WEAVING FINALLY BEGUN ON HANDSPUN WARP

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

This is a bird’s eye view of the piece.  It is still window screening.  Clicking on the image will raise it full size;  then the window screening will really show!  But it is window screening as it ought to be.  When the scarf comes off the loom, the fabric will close together a bit.  Washing it will close it up still more.

I have decided to weave this piece with a temple.  I think the selvedges will look better.  I think the whole piece will look better.  Despite the fact that I move the temple after 8 shots…….  I’m getting used to it, though.

If you go to the related post on temples, you will see that when I wrote that—in July of 2007—I said that I had never used a temple on my handspun, only on silk warps or wide warps that needed to be beaten very tightly.  A girl can change her mind…….

Related Post:  Temples

"Weaving Finally Begun on Handspun Warp” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on December 4, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

SLOW (VERY SLOW) MOVEMENT FORWARD

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

DYEING

As I should have been able to predict last Friday, I have decided to do one more set of dye sampling. I will use the green of the last sampling but for the red I will use Sabraset Scarlet.  As this is a very busy day for me, however, the dyeing will happen tomorrow.

THREADING DRAFT

Also, I have saved another copy of the threading draft.  But in this copy I have eliminated the gaps between groups of blocks.  To do the actual threading, I will print out the original version with the gaps.  But for the calculations, I needed to eliminate those gaps.

Eliminating the gaps gives me 1506 warp ends plus four more for doubled floating selvedges.  That gives me a final total of 1510 warp ends.

ANTICIPATED PROBLEMS

1510 warp ends of 60/2 silk makes me catch my breath.  That many ends in a complex threading leaves plenty of room for making errors.  Also, that many ends provides for plenty of opportunity for stuck warp ends and so problematic sheds in the actual weaving.

I am hoping that leaving the gaps in the printed threading that I take with me to the loom for threading will help with the threading errors.  And I am going to change the sett from my usual of 60 ends per inch to 54 ends per inch in the hopes that doing this will make for easier sheds.  To help with the latter I also plan to use a temple.

Onward and upward!

Related Post:  Done with Dye Sampling?

"Slow (Very Slow) Movement Forward” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on October 16, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

BLOGS TO VISIT

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

My New Cone Winder – Woven’N’Spun

An ingenious way of using a bobbin winder and a foam cone to wind yarn onto a cone.  The only thing she forgets to say is that the yarn must be wound moving rapidly up and down, crisscrossing the cone. This way, layers of yarn don’t dig into earlier layers of yarn and the whole thing will unwind smoothly. 

If you spindle spin, you will recognize this as the way you wind the spun yarn onto the spindle. 

If  you spin on a wheel with a WooLee Winder, it winds the spun yarn on in the same way which is why those bobbins are wound much tighter and firmer that on wheels without WooLee Winders.

Woven Ratios an essay by Barbara Walker on WeaveZine.

This piece really appealed to me because it is about a weaving technique I have been playing with (in my head) and thinking about as a good way to use my hand spun yarn.  The weaving technique is called color-and-weave, but what is different about Walker’s piece is that she analyzes how to use color in terms of intensity or strength and proportion when developing a color and weave drawdown. 

Her discussion of color is applicable to weaving structures in general. 

When she discusses intensity, she is not so interested in the varying intensities a single color can have, but a comparison of the intensities of the different hues.  This is because she is interested in teaching how one can successfully use two different hues which seem quite strident by getting the proportions right in terms of the amount of each hue that is used.

Temples…love ‘em or hate ‘em – Dust Bunnies Under My Loom

I have not been using temples lately.  Lynnette has reminded me how useful they can be.  For those who don’t really know how to use this tool, do check out her post.

Imaging Weaves – Curiousweaver

A very interesting post on fashion drawing.  In her discussion she gives a link to a fascinating download of fashion templates.  I intend on downloading it. 

Meanwhile, I have tried my own experiment by copying and pasting a Vogue pattern image into Paint Shop Pro and playing with it.   It would be hard to draw a scarf on it with a mouse and I don’t have a Wacom tablet. 

 

 

 

 

 

“Blogs to Visit” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on March 25, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

DESIGN CONTINUED: HOW MANY BLOCKS?

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

My attention may be on the handspun shawl I am getting close to being able to warp, but I still continue to think and make notes about the silk crackle shawl which will follow. Here are some of the issues I am concerned with.

1. NUMBER OF THREADING BLOCKS

The most immediate issue is to determine how many blocks across the width of the warp I want. The art pieces, all of the based on Zielinski’s notion of creating 8 crackle blocks on 4 shafts, consisted of 17 blocks across the warp, but that was a much narrower warp. This shawl will be 28” wide.

