REFLECTIONS ON WEAVING TECHNIQUE

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

On reflection, I have discovered that I have come a long way technically in my ability to weave 60/2 silk.

First, this has been a wonderful warp.  By far the best I have ever woven on in this silk.  This warp is a big jump over my last warp and I attribute it to gritting my teeth and winding on approximately 1-inch bouts and then gritting my teeth again and lashing on to the front rod in 3/4-inch bouts.

Previously I had made my bouts about 2 inches wide when I made them at the warping board.  And when I lashed on to the front rod, I had tied on in 1 1/2-inch to 1-inch groups. Changing these two things has made a big difference in the overall evenness of tension in the warp. 

The major result of this reduction is size is that so far I have seen on the wrong side only one weft throw where a couple of a couple of warp ends were missed.  And I am almost done!  This is a record for me and will motivate me to continue to beam on this silk in narrow bouts.

Also as a result I have had very few problems with loops of weft yarn getting caught in the warp.  But they are still there, primarily close to the selvedges.  I have figured two things I need to do to solve the last of this problem:

1. WEFT YARN TENSION: I have not tensioned my yarn in the shuttles tightly enough.  I bumped the tension up one notch and doing that had a decided effect.  I need to be able to bump it up just a bit more and I think that will mean using a temple. Otherwise the pull of the weft yarn against the selvedge edge will start to draw the selvedge in too much. When I start the next warp I will test this out.

2. LIGHT: I need better light.  I am getting more precise in what I look at as I weave and I have discovered that often I can actually see the beginnings of what will be a loop after I throw and beat the next shot.  It is an easy thing, before I do that, to pull at the end just enough to straighten it out so it won’t loop.  Better light should make it easier for me to see this sort of thing, so I am looking at miner head lights.

There is, however, something I still need to figure out.  Well, actually, it is probably a matter of practice pure and simple. There is an issue with the pirns themselves.  I talked earlier of the knots.  These definitely interfered with my ability to get even tension on each weft thread.  But there is another issue.  Even without the knots, the weft yarn still gets stuck from time to time.  That means I have not wound the pirn at that point exactly correctly.

The next time I wind pirns I shall have to be observant and careful.

Related Posts:  
   Winding the Silk Warp
   Pirn Winding
 

“Reflections on Weaving Technique” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on July 3, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.