Irrepressible

showing both sides of the cloth - one side more orange, the other, not so much

close up

Finally got started weaving the warp on the AVL yesterday.  The colours aren't to my taste particularly, but I think for those people who do like soft earthy palettes, these are looking pretty good.

One thing about being an optimist - one tends to look to the future.  Sometimes far into the future.

And so another Big Project is aborning.  This project has a deadline five years in the future.  What can I say?  I'm excited.  :)   Stay tuned.

In Pursuit of Perfection

two different waffle towels

As I was nearing the end of this blue warp I started having misgivings.  I'd changed the epi from 36 to 30 because the weft I was wanting to use was somewhat thicker than what I'd used on the last 2/20 merc. warps and thought that a more open warp might work better. 

Since I had another 2/20 merc cotton warp I wanted to do (got lots of that yarn to use up for weft!) I decided to check the finished results before committing to another 30 epi warp.

Am I ever glad I did.  I'm not at all happy with my results in the waffle weave.  The woven illusion actually turned out okay - better than anticipated anyway.

I used two different weft yarns on the waffle weave towels in the photo above, and two somewhat different tie-up/treadlings.  But the different treadlings are not enough to account for the humongous difference in dimensional loss - it has to be the weft yarn.

The towel on the bottom is woven with 2/16 unmerc. cotton.  The towel on the top is woven with the singles 6 cotton that I've used elsewhere for collapse effects.  As you can see, the singles 6 has most definitely collapsed (or torqued, would be a more accurate statement).  There is a 4 inch difference in the width of the two towels and the singles 6 towel is thicker.  The twill stripes in the singles 6 towel has ruffled much more than in the 2/16 towel.

So I'm going to try this again on the beige warp, set at 36 epi and see if that reduces the dimensional loss in the singles 6 weft towels. 

Like I keep telling my student, change one thing and everything changes.  :}

Waffle Towels

I had intended to use 2/16 cotton for weft on the waffle towels, but in my digging in the store room uncovered some of the singles 6 cotton I have.

The yarn was sent as an error as part of a large order of 2/8 cotton directly from one of the few spinning mills left in Canada a number of years ago. I don't even know if they are still in business.

Anyway, I rather suspect the 3 fifty pound cases of singles 6 they sent me were intended to be plied as the yarn has rather a lot of twist energy in it. As a result, in the right circumstances, the yarn will torque during wet finishing and 'collapse'. This twist energy actually works quite well in waffle weave which, as a weave structure, 'collapses'.

We returned two of the cases but since I was already exploring collapse effects, I kept one of them. I forget about it because I don't use it very often and it gets buried to be unearthed from time to time as I attempt to reduce my stash. :}

To make things easier for myself I weave a cut line into the cloth so that when it is cut from the loom it's as easy matter to cut them apart for serging. I program an empty pick into my liftplan to alert me when to insert the cut line picks.

The areas of waffle are separated by areas of twill. The hems are the same twill. Once the cloth is wet finished the twill stripes mirror the shrinkage rate of the hems and it all becomes a design element.

And no, these towels won't get a hard press although the ones with the linen for weft will.

Seein' Red

Someone asked on Weavolution (I think it was) if people had a favourite weave structure or pattern that they keep coming back to. The above is one of mine. It's done on a 16 shaft point twill progression and is easy-peasy to weave with a dobby. It doesn't look it's best as it is on the loom under tension, but once wet finished the design resolves nicely into an illusion of plain weave. The bottom of the cloth shows the hem area which I'm not thrilled with, so I just finished re-tooling the hem into a broken 1/3 twill which will provide a nearly solid red hem for the face of the fabric and provide a nice border, I think.



And here is the waffle weave after wet finishing. I got enough woven that I could cut the cloth at the cloth storage beam and wet finish the 6 yard length of proto-type fabric plus one of the two waffle towels I wove. I am very happy with the results, although have no idea if anyone will want to buy them. But I'm happy enough with them that I think I will go back and do some more once I've finished the rather large cone of singles 12 linen I'm currently using on the woven illusion above. If there is any warp left, that is. I may be forced to do another warp just so I can weave some more of these towels? Or perhaps something else will capture my imagination.

In other news I've been working on paperwork - show applications, teaching handouts and such - and have been mulling over a one day workshop on working with colour. One group has offered to beta-test the topic, so that may join my offerings for next year. Since I haven't tooled up any new topics in quite a while, I suppose it's time?

Currently reading Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin - really liking this author - thanks to Jamie for the recommendation! It takes place during the reign of Henry II so falls nicely into place having just finished Devil's Brood by Sharon Kay Penman

Waffling Around

A couple of years ago I messed around with waffle weave for towels. (before and after samples above)

Well, I wanted to revisit the towels I designed after doing the above sampling, but it appears that when I upgraded my computer, I 'lost' a bunch of my files. I think I remember shrugging resignedly at the time thinking I would not be wanting any of the files I 'lost', knowing that I could reconfigure anything I truly needed to.

And so I came up with this:


showing the hem and the first band of twill between the waffle areas


So many people get concerned about weaving waffle weave because the plain weave hems they use to finish their towels off flare so extremely in comparison to the body of the towel. To get around this draw in discrepency, I chose to use a 2/2 twill treadled in a point progression, and then inserted bands of the same twill into the towel body.

When the waffle contracts, the bands of twill will 'collapse' so that the hems will not look out of place. The discrepency has now become a design element.

The waffle I'm using on the red warp is a bit smaller from the looks of it, plus the waffle dimples are rectangular, not square. They also change direction so I'm very interested to see how that will affect the textile after wet finishing.

And no, I haven't done a sample. This time I'm winging it and letting the final results be a surprise. Let's hope it's a happy one. :)

Waffles

A couple of days ago I mentioned in a comment (I think) that I had woven a waffle weave towel with purposefully ruffled hems. The puckering doesn't show up very well in this photo - if you look closely at the bands in between the waffle areas, you might just be able to see 'lines'. These lines are where the fabric has pinched up or down to accommodate the greater contraction of the waffle compared to the twill bands.

The towel grew out of some sampling I did (foreground) on a 2/20 merc. cotton warp. The samples to the left were woven with 2/16 unmerc. natural cotton; the samples to the right were woven with bleached white 2/20 merc. cotton.

During wet finishing, the 2/16 weft, which was woven at the same ppi as the 2/20 cotton, developed deeper dimples and felt much more towel-like so using the 2/16 I wove a towel with weft stripes of waffle and twill.

I have found this to be true for many of the fabrics that rely on the torquing of the threads to develop - Bedford cord is another - that the more densely the cloth is woven, the more the 3D aspect of the fabric will develop. Something that feels completely counter-intuitive.

The selvedges are scalloped, the twill areas pucker a la seersucker, and the hems are lightly ruffled, of course. I did not hard press this towel! :D

I have been toying with the idea of weaving a part waffle, part twill towel on the present warp, but I'm still mulling the concept over in the back of my mind as I weave the complex twills with the very fine linen weft. The nearly four pound cones are down to about 1 pound 11 ounces and I'm almost half done the 40 yard warp. Which means that by the end of the warp, I'll still likely have linen left.

My goodness but you do get a lot of play value for fine, fine yarns!!!! :O