2. SIZE OF BLOCKS

But even before I can decide the number of blocks, I need to determine how many units in each of the blocks. Yes, I do plan (at least at this point) to keep each block the same size. To determine the number of units I need to determine how wide I want the blocks.

3. ENDS PER INCH (EPI)

The epi for the shawl will be different from that for the art pieces: 60 epi instead of 72. 72 epi is generally the best setting for 60/2 silk woven in a twill pattern. Since I am weaving this crackle in what is essentially twill fashion, 72 would be the right sett. And it worked quite well for the art pieces.

But weaving a much wider piece at the same sett as a narrow piece would, for me, create difficulties. More difficult because it would be easier for the closely sett warp ends to hang up on each other and so create bad sheds. It would also be much harder to pack in the weft on the wider piece than on the narrow piece. So I have decided to make life a bit easier for me and sett this shawl at 60 epi. I will also consider using a temple to help with both issues.

Changing the epi from 72 to 60 will in and of itself make the blocks a bit wider. But my inclination is to make the blocks even wider because of the larger proportions of the shawl. So I am for now settling on 10 units per block. With 4 ends in an individual crackle unit, plus 1 accidental end at the end of any given block, that would result in a block being 41 ends wide. That means a block would be approximately 2/3-inch wide. With 44 blocks, I would get a shawl requiring 1,804 ends, four more ends than I had originally planned on in order to achieve a shawl with a final width (off loom and washed) of 28”.

4. ORDER OF THE BLOCKS

I have also made another design decision regarding the blocks. I had intended on trying ordering the blocks differently from that in the art pieces. There they were aligned in straight twill order, but reflected:

A B C D E F G F G F E D C B A

And in reflecting, the center of the scarf had some repeating blocks which created a change in the design there. Always wanting to try something a little different, I started to think about changing the order. But then sanity prevailed. The weaving itself is going to be a challenge, and by weaving, I mean, the planning of the treadling combined with the colors. I have physically available to me what can happen with threading twill order reflected. But not any other kind of threading. So I am going to stick to the concept of straight twill reflected.

But just how and where and how often that reflecting process will happen—in other words, the actual block order—I have not decided.

Related Posts:
Temples
Temples (these are two different posts!)
Much Ado About Not a Whole Lot
Threading Four-Shaft Crackle
8 Crackle Blocks on 4 Shafts

"Design Continued: How Many Blocks?” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on February 5, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

WHY A TEMPLE ON THIS WARP?

Have I mentioned that I am using a temple?  That I am using a temple despite a statement in a post made in July of 2007?  A statement in which I explained that I do not normally use temples with narrow warps or with closely sett silk warps?   Go here to read that post and see some pictures of temples.

So what am I doing using a temple on a warp that is 7+ inches wide, is made up of fine silk, and is very closely sett?

WITH AND WITHOUT THE TEMPLE

I started weaving with a temple but at one point I decided to try weaving without one.  The sides did begin drawing in more than they did with the temple.  I wanted the absolute minimum draw-in because I did not want the blocks at the ends to be narrower than the rest of the blocks. I had, however,  added more units in those blocks to help compensate.

Also, because the warp is so closely spaced, it is difficult to beat the weft yarns in.   The temple, by stretching those ends out, helps me to beat them in.

HOLES AT THE SELVEDGES

If you click on the picture from an earlier post, however, you will see one reason many weavers don't like to use temples: the many little holes the teeth of temple leave in the selvedges.  These little holes are happening here because of the extreme tightness of the weave structure.   By the next day, however, the woven cloth has clearly relaxed because the holes are gone.   

A WARNING ABOUT MY POSTS

So, as I wrote in another post on temples:

"A warning about my posts. I am always learning. What I say here today may well be different next year. I may have learned, for example, that my current skills (or lack of them) at winding on warps may have been leading me to use a temple as a crutch. I don't think so, but it's always possible." 

Go here to read the entire post.   

© 2008

Throwing the Shuttle

Amount woven yesterday: 3.0"
Amount woven to date: 3 yards + 3"

Dorothy recently brought up a very important point about weaving technique in her blog. She pointed out the need for throwing the shuttle with each hand in the same way and the need for keeping the shuttle away from the body when beating the weft thread in.

