam pressed the hems in place on the tree panel. I don't know if I stayed up too late watching Inspector Frost, or if my ironing skills are rusty, but the steam from the iron kept fogging up my glasses and I couldn't see what I was doing. Very frustrating. Consequently the hem widths are just an educated guess.
It was fun to see the reverse sides of all the pieces, always a surprise.
With a few minutes to spare before heading out for errands, I glued the back of this one. It's going to be cut apart into little pieces eventually.
At the loom, the last woven inch has been folded up and securely taped in front of the reed. It's not going anywhere!!!
While in back, the least sticks are inserted, ready for tying on the next warp, TBA.
And the super-exciting wonderful news is——the Compudobby upgrade has arrived! I have to wait until this afternoon for the Heavy Lifting Brigade to help me affix it to the loom. But now I can finally see the light through the trees.