Weaverly

Taking Out The Garbage

Remember this warp? I called it a garbage warp, a term I learned in the 1970's to denote a mixture of odds & ends used hit & miss, in the service of stash reduction. I threaded it straight draw on a 16-shaft dobby loom and used a plain weave ground with a sprinkling of warp- and weft-floats in satin order. 

It repeats on 16 picks. If you click to enlarge, you can make out the draft in the lower left of the laptop screen.

I finally wove off all 6 yards a few days ago and cut it off and washed it. Surprisingly it lost about 20% in take-up & shrinkage. 

But what used to be a pretty boring project on the loom is now ~5 yards of delightfully squishy cloth which will some day (I hope) be something to wear.

Mostly cotton.

Thankful

It doesn't take much. Just that little bit of red.

Sometimes I overdo it. A bit less red would be better. But then the other colors would change, too. Everything is connected to everything else.

The threading & treadling are interleaved & non-parallel. I'm enjoying the combination of left & right diagonals and a bit of birdseye effect. Now how on earth did that happen? I'm sure I don't know. Click for enlargement.

In the Department of Books, I have just finished reading Foster by Claire Keegan and Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro.

Naturally

On a whim I ordered a kit of naturally dyed yarns from Cotton Clouds. I was blown away by the colors. I was also attracted by the community service aspect of the yarns. The final product is to be a simple vest of four rectangular panels. Instructions are for a rigid heddle loom, but I thought it would be an easy thing to adapt for a table loom with shafts. As it happens, it was not so easy. The warps are double (two strands acting as one), which is easy to accomplish on a RH, but a bit fiddly for a shaft loom. But I persevered. 

Once the loom is warped, the weaving is straightforward. Plain weave. There is a pattern suggestion of bands of pickup and other texture weaves, but I decided to stick with plain weave, and perhaps add fancy button loops as an embellishment post-weaving.

The colors are indeed wonderful. More about the dyers of San Rafael, Guatemala, here.

In the Department of Books, I have just finished reading the new English translation of Alessandro Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi, or The Betrothed. I don't intentionally go seeking out novels about the Plague, but they seem to find me. This one was wonderful and I'm glad I stuck with it. Lot's of interesting Italian history here. And it apparently inspired Verdi to write his famous Requiem Mass.

Washed

The very last bit of the 2.5 yard warp is woven off. I twisted the fringes & machine washed the scarf with a bunch of towels, then popped it in the dryer for 5 minutes, then hung it up to finish drying. After a steam pressing, here is a rough selfie. It is delightfully smooshie, not stiff at all. Take-up & shrinkage 8%. I'm really going to enjoy wearing this. But I might choose a different t-shirt. Or maybe not.

Each color block is a different weave structure. Four of them. Click to enlarge. This could be considered a miniature gamp in itself. I can imagine weaving any of these four structures by itself. 

Play It Again

After the silk adventures with four-shaft weaves, I put on another, similar, warp in linen this time. This is 30/2 linen at 28 epi and 28(?) ppi. Color plays a role now, and these high-texture weaves will change radically in the wet finishing. Probably too early to compare.

I am using four of the eight treadles on my Louet Jane loom. There are two different threadings, crossed by two treadlings, making a total of four weave structures. This takes some close attention in the setup, and also in the treadling. I don't think I would have attempted this without TempoTreadle. Click to get a closer view of the weaves.

Here's a structure only drawdown of the draft. Selvedges are included. Click to enlarge.

Now just for fun - a snapshot of my weaving studio in its current state of organization/disorganization. On the wall are some old jacquard pieces. On the shelves: some WIPs, some UFOs, and a few GOKs

Beneath, Above, Around, Beyond

Beneath:

Above:

Around:

Beyond:

Now back under my own roof, I am looking beneath and around for another viewpoint on the silk soil project. It's always fun to see the underside of the warp as it heads toward the cloth beam. Sometimes there are surprises, sometimes not. In this case the face & reverse are very similar.

There is just enough of the silk left on the cone to set up another short & narrow warp. I've tried four new weaves on it. They give quite good contrast one against another.

Change the point of view and you can subtle changes.

The scarves from the first warp were washed and steam pressed, and more texture changes appear. I've really enjoyed this series.

I wonder how these weaves would look in linen? Hm-m-m. 

 

Pattern Gamp

Typepad is still working on fixing "issues", so you may not be seeing all my pictures yet, but things are definitely improving. I am optimistic.

Patterns in the natural world always get my attention. Small units endlessly repeated in new combinations.

Alternate possibilities.

Overlapping bands of texture and color.

I've been admiring the pattern gamps my fellow weavers have been producing, along the lines of Janet Phillips's wonderful examples in  her books Designing Woven Fabrics and Exploring Woven Fabrics. So I decided to do one of my own, for 4-shaft weaves. I used a few of the threadings in Phillips's books and added a more of my own. Same with treadlings. It was great fun to weave, and I enjoyed seeing all the new patterns emerge in their turn.

There were 8 different threadings and 32 treadlings in the first gamp. But more ideas kept popping up, and there was enough warp left for a second, smaller gamp, with 8 additional treadlings, for a grand total of 320 patterns to add to my library!

Of course they changed considerably after washing, which was part of the fun. Here are the finished gamps:

And a closeup:

The next project, which I'm warping now, is to take four of these little patterns and combine them into one cloth. Stay tuned.

If any of these pictures fail to load, try again tomorrow. Maybe Typepad will have settled down by then.