When the shuttle is thrown through the warp, it emerges close to the open beater near the shafts. The yarn coming out of that shed and leading to the shuttle is thus at an angle to the fell. When the beater is then brought to the fell, and the hand holding the shuttle remains up close to the shafts, a fair amount of weft is pulled into the warp. Indeed, if you pull the beater slowly and watch the weft coming out of the shuttle, you can see the beater pulling more weft out of the shuttle as it approaches the fell. If you allow your shuttle holding hand to follow the beater and move down towards the fell, much less thread gets pulled into the warp. The end result will be more draw-in. The warp width will shrink.

How steep the angle is between the fell and the shuttle as it is held near the shafts depends on where the fell is. The closer the fell is to the shafts the less steep the angle is and the less thread that will be pulled into the warp. This raises two issues.

First, to have a consistent amount of draw-in, the warp has to be moved forward frequently, probably every 1"-2", Consistent draw-in is very important for consistent beating. Consistent draw-in may not guarantee even beating throughout the cloth, but it will definitely help.

Second, a decision has to be made as to where to maintain the fell. Close to the front beam? Half-way between the front beam and the shafts? Close to the shafts? Some people call that half-way point the "sweet" spot. That is the point where the beater will be closest to perpendicular to the warp. It is probably best to aim for that "sweet" spot. This is not an issue for the floating beater, if I understand the mechanics correctly. The floating beater will always hit the fell at an angle perpendicular to the warp.

I tend to keep the fell close to the front beam. Doing this, allows me to beat in more weft yarn and to beat more closely. As the warp threads on the edges get closer together because of draw-in, it becomes more difficult to beat as closely as I want to because those closely spaced edge threads offer too much resistance. That is the main reason that I often use temple. The temple gets those threads spaced out so that I can pull the beater closer.

Using an end feed shuttle creates a little blip in this issue. In an end feed shuttle the thread does not emerge from the center of the shuttle but from the end. When the shuttle is thrown from right to left, the thread will emerge from the far end of the shuttle because it is on the left side that it comes out of. But when the shuttle is thrown from left to right, the left side is closest to the warp and so will not pull out as far as it does when it is thrown from right to left. This difference may create a small difference in the appearance of each selvedge, at least that is what some weavers say. Oh well, nothing perfect under the sun, as they say.

One of the most important things about Dorothy's discussion, I think, is her focus on the need for self-analysis, the need to watch and analyze what you are doing. And she is good at it!

Temples

Amount woven yesterday: 10.0"
Amount woven to date: 37" (otherwise known as 1 yard+1")

Sometimes when I come back to weaving the yardage, after having taken a break, I forget to put the temple on. And then I get this whishing sound. This is the sound of the reed rubbing against the warp ends on the edge of the warp. These warp ends are not going through the center of the reed's openings. This is not good because it results in broken selvedges threads. Putting on the temple pulls out the warp back to its width at the reed and so straightens those ends. No more rubbing.

In the photo at the left, you can see how the temple stretches out the warp at the point of weaving so that the warp ends run parallel and do not bend inward. The red yarns you see will be removed. I put a short piece of red sewing thread in to indicate the end of one repeat and the beginning of the next. This way should I totally lose my mind and have no idea where I am, I can use the red thread to figure it all out.

Yesterday I noticed that, while the first half of the left side of the warp is nice and tight, the same as most of the rest of the warp, the next inch is decidedly looser than the rest of the warp. I checked it because I noticed an occasional warp end there that didn't always like to go down when it was supposed to. The interesting thing, however, is that putting on the temple and so stretching out the warp to its full width results in that inch being really very close in tension to the rest of the warp. This is even truer when the sheds are open.

Temples can definitely be a good thing!

Related Posts: Selvedges and Temples
Baby Blanket

Selvedges and Temples

I am now weaving some 8-shaft twill samples on the remainder of the blanket warp. I am not using a temple. The selvedges appear to be perfect. Both selvedges. Not just the right. The left as well.

This is the same warp on which I wove the blanket. I did a double-stick header which allowed me to remove the blanket while keeping the threading and sleying intact.That heading also allowed me to tie the sticks back on the apron rod without tying (and re-tensioning) the whole warp again. I learned how to make this heading from Peggy Osterkamp's Warping Your Loom and Tying on New Warps, Number 2. The result is the same even tension across the width of the warp that I had when I wove the blanket. Also I am using the same end-feed shuttles.

There are two differences. The first is that I am using different tie-ups. I don’t see how this could affect the selvedges, especially since I am still using separately weighted selvedge warps on each side.

However, here is the second difference: I removed some of the edge warp threads. So, instead of weaving on a 43” wide warp, I am weaving on a 33” wide warp.

