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.

PIRNS AND BOBBINS WOUND

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

Even with knots, silk yarn winds very smoothly from well-wound cones onto bobbins and pirns. The silk yarn would not have wound on to the pirns and bobbins at all well had I tried to wind them directly from the skeins. Taking the time to wind onto cones first definitely pays off.

To the right is a photo of the tensioner I use to help me wind pirns. It was made by John Stegmuller who designed something he calls the olympic pirn winder. This last was reviewed on Episode 18 of Weave Cast. Go here to listen to it.

I have used this tensioner for around five years now and am really happy with it.

The yarn, threaded on a big needle, enters the left side of the tensioner. It goes around the first pink thing, then in between the two black discs and around to the next pink thing and out onto the right side. The space between the discs can be adjusted by turning the wing nut at the top. The amount of space determines the tension on the yarn.

I hold the whole tool in my right hand and move it back and forth, just as I would if I were holding the yarn between my fingers. This saves burning of my fingers.

More important, this tool puts a lot more tension on the yarn than I can put by holding it between my fingers. That greater tension results in a pirn that is smoothly and firmly wound. Those are requirements for yarn wound onto pirns.

Related Post: Pirn Winding

“Pirns and Bobbins Wound” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on May 4, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

AMY’S TOWELS: SOME OBSERVATIONS

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

1. Simplicity can be very attractive.  In some ways, with my penchant for working with very complex elements, this may have been the most interesting thing I learned.  Perhaps the most important?

2. My calculations were on target for warp length.  I got six towels woven, with, as the photo to the left shows, only five to six more inches of possible weaving length. 

On the other hand, I do not like to count on having to weave once the rod has passed over the back beam.  Once the rod starts coming off the back beam things can happen, especially unexpected broken ends.

Visible in the photo are the selvedge weights I use.  They are normally at the back.  But the position of the back rod puts them in that rather strange position. 

3. I found that my body built up its ability to withstand continuous weaving.  That really surprised me.  After the first week it was showing signs of objecting.  But this second week I have felt as though I could weave all day with no problems.  Of course, I didn’t trust that feeling!

PROBLEMS:

1. Size of Blocks.  The wide blocks on the outside are each 3/8” narrower than the other blocks.  As I had added additional treads to the brown stripes so they would end up the same size, so I should have added additional warp yarns to the outside blocks.  I had not realized (though I should have known) that the draw-in would extend so far in.  In fact, even the next block on either side is ever so slightly narrower than the remaining blocks.

2. Floating Selvedges.  Nearing the end of the warp, I noticed that the floating selvedge on the right side had unplied and was sitting there as two singles.  The only difference between the two sides that I could see was that quite a few heddles had slipped from the right side of the loom up snug against the threaded heddles.  Usually I watch that pretty carefully.  But this time, in the euphoria of weaving, I neglected to keep a watchful eye on those heddles.  In any case, I continued weaving and that selevedge yarn never broke.

3. Selvedges.  I had trouble with selvedges for about an inch or so near the end.  I thought it was that my bobbin winding had deteriorated.  Then it seemed that the weighted selvedge ends were not as taut as they usually are.  I looked a bit and couldn’t figure it out.  So I kept on weaving.  At some point the selvedges started looking fine.  I felt the selvedge warps and they were tight as a drum.  Clearly the weights had somehow rested just a bit on the beam as the rods were moving to the top of the beam.  I should have been more thorough in my checking.

3. Draw-in.  There were no general draw-in problems except that the draw-in on the first towel was a little less than on the remaining towels. The next four towels stayed the same width throughout the weaving. This suggests I need to spend time just weaving for awhile on the warp so that the draw-in stabilizes.

It was the last towel that the draw-in suddenly increased. In the photo you can see that the bottom layers are a bit wider than the rest.  But then things settled down until I got to the last towel.  There you can see the fabric gradually contracting. 

The only thing right now that I can think to attribute that to is the yarn I was using.  I had not used this natural color for weft before.  I noticed that it didn’t unwind smoothly.  At times the weft yarn stuck so much that I found myself pinching the selvedges with my fingers so the weft wouldn’t yank the warp in.  Perhaps somehow it was a bobbin-winding problem.  Yet I went through three full bobbins and surely I hadn’t made a muck of all three? 

I think the yarn itself must have been rougher than the dyed (or bleached) yarns.  The solution then might have been to loosen up the tension on the bobbin.  Still, the stickiness seemed to begin with the thread coming off the bobbin, not through the shuttle itself.  So perhaps as I was nearing the end I grew careless in winding the pirns?

Related Posts: 
Never Touch the Selvedges
Pirn Winding
Akihiko Izukura
Sampling for Acrylic Afghan

"Amy’s Towels: Some Observations" was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on December 15, 2008. © 2008 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

Critiquing My Work

Amount woven yesterday: 5.5"
Amount woven to date: 2 yards + 14"

First, I want to thank Karren for her helpful comment on badly wound pirns:

"...I...rewind badly wound pirns...onto another pirn. No loss of yarn. I usually had to increase the winding tension a bit, a 5 min. fix to an annoying distraction."

Such a simple solution. How could I not have seen it!!! Thank you, Karren. By the way, the reason for increasing the tension on the rewinding is, I assume, to enable the yarn to wind onto the new pirn without the jerking caused by the bad winding.

On an earlier post I quoted Robert Genn as follows:

"Learn to be your own best counsel and private advocate."

And he has also said this in another piece he wrote for his email newsletter:

"Learn to be alone and to be your own best critic."

