Weaving – Page 5 – Measured Threads

February 10, 2015October 26, 2015

H3

I love this treadling variation. (4,3,2,1,4,1,2,3) I may do the 4th towel with it rather than the 4th variation included in the book. (4,3,4,2,1,2) I want to finish by tomorrow morning for my guild study group meeting. I have caused myself a time crunch because I spent some unweaving time yesterday. I had made 2 treadling errors in towel #2 and contemplated keeping that towel for myself and leaving the mistakes in. But, I decided to heed my own advice, I would rather keep a towel that didn’t have a mistake, so bit the bullet and unwove. I wasted time over the weekend not weaving most of Saturday and all of Sunday because I couldn’t make myself go on with the mistake in, and I didn’t want to unweave. It only took me about 20 minutes to unweave the 4 or 5 inches yesterday and much less than that to reweave. I should have done it right away. The towels would be finished by now if I had.

I need to leave to teach a rigid heddle class soon at the LYS and that will cut into my weaving time tonight. Its a good thing I get up early with my son in the morning. Hopefully I can push through and finish then before I need to leave at 9:30. I used fusible thread in my hems, so a quick iron on the ends and I can take the cloth along to study group with out fear. Washing, cutting apart and hemming of the towels can wait until after the meeting.

I was there this morning teaching a knitting class. I love my knitting classes. It is so gratifying to see how successful people feel the first time they use increases and decreases to make something shaped like a hat in the round, rather than a rectangle or square. Many people knit for years without going beyond the rectangle. In my hat class not only do they use shaping, but they learn to knit on a circular needle and a set of 4 double pointed needles. Such a simple project that creates skill and confidence when they complete it.

Everyone in the class wants to make a sweater now, so that will start in two weeks!

February 6, 2015October 26, 2015

Halvorsen 1 & 2

This is the first towel on my current warp of ringspun 8/2 cotton (bought at M&R Yarns while on a road trip to Georgia). The weft is Borg’s 22/2 cottolin in light blue. I got a copy of Davison’s A Handweaver’s Pattern Book, I studied it looking for a nice twill that had some threading changes so it wasn’t all one pattern and with some nice treadling variations to keep me on my toes. I chose the Caroline Halvorsen patterns on pg. 44. Above is Halvorsen I.

This is the second towel on my warp. From Davison p.44 Caroline Halvorsen II. The first treadling was the easiest. 4,3,2,1. The second was a slightly longer sequence of 8 picks. 4,3,2,1,2,3,4,1.

The treadlings get progressively more complicated in 3 & 4 but should be fairly quick to memorize as well. I am halfway finished with towel #2 and should start on #3 later today.

Here is the draft for towels 1 and 2. There are plain weave sections at the beginning and end of each towel. I am using a floating selvedge since there are some point twill treadlings. I hope to finish all 4 before my study group meeting at the WGGC on Wednesday.

January 29, 2015October 26, 2015

User Error

Yes the auto reed hook kept me from skipping a dent yesterday, but it didn’t prevent user error. You can see in the picture above slightly left of center what the problem is. I got my whole warp sleyed and tied on, then it was time to check for issues. I treadled some plain weave sheds and I examined the sheds from the front of the loom. Each dent should have two threads and when treadling the plain weave shed, one in each should move up and the other stay down. But, I saw an empty dent when I treadled the sheds. With the shed closed and flat, I hadn’t noticed it, but two of the dents only had one thread in each instead of two. When I raised a shed, the thread in one of the dents that only had one thread stayed down and there was a one dent gap. Fortunately the dents with one thread each were right next to each other. I contemplated leaving it, but it could leave a reed mark in the finished cloth. Since it was only about 4 inches away from the left selvedge, I fixed it and resleyed those 4 inches. If it had been in the middle, I probably still would have fixed it and resleyed 11 inches of warp.

I also looked into the sheds from the side and found 2 threads in the middle of the shed. I had twisted them between the heddles and reed. So I marked the threads with a piece of red string from a thrum and located the bout and untied it. I traced the threads back and sorted them out, resleyed them and retied the bout.

I always look for problems before I start weaving. That is the best time to fix things. I don’t want to go through all the work that it takes to weave something only to have a flaw in the finished product that I was too lazy to fix.

I am like this with my knitting too. If I can fix it, I do. I have been know to rip out almost completed knitting projects. My philosoply is that if the mistake will bother me, I won’t want to wear it or give it to the person it is intended for. I like knitting and I like weaving so ripping out or unweaving may take me a little longer to get that particular project finished, but I still get to knit or weave and will like the sock or the towel better.

