GRADIENT DYEING OF WEFT YARNS

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

Tien has revived my interest in the possibility of weaving with knit blanks which I could dye and then unwind onto pirns for use as weft. In this process,  the weft yarn is first knitted (on a knitting machine) and the resulting knit fabric is then dyed with the desired gradated color changes.  After the knitted blank is dyed, it is unwound onto pirns or bobbins for weaving.  Then one uses these bobbins in the correct order to weave with. 

SOME NOTES ON HISTORY OF MACHINE-KNITTED BLANKS

Sara Lamb was the first person who I was aware, through her blog, of using this technique. She had learned of the process from her good friend Nancy Roberts. At that point Nancy had been machine knitting and dyeing blanks for hand knitters to use and so Sara pursued this.  Go to her 2005 post “More Dyeing Fun” to learn how Sara dyed the blank and then hand-knit it.

Later that year, Nancy got the idea of machine knitting blanks not just for hand knitters but for weavers as well. So Sara agree to weave up one of Nancy’s machine knit and dyed samples.  To see what she did with the blank, go to this post, A Little Help from my Friends. You won’t be disappointed with the eye candy that Sara provides.

The next year, Nancy presented a workshop for Sara’s guild. Sara talks about this workshop in her post, Dye Another Day. This was primarily about dyeing sock blanks for knitting socks. 

While Sara often refers to this technique as “Nancy’s technique,” Nancy explained in an email conversation with me that her source was Rebekah Younger. To see some of Rebekah’s creations, go here.  Rebekah had an article in a 1995 Threads Magazine on the technique, a technique she used for knitting.

An article on this technique can be found in the current Handwoven magazine (Issue 143, pp. 16-17). This is the story of the collaboration between Nancy and weaver Penny Peters. Here I learned that Nancy can make knit fabric even with 60/2 silk. Aha!  My favorite weight of silk. 

As a former machine knitter, and one who knit on a fine gauge machine at that, I had not believed it possible to use 60/2 silk in a knitting machine.  And apparently Nancy wasn’t so sure either.  But she found she could, and Penny’s weaving shows the brilliant results.

Now Tien is playing with the concept.  Go here to read Tien’s description of her process along with wonderful photos.

MACHINE KNITTED BLANKS AND MY WEAVING

Reading Tien’s post on this process started me thinking once again about using it in my own work. I had not realized until Tien’s posts that anyone knit these blanks for sale.  That meant, I realized, that even though I no longer had any knitting machines, I had easy access to purchasing knitted blanks.  But I “knew” that of course 60/2 silk was out.  Thanks to the piece in Handwoven I know that Nancy could knit me up 60/2 silk!  Wonderful!

Right now, however, the kind of weaving I am doing does not seem to lend itself to using this technique.  But were I to use it, I would not use it in the same way Tien does. 

Tien is using very long colorways. In fact, looking at Tien’s photos, it looks like each of the colorways takes up enough yarn for one pirn, for a total of seven pirns.  Elsewhere, however, she mentions that she is using 14 pirns.  In any case, if I were to use such long color ways, it would for me make more sense to dye the yarns myself.

Dyeing the yarn in separate skeins would make it easier to make decisions as to when to stop weaving with one color and move to the next.  As Tien makes clear, one has to calculate all this fairly accurately in advance.

Another advantage to doing the dyeing myself, I could choose on the fly when to move to the next bobbin.  This would give me plenty of opportunity to play with (i.e., change my mind about……..) my original plans for working with the weft colors.

When I dye small bits of yarn I use canning jars and an electric frying pan to provide a water bath.  The pan holds 8 jars.  Actually I have two frying pans designated for dyeing and have been known to dye as many as 15 different yarns at a time. To dye 16 (or even more) gradations with two colors would require only that I make the two basic stock solutions and then gradually mix them into the number of dye pots I wanted.  The number would be determined by just how smooth I wanted the gradations to be.

So, with long color changes, I’m not sure about the knitted blanks.  If, however, the colors change relatively quickly, then I think the knitted blanks are a brilliant way to save some time as well a to reduce the number of weft ends that have to be woven into the fabric.

TO LEARN MORE

To find out more about this and to see examples of the beautiful things that have been created, go to Nancy Roberts’ website, Machine Knitting to Dye For. There is also a Machine Knitting to Dye For group on Ravelry.

I am indebted to Nancy for her help and advice with this post.

Related Post:  Anger Despite Playing with Dyes

"Gradient Dyeing of Weft Yarns" was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on December 17, 2008. © 2008 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

FINISHING THE TOWELS

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

Many weavers seem to dislike the warping, threading, sleying, all the activities that go into getting the warp on the loom and ready to weave. I enjoy those activities. What I dislike is doing the finishing.  When I cut a piece off the loom my mind tells me I am done and shuts down. I am ready to get on to the next piece. I have to use every trick in the book to get me to continue with the finishing.

ZIGZAGGING EDGES

I have used the sewing machine to zigzag the edges of the towels to keep them from fraying.  I have cut the towels apart.  I now have what almost seems like a pile of towels.  But they feel coarse.  They look a bit like window screening.  There is more work to be done before they morph into towels.

I need to get rid of all the weft yarns thrown in between each towel.  I need to trim any threads not trimmed at the time of weaving.  I need to check each towel for errors. 

PROBLEMS

I did check for errors. The first error I spotted was a treadling error:  I threw two consecutive shots in the same shed.  It is at the hem border—the (more or less…) horizontal line of cream at the bottom shows two wefts each in the correct shed.  But then, at the top of that line is an apparent thicker shot in a third shed.  Actually that apparently thicker shot is really two shots in the same shed. 

I may keep this towel for myself.  I had planned on keeping one or two for myself, but then I had also changed my mind.  Or I may simply point out the error to Amy as a reminder that her mother is not perfect.  Not that she needs reminding, mind you.