(To read the entire essay where he made this last statement, go here.)

Sitting at the loom day by day, throwing the shuttle, watching carefully, tends to lead me to be critical of the design I am weaving. Basically, I feel happy about it, but there is something that niggles at me---the blue warp stripes. I had hoped that they would have been less dominant, blurred more than they are by the crossing weft threads. That is one of the reasons I chose a lighter blue for one of the weft threads instead of the more medium blue of the warp. The areas I like the best are when the blues are only 2-4 warp ends wide.

The photo on the left shows the blues as more muted than they really are so it does not seem to present so much the problem I am talking about. In truth, the photo is closer to what I would actually like to see on the loom than what is on the loom!

I wonder if in part what I see in the image is more like what I would see standing at a distance from the cloth. Weaving fabric is very tricky because ultimately it will be seen, and should be readable from, widely varying distances.

However, were I to make this warp again, I would design the layout of the three colors, without the blue, much as I did here. Then I would interpolate bits of blue, sometimes for only one warp end, sometimes for two, and sometimes for three, four or even maybe five. The emphasis, however, always would be on the smaller number.

Winding an odd number of warp ends creates a slight difficulty, as I would have to tie it either onto the board or onto the preceding warp end on one side. I couldn't just wind it up, and then down, and then wind it around the last peg awaiting for its next turn. But heck, there is already so much fiddling and tinkering, why not a bit more?!

One of the things that intrigues me is standing at the side of the loom, a little away from it, and looking at the woven fabric sideways. Standing there I can see a kind of a glittering optical illusion of a pattern. It is interesting, that this is more visible in the picture at the left which is taken from the front of the loom! This must have something to do with the built-in flash.

In any case, what is visible is the underlying structural pattern. It is even more visible in real life when I stand at the side of the loom. This pattern is otherwise pretty well hidden by the interplay of colors. But I think this effect is pretty neat. I wonder if it will be lost completely when I cut up the cloth and sew it into a garment.

Pirn Winding

Amount woven yesterday: 3.5"
Amount woven to date: 2 yards + 4"


Pirns are what are used on end feed shuttles. They differ from bobbins in that they are tapered. Also, instead of winding them back and forth, the weaver winds them a half inch at a time. On the left is what a correctly wound pirn should look like. To see a good illustration of how to wind pirns, go here.

One pirn is has been giving me a devil of a time. It jerks, it catches, it is not at all nice. It is incorrectly wound. Not terribly incorrectly. Just enough to drive me up a wall. I could, of course, just cut the yarn off the pirn and wind it again. But frugality won't let me. Sob.

Below the image of the correctly wound pirn is a close-up of an incorrectly wound pirn. The image is a bit fuzzy. I have taken and taken pictures to try to get one that will show what it looks like. My digital photography skills, which I thought had been improving, are being sorely tested. I have a lot to learn there as well! Anyway, though the picture is a bit fuzzy, I still think you can spot the problem area.

The problem area is right at the base of the black pirn. There is a little sliver of black where you can see through the wound yarn to the pirn itself. This should not be. It means that the yarn right there has loosened up a little bit. And then just above the sliver of black is a place where the yarn seems to recede a bit. At this point the layers are cutting through each other a bit. What then will happen when that shuttle is thrown is that the thread coming off the pirn will catch on the layers that are bad, trying to pull the yarn which has actually slipped underneath. So it catches and the yarn stops unwinding, and it stops unwinding very abruptly! And when this happens, it pulls at the selvedge it is coming from. So, not only do I have to get the yarn winding off again, but I have to reset the yarn at the selvedge. Very frustrating!

To the left is a picture of another pirn that gave me trouble for a little while. This picturet too is fuzzy, but what is visible is the yarn going askew at the point where it is coming off the pirn.

To wind the pirns, I use an electric bobbin winder and put the yarn through an adjustable tensioner to keep it at high tension. My winding skills have much improved, but clearly I have my "moments"! It does take practice to learn how to do it right. But, especially when weaving with fine threads, the effort involved is worth it. The pirns are big and hold a lot of yarn and the help improve selvedges.......when the yarn doesn't catch, that is!

Related Post: Shuttle/Pirn Problem

Shuttle/Pirn Problem

Amount Woven Friday: 10.8"s. No broken warp ends!
Total Amount Woven: 24.5"

I am weaving with 4 shuttles. They are the large Bluster Bay end feed shuttles. One shuttle has been giving me grief, grief, grief. It has been the shuttle with blue thread. That yarn was constantly refusing to come out. It would get stuck and I would have to yank at it. I finally would pull a bunch out (doing some yanking) before I actually threw it so it wouldn't pull against the selvedge. I tried and tried to figure out how I had wound it incorrectly. The other 3 have been fine.

End feed shuttles have a special winding technique. You don't wind the pirns back and forth as you do with bobbins. Rather, you build up half an inch at a time and move on, building up another half inch each time. Also, it must be wound on very tightly. The result is an electric winder is necessary, at least for fine threads. But since they cut my fingere, I started using a tensioning device. In any case, I was getting really nervous about my pirn winding skills and was not looking forward to winding the next set of bobbins.


Every once in awhile I would stare at that shuttle. What on earth is wrong? Sometimes it would look like absolutely nothing was wrong with the winding. And then I saw it. I had not shoved the pirn all the way to the end of the shuttle. I did that. It is now just fine. I love happy endings.



Pirn not fully in shuttle











Pirn correctly set in shuttle










Related Post: Pirn Winding