See this sock , it was a project I started last year during the winter Olympics. Shortly after this picture was taken, I ripped it out even though there were no errors in the knitting. I tried it on, and it was really tight. I didn’t take into consideration how the twisted stitches would affect the stretch of finished sock leg and they were intended for me. My daughter who has thinner legs said she probably would not wear them. I still had one sock to go, so I ripped. I want something that fits.

I will restart them on dpns (2.25 mm) for the leg with the same number of stitches. That will give a little more stretch. Then when I get to the foot, I will switch to two circular needles, one for the top of the foot in size 2.5 mm needles and stick with my usual 2 mm(US size 0) for the bottom of the foot. That should do the trick.

Meanwhile, I do have other socks on the needles. I am trying to weave during the day and knit in the evenings, but have instead been working on weaving into the evenings since my days have been interrupted here and there by normal life.

Well, now its back to the loom to finish the last inch of resleying and hopefully to start weaving.

January 28, 2015October 26, 2015

Dressed For Action

The warp has been beamed onto the warp beam and I have threaded the heddles. I had a bit of a setback on Monday, I got the warp on the loom, spread it out to 22 inches and beamed it on only to look at it and think, “something is not right”. I had only wound half of the number of threads needed. So, I carefully unwound the warp from the beam, scooted everything closer together onto one side, and wound more warp. I then put that on the apron rod with the rest of the warp and beamed it all again.

I got most of the heddles threaded into the pattern yesterday and finished up this morning. I started to sley the reed with the normal reed hook, but it was sooo slow. I have gotten used to the auto reed hook, so I had to look for it in my unorganized studio (I promise to work on organizing) and am now sleying faster. No it doesn’t automatically sley the reed for me, it just moves from dent to dent on its own, while I pick the threads, catch them with the hook and pull. I can leave it in a dent and do something else with my hands, and it doesn’t fall out, and most importantly, I don’t accidentally skip a dent while sleying.
Here’s a short video to show how I use it. It works best if the reed is laying flat, not standing up in the beater.

After I run a few errands, I should be able to finish that up quickly and get to the real action of the day, weaving!

January 26, 2015October 26, 2015

Measuring Threads

I recently took over one of the bigger bedrooms in the house as my studio. I got it sorted out enough today that I could wind a warp to start a project. What that means is that I am measuring and counting the warp threads (in this case undyed 8/2 ringspun cotton). I need 528 ends (strands of warp) that I will sett at 24 e.p.i. (there will be 24 strands in each inch of my warp). This project is dish towels which will be 22 inches wide on the loom. Even before beginning to wind the warp, I had to plan out my pattern to fit into 22 inches with the yarns that I chose to use. The pattern is a twill, and 8/2 cotton is good at 24 e.p.i. for a twill pattern.

I chose a pattern from Marguerite Porter Davison’s book A Handweaver’s Pattern Book on page 44 titled “Caroline Halvorsen’s No. 30”. This is a classic book of 4 shaft patterns for weaving, that was written in 1944. There are 4 variations of the pattern that I can treadle by changing what feet and treadles I use in sequence. My warp will make 4 towels, so each towel will be a different variation of the pattern. To make the 4 towels I need 4 yards of each strand. The pattern is a twill, and 8/2 cotton is good at 24 e.p.i. for a twill pattern. I want 22 inches wide on the loom, so my warp takes 2112 yards of yarn. This 8/2 cotton has 3360 yards in one pound of yarn, so I am using almost 2/3 of a pound of yarn.

These kind of calculations are necessary to know that you have enough of a given yarn to make the project (or to know how much to buy) and to know how much your project costs to make for pricing decisions, for inventory and for profit calculations.

I have a limited amount of the yarn that I chose for weft (the threads that I weave with), and wanted 4 towels as wide and as long as I could make them, but still trying to keep the weaving width a multiple of 2 inches with 24 ends per inch. I have a loom with a warp beam that has 2 inch sections, so to make warping easier, I try to keep my projects a multiple of 2 inches. I changed the draft in the book a little to accommodate this by increasing the number of ends in the first and last repeat of the pattern. There are lots of decisions to make before you even start to wind your warp.

I have been thinking about the project for a while, but actually sat down with a calculator, graph paper, my spreadsheet and weaving software this morning to pull it all together.

This post shows a picture of about half of my measured threads on the warping board. (A warping board is a device used to measure your yarn so that each strand is exactly the same length and keep the strands organized so that you can then take it to the loom to “dress” the loom.)

So, off to wind more warp and perhaps get it wound onto the loom today. Tomorrow, I will need to thread the strands through the heddles on the loom in the order required to make my pattern.