CHAINING THE SILK WARP--NOT

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

I am doing something else different. I have always chained my warps. But the 60/2 silk warps frequently presented me with a problem in unchaining. Indeed, there were times when I thought I would have to make the whole warp shorter because in the unchaining a warp bout had gotten so knotted.

So now, instead of chaining the individual bouts, I am winding them onto bobbins. The first one was a bit of a mess as I didn’t know exactly what I was doing, but the succeeding ones improved as I began to get the hang of spiraling the warp back and forth between the ends of the bobbin.

The choke ties unfortunately interfere with the neatness of the wrapping. I wonder if I might dare not use the choke ties? I think not.

The warp is short (four yards), so a bout fits nicely on a regular weaving shuttle bobbin. I don’t think I could go over five yards, however, or maybe six with a choke tie close to the beginning of the bout.

This process reminds me of the kite stick method. Peggy Osterkamp discusses this in Chapter Eight of her first volume called Winding a Warp and Using a Paddle. But instead of spiraling the yarn up and down the kite stick as I have done with the bobbin, she uses a method similar to that used in winding a niddy noddy. I have never gotten the hang of winding a niddy noddy. So I am taking for truth her statement that “you can wind it up any which way that keeps the warp under tension.”

She also suggests things you can use to warp the warp around: canvas stretchers and packing sticks, for example. These would be useful for longer, fatter, bouts, but I don’t think I would like to use them for 60/2 silk.

For the 60/2 silk I could use six-inch bobbins instead of four-inch bobbins. I could use the plastic bobbins that are used in sectional warping. The size of the latter would probably make winding and spiraling a bit awkward. For my particular silk warps, 6” bobbins sound more appropriate.

Related Post: Warping Paddle

“Chaining the Warp--Not” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on April 6, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina