A New Week, A New Warp

 

florets  - showing hem area and repeats of the motif

Well, not, quite - it depends on when you begin counting your week (is it Sunday?  Or Monday?)

I've just finished threading the next warp - the one inspired by the Snail's Trails and Cat's Paws motif so well known from being used as overshot - but which can also be woven in twill blocks.  There is some speculation that overshot was developed in order to create more 'ornate' and/or larger designs than can be easily done with 'only' four shafts.  Certainly there is evidence that the motif was already well known in the 16-1700s, given I found it in one of the two German weaver's pattern books translated by Patricia Hilts.  Which gave me the idea to convert some of the other smaller overshot designs into twill blocks.

After the injection Friday, with lots of warnings ringing in my ears about taking it 'easy', not 'pushing' myself, I did just that.  Since I was feeling 'off' it wasn't a hard decision to make.  But over the rest of Friday and into Saturday, the pain did begin to wear off.

It wasn't altogether gone, and may never go away entirely, given the peripheral neuropathy.  OTOH, I'm taking a medication to see if it will work for that.  We are running the experiment, in the absence of actual studies being done, but based on other conditions where it IS helpful, my pain doctor was willing to let me give it a try.

One of the light duties I did while 'resting' was fiddle around with the Snail's Trails threading and see if I could understand the weave structure better and get something closer to what I wanted.  It took a while, and it's nothing spectacular, but I was able to push, pull and prod it into something that I can weave and gained a greater understanding of how the weave structure works.

This is now in the queue for the warp after the one I just threaded.  Unless I decide the design is too 'static' (which it is) and I want to mess with it further.  Which may well happen.  Weaving drafts are not writ in stone and have Fiberworks, can edit.  OTOH, it's fine.  It's 'classic' with a 'rose' counter changing evenly and it feels very, I don't know, traditional?  And there is nothing wrong with a little tradition.

It is a rather warm autumn day - far warmer than 'normal' - but given Doug is trying to get the new screen door installed, having a nice warm day is a bonus since the back door has been standing open for a while.  We are trying to get a few maintenance things done before winter sets in, and in addition to Life continuing to lob curve balls at us, it's taken a bit longer than expected to get everything done.  So this milder weather, while concerning, is quite pleasant.

It is still early enough in the day I'm hoping to get the warp sleyed and tied on, then wind bobbins, and then, who knows, set up the laptop so I can begin weaving tomorrow.  One more day of 'rest' will not go amiss, I'm sure.  But I'm eager to see how the Snail's Trails and Cat's Paws weaves up in this weave structure, so I'm looking forward to beginning tomorrow.

Mulling Things Over

draft for next towel warp

The current warp is nearing completion and it is time to begin organizing the next warp in the queue.

Drawing upon the Ars Textrina information provided by Patricia Hilts, I selected a twill block design, tinkering with it to be suitable for a tea towel.

Over several days I revisted the draft, editing it, tweaking it here and there until I had something I thought would work.

But.

It was 'too long' for a tea towel.  Not really, but longer than most people would find comfortable to use.  But not really suitable for a table runner.

So I parked the idea firmly on the back burner and let it simmer while I looked at it from several angles - so to speak.

In the end I decided it really was going to be too long and last night edited the draft one more time making a minor change that shortened the draft by about 2 inches, bringing it much closer to a standard tea towel size.

Now my tea towels are not all the exact same size.  I do have to make allowances for size of motif, how big a repeat is and so on, but they do tend to stay withing a range.  This draft now does that.

When I finished weaving for the day yesterday I took a look at how much warp is left on the beam.  I still have a hard time judging how much is left on the tiny warp beam of the Megado although I am beginning to get a sense of it.  So I think that maybe there might be enough warp for three more towels, but if there is only enough for two, I'm good with that.

If there is only enough for two, I should be able to cut this warp off the loom today and begin setting the loom up tomorrow for the above project.

Just as an aside...the original draft put the bulk of the warp yarns on shafts 5-12.  Since most of the heddles on the Megado were put onto the first four shafts, I did a shaft shuffle and changed the threads around so that they were placed on the shafts with the most heddles.  In the end I ran out of heddles on one of the shafts and had to tie on more.  But that sort of thing isn't a big problem, just a little annoyance that I know how to overcome.

And now I will begin working on the warp after this one.  I have been eyeing a mid-range blue, thinking about Delft pottery...

