A Thread Runs Through It

I am not averse to taking inspiration from others and have a library of resources to draw from.  That doesn't mean I can't or don't come up with something out of my own brain, just that sometimes it is faster to thumb through a book or something until I find something that looks pleasing to me, then tweak it to my own purposes.

A weaving draft is not a set-in-stone kind of thing, but more of a concept drawing.  How one applies that, the colours one chooses, the density, the fibres...all will make my interpretation of a draft quite different from someone else's.

I have also been working with another weaver, working up her concept into finished cloth.  Last week she sent me a draft that she had gotten from another weaver, tweaked to her purposes, which I then crunched to make it work for the specific requirements of her project.

When I thought about the yarns I had pulled for another tea towel warp, I looked at the draft I'd been working with - a four shaft overshot profile draft, and thought...hmm.

Then I tweaked it to become a twill block (turned twill) weave structure and adjusted the blocks to fit my intended warp width/length.

Creativity is not completely individual insofar as we take in our surroundings, get input from others, from books, magazines, on-line resources.  It is how we apply those resources to our own requirements.

Nature is a wonderful resource, full of inspiration.  One of the things I am missing this year is the drive through the Rocky Mountains.  The lines in the sides of the mountains can look like fancy twills.  The vegetation can be texture.  The colours change with the seasons, sometimes in surprising ways.  The drive gives me ample time to just drink it all in, especially if I'm doing the drive on my own.

But not this year. 

Hopefully things will be better next year.

In the meantime, there is the internet.  There is working with other weavers.  

The Best Part

I enjoy weaving on multiple levels.  I enjoy the physical activity of sitting at the loom, throwing the shuttle, beating the weft into place.

But I also find the intellectual work of trying to figure out how to make the threads move through the fabric stimulating. 

So when I'm at the loom and things are going well and only surface attention is required, I will frequently mull over up-coming warps.

Right now I have 20 yards (give or take) of warp on the loom with three towels woven...with about another 8 or 9 days of weaving before that warp comes off. 

I also have at least three bins with planned warps waiting.  Two of them already have their drafts ready to go.  The third one I'm still letting simmer.  A fourth is percolating in part because of the draft I want to use and what I have available which may - or may not - be suitable.

In order to get a good fit between draft and planned warp you have to have the right combination of things and I'm not sure I have a good fit left in my steadily reducing stash of 2/16 cotton.

I also have some more linen (thanks to a friend giving me more linen just as I was finishing off my stash!  Um, thanks?)

So I may wind up using the linen for weft on that one, but given about two weeks per warp, I'm still several weeks away from needing to crunch that one while I deal with the ones that are ready to go.

Here is a glimpse at what I work on:  The draft has been turned so that instead of 16 shafts only 8 are needed.  But 16 treadles are required, so suitable for a loom with levers or a dobby.  The stripes are now weft wise instead of warp wise, but yes, it is possible to weave on fewer shafts. 

Precision

photo showing a red and beige fabric that represents plain weave as the design

Weaving is the kind of craft where on the one hand there is a great deal of precision, and on the other, not so much.

We can, with some effort, be quite precise in our math, in our physical skills, in our choices for density and weave structure.

The above photo shows a fun design woven in 1:3:3:1 twill over 16 shafts.  The overall effect is to represent a plain weave structure.  But that design is faux.  It is a visual pun, so to speak.

The effect relies on having a near perfect beat and a near perfect ppi.  The photo was taken with the cloth on the loom so the twill line is slightly steep.  After wet finishing the twill line is near perfect, which enhances the effect of showing a plain weave structure as the design in the cloth.

Part of the difficulty with the written word and attempting to share information of a technical nature is that there are so many things that can go wrong.  The choice of yarns might not be optimal.  For this effect to work, the yarns should be smooth.  There should be contrast between the warp and weft to enhance the effect.  In this warp a variety of colours were used, close in value and hue.  (2/20 mercerized cotton)  The weft was a single linen in a pale beige.  The effect would be muted if the warp and weft were the same value.

When it comes to someone else weaving this cloth, they may have a different loom, different choices for yarn, different ability to assess the density that might be required and achieve a consistent beat.

They might weave under a different degree of tension and more - or less - force in their beat.

They might be trying to achieve a 'perfect' twill line in the loom under tension instead of a 'perfect' twill line after wet finishing.

They might not understand that the yarns will behave differently in the wet finishing - the cotton will shrink more than the linen.

So while I can document what I do, I can share that documentation, someone else reading what I have done is making certain assumptions.  They are assuming that they and I have the same skills, the same loom, the same quality of yarns.  And none of that might be true.  In the end, their results, their experience, may well differ.

We all see the world through the lens of our experience.  What is true for me may not be true for someone else.  This is the reality bubble we each live in.

When an experienced weaver tells a new weaver to sample?  We are not being unhelpful.  We are telling the new weaver that they need to do their work.  Because change one thing and everything can change...    Any technical information I share is only ever a starting place for another weaver.

Draft taken from The Fanciest Twills of All  by Irene K. Wood

Interlacements/Angle

Someone asked about interlacements and how one would go about changing that ratio.

I managed to get one towel woven yesterday with the finer green linen.  The camera has washed out the colours a bit, it actually looks more interesting than this, but the point of the photo is the twill angle.

If the linen had been a single 16s, 32 epi would have been good for it in the following tie-up:  (with the first number being lifted, the next number the number of shafts left down, etc.)

1:3:1:3:2:2:3:1 or some variation of that.  The lift would have been unequal, putting more warp on the surface of one side of the cloth, more weft on the other.  Only by one shaft, but surprisingly, it does make a difference.

However, the green is much finer, probably closer to a single 20s and the sample I wove was packing in more than 32 ppi.

I changed the tie up to something like:

1:3:2:2:3:1:1:1:1:1

This creates an equal shed with 8 shafts lifted for each pick.

In the end I rearranged the tie up one more time to change where in the treadling sequence the plain weave appeared but what I've given above is where I started.

It took a few inches to gain a feel for how much to 'beat' the weft in (not much, more of a 'place')  but by the end of the towel I had a pretty good angle.  The photo above was taken with the tension off the warp, but the cotton is going to shrink more than the linen, so there is a good chance the cloth after wet finishing is going to change the ratio and be slightly lower than 45 degrees.

They won't hit 'perfect' but they will work just fine as the tea towels they are intended to be.

If only four shafts are available, it is possible to change the density of the cloth and the interlacements by weaving plain weave alternately with twill using the same weft yarn.  It will change the appearance of the cloth so a sample would have to be woven to make sure it would be suitable.

So it might be something like this:  (indicating which shafts are being lifted)

1, 2
1, 3
2, 3
2, 4
3, 4
1, 3
1, 4
2, 4

The twill angle will be steeper, except if the weft is much finer than the warp it will beat in more closely and might then become more 'balanced'.

Again, only a sample will show for sure.