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

Category: Weave Page 18 of 34

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.

Kilim Exhibit

click to enlarge

There’s been almost no progress on the Circle of Life shawl. I have been focused on warping the loom and weaving yardage for Daryl’s jacket workshop next month. The yardage is progressing, but not very exciting. So, I’m here to give you more eye candy from my trip to Turkey.

While there, I noticed a signage in the big palace across the street from our hotel. A special exhibit on 17th-19th Century Anatolian Kilims! I took one afternoon off from my friends and took my time going through the museum. It was fabulous!

You can see a few of the rugs in my photo album. I wasn’t allowed to use a flash in the museum so some of the rugs are a bit fuzzy. I used Photoshop to adjust the lighting, but that is it. I did not do any color adjustments. So yes! The colors in those rugs are just that vibrant, even after all these years!

While you are in my photo album, you can take a look at the rest of the photos from my trip to Turkey, including more photos from the Ethnography Exhibit blogged earlier. I haven’t finished processing the rest of my textile photos. Stay tuned!

Dressed!

Isn't that hand carved beater bar a thing of beauty?

10 yard warp with Jaggerspun Zephyr and handspun. 900 ends + 4 floating selvedge ends at 30 epi using a 15 dent reed. 60 of those ends were handspun. “Were” because 3 of them broke (drifted apart) while warping. I replaced them with Zephyr because I didn’t want the singles to dangle, unspin, and drift apart. Okay. I was lazy. I had wound extra Zephyr just in case, so they were handy. There was only 1 threading mistake that I found so far (the pin in the photo). Hooray!

It only took 25 hours to dress this loom. 25 hours to go from bare loom to this point. Sigh. I sure hope it gets faster as I gain more experience with this loom!

Many firsts with this one:

  • First time weaving yardage
  • First time using floating selvedge
  • First time weaving with the Fireside Loom

I’m still getting a feel of this loom. It’s so much larger than my Gilmore Gem II. I’m finding that I need to work on putting a bit more oomph when I throw the shuttle to make it all the way through (30″ width at the reed). The Bluster Bay shuttles are a bit too tall to get under my floating selvedge so I switched to my pretty Schacht one. The outside treadles are just a wee bit further than my normal seated leg span so a bit more scootching is required. I might swap out the weaving bench for my task chair that I use with the Gilmore. We’ll see.

I’m still trying to find the sweet spot on the tensioned brake so that I can advance the warp easily. Too much tension, I can’t advance it without manually loosening up the back beam. Too little tension, the warp advances by itself with every beat. I feel a bit like Goldilocks right now, except I haven’t found “just right” yet.

I will never ever warp Zephyr front to back again, especially not at this epi. The yarn is soft and fuzzed up and quickly adhered itself to its neighbors. Beaming on took a lot of patience.

The handspun single is working. I need to weave a bit more before I call it a success. The color runs are longer than I wanted them to be, but it works. You can’t see the spots of color from the handspun in the picture because I’m weaving with the wrong side of the fabric facing up. This allows me to just raise one harness instead of 4. Much easier to treadle this way, but difficult to see what you are doing. I have a hand mirror that I stick under the fabric every once in a while. That doesn’t work very well because it’s dark. And if I put the light on it, it glares and I still can’t see.

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