Weaving Drafts

What new weavers don't always understand is that a weaving draft is just a set of possibilities.  The draft shows how a loom can be set up with a threading progression (in this case point over 16 shafts) and then how the shafts can be combined in a particular sequence to achieve a motif.

That's it.

The draft does not contain any information about what threads to use, how dense they should be used, or the colours.  There is no information about dimensions of a textile because a draft isn't about a particular textile, it's about a weave structure.  How the threads move through the cloth.

A few years ago (quite a few now) I looked at the threading for a pattern/design referred to as Swedish Snowflake in North America.  Then I condensed it so that something similar could be woven on four shafts (and brazenly called it Canadian Snowflake).

The motif isn't as 'strong' or obvious as the 8 shaft version, but it allows people with only four shafts to do something complex.

Yes, I still offer the Canadian Snowflake draft but it comes without any information on yarn to use, epi/ppi, or colours.  Because that isn't the point.  The point was - is - to just provide the set up that can result in the snowflake motif for four shafts.  (email me if you want the draft - I send it as a Word file.)

One of the reasons I like having 16 shafts is for the flexibility one has.  With a point progression over 16 (or 20 or 36 etc) shafts, a multitude of 'fancy' twills can be woven.  There is even a book that has documented a number of drafts for 16 and a few for 20 shafts. 

Called "16 Harness Patterns; the fanciest twills of all" taken from the weaving notebooks of Fred A. Pennington, written and compiled by Irene K Wood, I bought it when it first came out in 1984.

I also have the book by Oelsner, which is a similar compendium of drafts, many on straight or point progressions for various numbers of shafts and treadles.  The scale motif comes from Oelsner's book.

Patricia Hilts work on the weaving manuscripts from the 1700s (I think) is also a favoured resource of mine.

These resources are available for anyone to use.  Weaving drafts cannot be copyright protected, only the specifics of what you do with them - so a particular combination of threads, colours, to make a specific cloth and published. 

A new weaver won't have the experience to know enough about yarns to make choices on their own, necessarily, so they rely on published patterns.  Or they do as others do - weave a LOT of samples, examine them, learn what happens when they do x, y, z. 

In the 21c we have many resources literally at our fingertips.  We can dip into on line resources.  We can take on line classes.  We can participate in weave-a-longs or now Zoom guild meetings.

The other night I had my first Zoom meeting with three weavers who live in TN, one in NC and moi, up here in BC. 

When you think about it, we live in pretty amazing times.  How much has changed since I first picked up a shuttle in 1975, since I chose to become a weaver. 

Weaving can be a life long journey into discovering how the craft works, or an expression of ones creativity or however one may want to practice the craft.

Percolating

Now that company has gone and I'm back to thinking about what I want to be weaving, and because the current warp is well underway, it is time to start thinking about the next warp.

There are two boxes of pirns filled with two shades of beige so it seems time to do another beige warp.  This time, instead of skewing to peach, I will add some pale yellow to the blend.  Since I hadn't put away the tubes from the last beige warp, I began by pulling some of the tubes out of the previous warp to see how many I had and what I might add to the rest of the pile I pulled yesterday (not shown).

My last beige warp had mostly that coppery brown linen as weft, but this time the weft is also beige so I'm looking to have a more subtle effect happening.  The other yarns that will be used range from a very pale beige through several shades plus a little yellow, then fill in from the pile on the floor until I get a total of 32 tubes (my epi).

There is still some linen left but I need to empty these pirns.  I have actually done a pretty good job of getting the yarn on the pirns woven - there are now two  boxes filled with the empty pirns.  I was hoping that if I teach at the Sunshine Coast I could drive and deliver the pirns to the buyer of the pirn winder.  Still no word on that and with their new policies I may not hear until the cut off date which is just one month prior to class starting.  So, just in case, I'd like to empty as many pirns as I possibly can.  Which will also free up a shelf in the storage room.

Once I've decided on which yarns I'm going to use I'll start thumbing through Ars Textrina (Max Ziegler's pattern book, translated by Pat Hilts) which I use for inspiration.  Many of the drafts are written for 12 shafts with a 'key' to change them to 16.  I tend to look at the 12 shaft drafts, then fiddle with them to create a draft that is similar but easier (for me) to thread.  I can expand the drafts included or re-arrange them, or manipulate them to make borders, etc.  By starting with something that already exists, I can fast track getting a design that I want to use.

We stand on the shoulders of giants...

Tricky Twills

Most weavers have experienced the phenomenon of having the outside ends of their warp 'fall out' of the cloth when they reverse the direction of a twill.  It is the reason so many weavers recommend that a floating selvedge be used for twills.

Since I don't like using floating selvedges, I try to find work arounds.  For example, instead of using a large 'goose eye' draft, I will break the twill sequence and use what is sometimes called a herringbone or Dornick twill.

On the current warp, I designed a towel that has a twill diagonal going one direction at one selvedge and the other direction at the other.  The central motif is bracketed with \ and / at the selvedge.   For the majority of the towel, all is well - both selvedges weave as they are meant to.  But I also changed the twill direction in the hems, so when I get to the end of the towel, the change in the twill direction causes the two selvedge ends to drop out.  This is at pick 1140 of the treadling (I generate the entire treadling for one towel).  When I get to pick 1140, I stop, cut the weft off and then enter the shuttle from the other direction, which then brings the selvedge ends back into the cloth.

When that towel is done, I have programmed a lag that is empty and when that lag comes along, it is a visual/physical cue to stop, add a cut line in a different colour so that when the web comes off the loom it is an easy task to separate each towel and serge the raw edges for wet finishing.

The one pick of cut line automagically brings the shuttle back to the other side of the cloth and the towel weaves as it is meant to do with the shuttle catching the outside ends - until I hit pick 1140 when I cut off and insert from the other side of the cloth.  (Yes, I tuck the ends back into the selvedge of both ends.)

The treadling sequence is too long to 'capture' or I would share it here.

However, here is the threading draft showing 1.5 treadling repeats.  I ended on the half repeat to balance the motif.

Yes, there are areas in the treadling where the outside ends are not captured.  They equal 5 picks.  With a textile being woven at 32 ppi, I do not consider this 5 pick float to be detrimental to the textile and it's intended function.  YMMV.  If it was truly an issue, I'd change the tie up to add more plain weave to the mix and shorten the floats/skips.

This is a 16 shaft 'fancy' twill, the motif was taken from an Ars Textrina article about 17th century 'gebrochene' twills, modified to fit my towel format.  Thank you to Pat Hilts for providing the article to the publication.

Flowers in November

After the weekly errand run with my mom I came home and finished threading the warp and sleyed it at 24 epi (with the doubled ends counting as 'one').

This is the very beginning of the weaving. I keep left over weft on bobbins to use for headers, cut lines, testing colours and so on, so I began with the natural singles 20. It was difficult to see the pattern to check for oopsies so I switched to the red singles 20. Thankfully there were no threading or sleying errors, so I was able to begin weaving.

While threading, I continued to mull over my plan of using the white singles for weft, and after comparing it to the singles 20 noting that the white was much finer than the singles 20 (in spite of being labelled singles 12, both on the cone and the invoice) decided that I had to double it. Especially for the floral motif. So I dragged out my trusty doubling stand.

The resulting fabric is open and not suitable for towels, but the length of the floats would rule out use as towel fabric anyway. It would, however, make really nice fabric for a window covering. It's light enough and open enough that it would not block out the light entirely, but would provide sufficient privacy.

Once again I'm weaving this fabric up-side-down in terms of which side will be used for the face. No real reason except that I used the draft as given, which was probably written for a counter balanced or countra marche loom.

The draft is taken from the monograph done by Pat Hilts for Ars Textrina. She translated two old German weaving books of patterns. Many of the patterns are similar to Irene Woods monograph The Fanciest Twills, another book I often peruse for ideas. A third resource is Olesner's book.

Yes, I could draft these patterns from scratch, but when I have a concept of what I want, I will sometimes flip through these old books until I see something close to what I want. Sometimes I find precisely what I want, in which case I give a nod to the resource, thanking them for not having to spend a couple of hours at the computer clicking the mouse. :)

Sometimes I take their draft as a starting point and adapt it to my vision. In this instance, I was just looking for something to weave for the Seattle Guild newsletter, and somehow weaving flowers in deary November seemed very appealing.

PS - while winding a bobbin, the cone on the top of the doubling stand had a break in the thread and I lost the end. The yarn is so fine it's difficult to see, and finding the broken end proved fruitless. Inspiration struck, and I grabbed the lint roller, rolling it around the cone in the direction the yarn was winding off the cone. It only took a swipe 1/4 of the way around the cone for the broken end to be caught on the sticky roller, saving minutes - possibly quite a few minutes - not to mention the frustration. :D