And in the course of trimming up, I saw the occasional notch in the selvedge where one or more weft threads had caught and pulled tight when I threw the shuttle across the warp.  The one in the photo was particularly bad.  The rest are not nearly so obvious.  Clearly my pirn winding, though much improved over what it was when I first started weaving with end feed shuttles, still needs work.  But my eyes still need to be more attentive as I weave so I can catch these problems while it is still reasonable to unweave and correct. 

MEASUREMENTS

After I trimmed the towels up, I measured them. The first five towels were 25” wide.  The last towel was 24 1/2” wide---narrower than the rest as expected.  These were also the widths on the loom.  That did not change.  However, the width at the reed had been 27”, so that means there was either 2” or 2 1/2” of draw in, depending on which towel I am discussing.  Roughly 10%, a figure that is in line with normal expectations.  I expect more shrinkage widthwise after washing.

Measuring the length of each of them from edge to edge (which includes the hems), four of the towels measured 37” and two measured 38”.  This, two I anticipated because I had gotten confused at some point whether I was measuring edge to edge or from the bottom of the towel to the other bottom of the towel, minus the hems.  Next time I weave multiple items that I have to measure on the loom, I will attach a reminder to my little bulletin board on the castle.  Right in front of my face……….   Perhaps in red ink………..

WHAT REMAINS TO BE DONE

Now I need to wash, hang dry and press.  Then sew the hems.  For towels I use the sewing machine for this.  Then I plan to wash them again and put them through the dryer this time, primarily to encourage more shrinkage, but also to soften them up a bit more. 

I will not put them in the dryer the first time round because I have read that wrinkles will set in cotton if the fabric is not carefully pressed first. Once that initial press is over, the dryer will create no wrinkles.  I do not know for sure whether or not this is true.  I only know that that is how I finished dish towels I wove many years ago and there is never a wrinkle in them.

WHAT I’D RATHER BE DOING

I would so much rather be making the warp for my next piece…..

I would so much rather be working on the design for my next crackle piece…..

"Finishing the Towels" was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on December 16, 2008. © 2008 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

FINAL TOWEL

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

When I went to fill a pirn with white 8/2 cotton I discovered that that this white cotton that I have been weaving with is not the cotton I used for the warp.  The 8/2 cotton I used as warp was a natural color.  I remembered that I had ordered the natural and not the white. 

Apparently I had some cones of white 8/2 nearby, so when I went to wind weft, I wound white, not the natural.  It worked out nicely.  The white squares and lines are nice and clean, but the natural warp probably keeps the white from being blinding white---an effect I had not wanted and why I had ordered the natural.

But, for this last towel, I decided to weave with the natural instead of the white.  And I decided to use the burnt orange I had used for the body of the first towel, for the horizontal stripes on this towel.  The result is a slightly creamier looking towel.  To appreciate the difference, the two towels would need to be seen right next to each other.

I think this last towel may be my favorite.

Related Post:  Towel One Woven

"Final Towel" was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on December 12, 2008. © 2008 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

USING SAMPLES

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

Dave’s  idea of hanging yardage/scarves on a wall for display has been a great inspiration for me.  He used hooks that he screwed into the wall onto which the hanging rod could be laid.  Not willing to put needless holes into our walls, I went to the store and bought a pair of over-the-door hangers.  Hanging my samples from them has worked like a charm.

But what is really good about them, is that they are a hung on a door that I constantly pass through.  Now I find myself stopping and looking from time to time.  Right now my focus goes to the part of the sample that is the impetus for the shawl I plan to weave. 

Today as I stood and stared at that part of the sample (photo to the left), ideas started coming into focus just a bit.  I realized that I was looking at motifs—some primary, some secondary.  Finally I couldn’t abide standing and looking any more.  I grabbed the sampler off the hanger and took it to the computer.  I brought up the notes I had started for the shawl and began typing away ideas.

Ideas are starting to come. Many will be discarded almost immediately.  Many will spur on more ideas.  And so my excitement grows.  Thank you, Dave.

Related Posts:
   Resisting Doing the Work
   Crackle Shawl/Art Piece

"Using Samples" was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on December 11, 2008. © 2008 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

PHOTO MEME

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

I just realized that Leigh tagged me for this meme. Here are the instructions as they appeared in Leigh’s post:

*Go to your sixth picture folder and pick your sixth picture.
*Pray you remember the details.
*Tag five others.

My sixth picture folder is titled Christmas 2007. The sixth picture is of my husband. I have no recollection whatsoever of the present he is opening…..

For those curious about such things, the room immediately behind Chuck (the room with the white bookcase) is the breakfast room where my loom resides.

Also, the sweater he is wearing was knit many years ago by yours truly when I was in my knitting machine phase.

These are the five bloggers I have tagged:

The Twisted Warp

Tien’s Blog

Centerweave

Thrums

WeaveGeek

Here, by the way, is one definition of meme that I found.

A meme (IPA: /mi:m/) is defined within memetic theory as a unit of cultural information, cultural evolution or diffusion that propagates from one mind to another analogously to the way in which a gene propagates from one organism to another as a unit of genetic information and of biological evolution. Multiple memes may propagate as cooperative groups called memeplexes (meme complexes).

I found many other definitions that were quite similar. I have no idea how the “tagging” community came up with this word.

"Photo Meme" was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on December 10, 2008. © 2008 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

TOWEL 5: CORRECTION

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

The following sentences in the previous post are not correct:

I did the first blue. I did the second green. I did the third blue. I did the fourth blue……….

It should read, I did the first green. I did the second blue.  I did the third blue……

"Towel 5: Correction" was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on December 9, 2008. © 2008 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina