Random thoughts of a fiber enthusiast - mostly fiber related, sometimes coherent

Tag: Garment Page 3 of 4

Done

In every sense of the word.

The yardage is done. At least, it’s been woven. I stopped at about 9 yards, by my calculations. I wove a sampler with different weft colors, leftover from the original sample. I probably could have woven another 15″ or so, but I am done. I was so sick of weaving this yardage right now, I couldn’t see straight.  Apparently, I can get tired of weaving.

So for now, the yardage sits on the cloth beam for another day. I’ve poured myself a glass of wine, and am tuning in for some mindless television. I am exhausted. Done in. Done for. Just, DONE!

Progress Update

Circle of Life Shawl Progress

I’m now half way through Chart 8 (of 11). Round 195 of 223. Just shy of 70%. And yes, this is all before I start the border. Each round is taking more than an hour to complete now. I have serious doubts as to whether I’ll be able to finish this in time for SOAR.

6 yards

I have woven the minimum required yardage for the jacket workshop with Daryl Lancaster. I have 3 more yards of warp. I want to weave as much of it as I can as “backup” yardage — just in case.

31. The number of quills used in a 3.5 hour session. (That equates to about 2 yards of fabric.)

Weaving Yardage

I am keeping a notebook while I weave yardage for the jacket. I’m keeping track of time spent, amount woven, things that work and what don’t. How the handspun is (or in most cases not) holding up and why.

I auditioned nearly all the shuttles I have in the house. The Bluster Bay Swedish-Styled Shuttle won the day. The low profile allowed the shuttle to pass under my floating selvedge without any manipulation from me. All the other shuttles were just a little too tall, and skimmed over the floating selvedge threads. My Schacht Mini-Boat Shuttle came in a close second. But the open bottom dragged on my warp. Given how quickly the Zephyr and my handspun fuzzed up, I didn’t want to put any more stress than I absolutely had to.

I’ve heard complaints that the shed is small on the Fireside Looms. The shed seems perfectly adequate to me, but I have only woven on one other loom — my Gilmore Gem II. It’s possible that it has a small shed too, given that it’s a workshop loom, but it works for me. Without the floating selvedge, every single one of my boat shuttles fit through the shed with plenty of room to spare.

Here’s what the fabric looks like. The color runs are a bit longer than I originally envisioned. My dyed black is a little bit less saturated than the Zephyr Ebony, so it is still visible. And the “random” didn’t turn out to be quite so random.

I sleyed the handspun through the reeds first. I had planned on 2 handspun threads per inch, so I just pulled them randomly through the reeds, 2 per inch. Sometimes they were next to each other, sometimes several dents apart. However, when it came to threading the heddles, it seemed that most of them ended up on heddle #5. It almost became a game while I was threading the heddles. I needed something to amuse me for 900 threads! Because they were 2/dent in the reed, I could fudge a bit and move them to either 4 or 1.

So far, I’m pretty happy with how the yardage is turning out.

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