Began with 5.5 yards of warp (that's the max length of my warping board), ended up with 4 yards, 30" total length, so that's 24" of loom waste. The finished piece averages about 32" wide.
Yarns: All of the dark brown weft is alpaca that I spun myself. This is about two pounds-worth. I learned that I don't really like spinning, and have just sold my spinning wheel, so I'll be forced to do the medieval thing and actually buy my yarn henceforth.
The blue warp is also alpaca, but commercial. The orange warp is handspun, but sheep, and not by me…it was a present from someone who went to Ireland. The taupe warp and weft is mystery wool that was a present, so was the rose warp. The light gray weft at the top of this picture is more mystery wool, gifted by Mairi Ceilidh just at Midsummer Revel. I have a lot more of that, and it was a pleasure to work with.
All of the warp yarns are pretty thick…DK weight at least, running to worsted weight. I have them set at a bit more than 6 epi (the reed is 6, but I skipped a slot every inch). These gaps were very apparent in the weaving, but not so much now that it's wet-finished.
The warp yarns are mostly thinner. I started with an unplied version of the taupe, a sport weight, but my spinning and MC's yarn are definitely mostly fingering weight. Mostly…did I say I didn't much like spinning? All you people who ask me, "Greet, is there anything you can't do?" Now we know.
AFTER WET FINISHING
Damp dimensions: 8" short of 5 yards, but still averaging 32". Lost two inches to finishing.
I chose to "full" my piece in the bathtub. I wanted as much control over it as I could get, but I also wanted to lock the fibers in warp and weft together, to protect the structure.
Here's what that looks like:
(yes, those are my feet)
Dirty, huh? My books tell me that cloth not yet wet-finished is called "gray cloth", because it's dirty from the weaving process. I don't think that my own weaving process made the cloth dirty…I think that all this grime is from the alpaca fleece I spun – all the dark brown yarn is naturally colored, from an animal called Midnight who lives outside Pensacola.
What I did: I put a few inches of the hottest water my tub produces (probably right under 140 degrees, given that it has about 40' to travel from the hot water heater), and per instructions from Dixon, added a good lather of "mild detergent". (I used cheap shampoo, because the alkali is pretty low and my ordinary laundering of wool responds well to shampoo.) In went the dry fabric, I scrunched it up so that it wouldn't be folded, and stick together accidentally, and then walked on it. I walked on it for about ten minutes, scrunching and unscrunching it to get all the bits abused evenly, and it was in the water for about twenty, while I fooled around with taking pictures and figuring out what to do next. Rinsed with same temp (pure hot, administered with handheld showerhead), and squeezed it out gently with my feet.
Apparently there's a piece of equipment, a slatted roller, that you can use to roll your delicate, heavy, sopping wet wool textile on. I don't have one of those, didn't even read ahead to find out about it. But I had a couple of FedEx tubes and lots of towels. Wrapped a couple of towels around the FedEx tube, and rolled the whole thing up and stashed it in the spare shower overnight.
This morning it was much drier (though the FedEx tube was mush…I have an idea on how to make an inexpensive slatted roller out of chicken wire, still to be used with towels) but still dampish on the inside end. I laid it out flat, took the top picture, and re-rolled it with a fresh tube+towel. Which looks like this:
That's actually the starting end of the weaving, which apparently has a header. (Haven't really seen or thought about it in two years, so I am not sure what I had in mind, there. Probably blindly following instructions.) I'm going to leave it in, because this piece has so many beginner's lessons for demonstration.
Other (ahem) design features:
I didn't warp selvedges…have you ever noticed in yardage that the warp threads are generally much closer together, which gives the selvedge a different appearance? Often the weave structure changes to tabby at the edge to be firmer. These selvedges are like the rest of the fabric.
Minimal puckering at the centerfold! Very proud of this, for the following reasons:
This textile was produced with a weaving technique called "doubleweave"…which is a tricksy way to produce cloth wider than the loom. You need twice as many shafts as the cloth weave structure calls for…i.e. for tabby, you need two sheds, so on a jack loom, that's four shafts. Doubleweave can be two layers of unconnected fabric, a tube, or open on one side and folded on the other. That's what this is….so when I took it off the loom, I opened it up and had wide fabric. Except for where I messed up. Look at this:
This is immediately off the loom. See where it's not unfolded? That's where an error "sewed" the two layers together. I did this error twice within a few inches at a demo. I fixed them by cutting the warp thread at the open side, pulling those threads out, and then darning them back in with a needle at this point. Because this cloth is made from large-gauge stuff, and the weave was simple tabby, it was easy to fix.
Close up of the errors. See the lighter stripes, where threads are missing? That's where I've pulled the wrong weft out already. You can see how securely the wrong weft "sews" the fabric together. Of course this function can be used for design, too…I've seen doubleweave projects where the weaver stuffed batting in a bunch of channels as the fabric was being produced…not sure how you wet-finish that sort of thing.
Maintaining straight edges while weaving is tough – there's a gadget called a &quo
t;temple" that helps, though I haven't made/got one. I was warned by the books to expect some tension strangeness at the fold if I couldn't keep that edge smooth…so minimal puckering means I'm doing a good job with the edges. Good job = not pulling my weft too tight (more common) or too loose.
t;temple" that helps, though I haven't made/got one. I was warned by the books to expect some tension strangeness at the fold if I couldn't keep that edge smooth…so minimal puckering means I'm doing a good job with the edges. Good job = not pulling my weft too tight (more common) or too loose.
I tried while rerolling the piece this morning to yank it about a bit, and carefully lined up the edges to stack with themselves – if you're familar with blocking knitting, you understand this phenomenon. You have the power with wet wool to affect its final shape in blocking – a bit of fine tuning on shape is possible, even desired, for geometric shapes like straight lines.
So. It's finishing drying, and I think its character is pretty well set. The drape is fantastic…a function of the loose weave. I like the long fringe, even though I know it will get raggedy with use. The color is too wild and contemporary in its changes to be clothing, and I'd be concerned about the unravel factor, so I think this will be a light blanket, to be folded diagonally and worn as a big cuddly shawl. It's light, soft, and will be easy to pin through with my penannular brooch.
After it's dry, I'll machine zigzag twice in the middle of the length to secure the weave for cutting, and then cut between the zigzags. I'll handsew the selvedges together, and then handturn down a hem. Maybe this is a good time to learn that herringbone stitch…this project is sort of a Frankenproject, showing off all its construction aspects proudly. I figure between this and my North Sea woolly dress, I should be set for warm things for Pennsic.
Dixon, Anne. The Handweaver's Pattern Directory: Over 600 weaves for four-shaft looms. Interweave Press, 2007.
This looks good! What kind of loom do you have? I am suspicious of temples – I haven’t tried using one either.