Could the different width really have such a marked effect on selvedges? I remember reading somewhere that one shouldn’t weave the full width of the loom. I don’t recall why. And since my computer is still in the hospital, I can't check to see whether or not I made a note of that information. The weaving width on my loom is 45”. 43” is precariously close to full width. Perhaps there is a relationship between arm span and throwing a shuttle properly? Perhaps I didn’t have the tension set quite right on the shuttles? I will have to keep this issue in mind as I weave future projects.

Temples: A Correction, an Addition and a Warning

In my last post I talked about using fishing line under special circumstances. When I said that it prevented draw-in, I was incorrect. What the fishing line does is more effectively to keep the warp ends at the selvedge so spread out during the actual weaving that the draw-in is equalized across the entire warp enough to result in selvedges that look (hopefully!) the same as the rest of the fabric.

Now, why wouldn't one always want to do this? Isn't this a desirable effect? Well, it certainly was in my case, where I wanted to made virtually invisible joins between panels of fabric. But otherwise I don't think it is usually desirable. The closer draw-in at the selvedges serves a very important purpose: to protect the edges of the fabric. The edges of a fabric are the most vulnerable to wear. The cuffs on men's long-sleeved shirts are a good illustration. So having the warp on the edges of a fabric a bit closer than the rest is really a good thing. I have read of weavers who actually sett those edges closer for just that reason.

A warning about my posts. I am always learning. What I say here today may well be different next year. I may have learned, for example, that my current skills (or lack of them) at winding on warps may have been leading me to use a temple as a crutch. I don't think so, but it's always possible.

An example of always learning. I "know," and have "known" for a long time that one is supposed to move the warp frequently while weaving. Every 1 1/2" to 2 1/2" are the general guidelines I have read. Sometimes I kind of abide by that; sometimes I don't. The temptation to weave and weave before I finally am forced to move the warp forward is very great.

Today as I watched the weaving of the blanket progress, I noticed something I had not noticed before. As I wove, the angle of the weft thread kept getting smaller and smaller. The left selvedge also started getting pretty bad. Now I "know" that the angle of the weft thread affects the amount of weft pushed into the fabric. And I "know" that the less weft pushed in, the more draw-in there will be. But this morning, knowing started turning into understanding.

So I moved the warp and after about 1" of weaving, I noticed the selvedge beginning to tighten up. So each time after I threw the shuttle, I used my free hand to pull up the weft thread closer to the reed. This made the angle of the weft about what it had been in the previous inch. It worked!

Now that I finally understand a bit more, moving the warp frequently will not bother me, at least wide warps. My suspicion is that a narrow warp can be woven a bit longer before having to move it. But I will have to test that out.

Temples

Leigh asked if I always use a temple in my weaving. The answer is no, I do not. When I am weaving fairly narrow (10-14") and fine (60/2 silk) silk warps, there seems to be no need for a temple. I think that may be due to the fact that I ratchet up the tension on the warp to maximum. Silk is very strong and seems to have had no tendency to break at such high tension. And it is also fairly easy to get the number of picks per inch at those widths.

Also I have not used a temple weaving my own handspun, though again the warps were relatively narrow (15" to 20"). Also, I found I could keep the warp tension quite high. This surprised me as my handspun is quite soft and very stretchy. The first time I made a warp with some, I was amazed at how it snapped back to a much smaller size when I took it off the warping board. Needless to say I made a mental note to calculate for that in planning the next handspun warp! Also, I did not need a temple because I was not packing in the weft tightly, as I do with the fine silk.

When I do use temples should become fairly clear now! I use them on wide warps. The temple keeps the whole warp stretched widthwise so that it is easier to get the number of picks into an inch that I need/want.

One thing a temple does not do is to prevent draw-in. When you remove the temple that fabric is going to draw in. Draw-in is just the nature of the beast. What it does do is to keep the warp stretched at the point of weaving so that you can pack the weft in more easily and to distribute the draw-in a little more evenly across the entire width of the fabric.

The top left picture shows a very small temple from the top side. The top right picture shows its business side. You can see the prongs on the side that is lighted (I do have to work on my photography skills!). The bottom picture shows the temple with the two pieces separated. One part of the temple has a little upright piece that fiats into the holes you see on the other piece. The white band you see in the top two photos then slides across both pieces to hold them in place. A wicked, wicked piece of equipment.

Draw-in is just the nature of the beast. You can, however, weave with virtually no draw-in if you use something like fine fishing line for the selvedge edges and then remove it when you are done. I have done this when weave a blanket in 3 pieces. I put the fishing line on those edges that were going to be joined. I wanted those edges to look just like the rest of the blanket after seaming. And, thanks to fulling, you have to look for those seams to find them.