Weaverly

Where am I?

A Barnraising, Kinda

Patti's new loom finally arrived. Pat and I had been invited to join in the fun and help Patti assemble her loom. Between us, Pat & I have assembled dozens of looms, so we feel qualified. It appears that not much help was needed, however. When we arrived at Patti's, we found that she had already unpacked, sorted, and labelled all the parts and hardware with sticky notes.

Here she is with the central unit, with all sixteen shafts and their new heddles already cut apart.

After much crawling around on the floor, hammering, and passing wrenches back & forth, we got the loom completely assembled in less than five hours. Here Pat, Patti & I pose behind the new loom, which Patti declares will not have a name.

Another photo op.

Patti's husband provided us with a lovely lunch. Here's a final picture before we all went our separate ways. Just as we were leaving, the computer module arrived. Three cheers!

Here are some of the stickies left after all the parts found their correct destinations. I admire an organized person.

Happy weaving, Patti!

Coming Together with DDW

The appearance of Pat Foster's excellent article on Deflected Double Weave in the current issue of Complex Weavers Journal was true serendipity. Pat's work is beautiful and she writes very clearly. Great pictures, too! If you're a member of CW, you can download the Journal here. 

Meanwhile I am continuing my explorations in random patterning of DDW. I showed you a sample just started on the loom in my previous post. After weaving off a liftplan of 512 picks, I cut that sample off and sent it through the laundry. Here it is out on the deck for a quick picture before our daily thunderstorm arrives.

First the front. Click to enlarge.

And now the back.

In other news, I just finished reading Rohinton Mistry's Such a Long Journey, a funny, bitter, sad, highly descriptive narrative of life in Bombay in 1971.  Fascinating local detail and politics. Mistry, a Canadian born in Bombay (current-day Mumbai), cancelled a United States book tour in 2002 after he and his wife were targeted by security agents at every airport he visited. 

A Random Approach to Deflected Double Weave

Working back and forth from Photoshop Elements to weaving software, I've hit on a method of generating random patterns in deflected double weave.

We'll, sort of random. DDW has some strict rules, but once these are established there is still plenty of opportunity to play around. Here's a quick sample on 16 shafts.

Both Sides Now

This morning I was doing some paper work for an upcoming exhibition, and reviewed this piece:

 

This was supposed to be the right side, and I always viewed it that way, but as I turned it over and checked the label, I realized that I liked the "wrong" side much better.

As the structure is double plain weave, technically either side could be the right side, and the decision was made. In recent years I've hand stitched my labels to my jacquard pieces instead of fusing them, and it was easy enough to snip out the stitches and resew the label to the other side. Done!

The new right side:

The exhibition in question, a selection of my jacquard work since I acquired my TC-1, will open in October. You'll be the first to know. Check this space.

Laundry Report

Click on this one to enlarge. Fresh out of the washer & dryer, with face & reverse pictured side by side (and the annoying plain weave dividers edited out), here are the laundry results from the samples pictured in my previous post.

The linen/cotton and 8/2 unmercerized cotton sett at 24 epi and ppi worked beautifully. This fabric has a delicious hand and would be suitable for table linens and wearables alike.

Total shrinkage and take-up were a whopping 21%. The extra 10/2 mercerized selvedge threads didn't shrink at all; consequently they tended to ruffle at the edges and I will omit them next time. I think they won't be needed.

To anyone following my DDW explorations: I've added a Deflected Double Weave category to this blog, so anyone searching on the topic will be able to find all the relevant posts in one place. 

I'll be coming back to DDW in the future, but that's it for now. I've got to clean up my desk and plan for the next adventure. 

Selvedges, Again

Where has the time gone? Lots of weaving time, not much computer time. That is a good thing. 

Also staying away from radio & TV as much as possible these days. Reduces the crazy factor. :-)

More DDW samples, this time in a linen/cotton from Gist, along with some 10/2 cotton for the other layer.

I wanted wide selvedges, with the layers quite separate. On the loom it looks  sleazy. I hoped that would change in the wash. It did, but not enough. And now I have ruffles. An interesting development, but not what I was looking for.

Also, the linen/cotton yarn was rubbing too much at 3 ends per dent. 

Here's the washed sample:

So-o-o, I reduced the size of the selvedges, opened up the sett from 30 epi to 24 epi, and tied on a new warp, this time substituting 8/6 cotton for the 10/2. 

The weaving went much better.

Here's a closeup of one of the samples. You can see that I reduced the width of the selvedges. I also added an extra selvedge thread of 10/2 cotton to the outside, just in case. I was still concerned about the durability of the linen/cotton, which is rather loosely spun.

After I cut the three samples from the loom, I photographed them on both sides. It's amazing how different front and back are in this structure. There seems no easy way to predict, short of weaving actual samples. Weaving software helps a little, but you really have to weave the structures to be sure of how they will turn out.

Stay tuned. The samples are in the washing machine at this very moment.

The Selvedge Dilemma

Anyone new to deflected double weave (as I am) inevitably comes up against the issue of what to do about the idle weft at the selvedge while the active weft is weaving. Madelyn van der Hoogt, in her excellent DVD Weaving Deflected Double Weave, has a suggestion. Madelyn parks the idle shuttle on the loom castle and sends the active shuttle around the idle weft with each pass, literally encasing it alongside the floating selvedge. That is an interesting solution but not one that works for Ms. Fumblefingers (me). 

I searched for another method, and by accident came across a video by Elisabeth Hill, weaver of gorgeous deflected double weave. This video introduced me to the technique some of "shuttle diving." and it's truly ingenious. I gave it a try and found that I really liked it.

Here's a close-up. When this is washed I think it will be just fine.

Thank you Madelyn and Elisabeth for your contributions to the literature of this fascinating structure.

Post Script. I looked for more information on shuttle diving, and to my great amusement, Google sent me to a myriad of sites about scuba diving. Hilarious. I guess underwater weaving is next.

 

Shrinking

This week's samples took a dunking to encourage the differential shrinkage of the wool yarns. First I tried hand washing with vigorous kneading to encourage the action. The effect was still not what I was looking for; I then tried brief (1 minute) bursts in the washing machine. That was better, but still not enough. Then I popped the samples in the drier with a load of towels, checking after every 5 minutes. Finally, after 15 minutes, I got what I was looking for: felting of the brown wool while the natural cotton poufed slightly. 

Here's the face of one of the samples (warp running horizontally here):

And here's the reverse of the same piece:

I was relieved that I had finally found the right yarns for the deflected double weave. I proceeded to start a scarf with a new draft on the same threading:

Here's a close-up. I am beginning to recognize the potential for shrinking in these "screen door effect" pieces on the loom, now that I have confidence in my yarn:

As usual, click on any of these to enlarge. 

 

 

Another Wool

In my June 22 post I published a picture of a deflected double weave scarf woven with Zephyr wool/silk and cotton, that had not shrunk as I had expected. That is to say, I wanted the wool to shrink differentially, but it didn't, because of the silk in the mixture. Several people have since told me of their experiences with the non-shrinkability of the Zephyr, so I have gone to Plan B, a very fine 2-ply brown wool mill end, and natural cotton for the other layer.

The new warp is long enough for some sampling and two scarves. Here's the first sample...

...and here's the second.

It looks really coarse and sleazy at this point, but the fun part will be in the washing. I'm hoping that the wool will do its thing.