Being cooped up with a cough has had its benefits – I’ve been dragging out all the ‘someday’ projects and working on them.  One of which is this DVD that was loaned to me at July’s weaving guild meeting.

I didn’t notice until I finished watching the video that Deborah Chandler is the same author of the book that’s also been loaned to me, and that I’ve quit reading in the middle because I want to get a loom warped.  But I was kind of scared of the process.

But in the video she makes it look so easy, and confesses that warping on is her favorite part of the process because she gets to handle the yarn.  That’s easy to identify with.

The sampler that she advocates weaving as a tutorial device is also less intimidating on video.  It includes plain weave, basketweave, rib weave, 3 twills, some of which make diamond patterns, and DOUBLEWEAVING.  I emphasize this last, because it’s positively magical.  You get two layers of fabric from one warp!  There’s even a way to weave a double fabric that’s connected on one side, but open on the other, so when you cut the fabric off the loom, you can unfold the piece and have fabric up double your loom width!  AHA!  I did notice that it takes 4 harnesses to produce 2 layers of plain-weave fabric (2 x 2 harness-weaving), so you couldn’t do fancy brocades doubled, but for sails and bedsheets and sacking…this is an ANSWER.

People are always saying that looms were narrow before the flying shuttle was invented, because the width of the loom was limited to the arms reach of the weaver.  Since I’ve taken up weaving I understand this relationship very well.  I disagree that all looms must have been 18" – how standard was an inch, and I’m only 5’7", and do fine with 24" wide.  Not to mention that just because your loom is 24", doesn’t mean your output has to be that wide – you can weave ribbons on a large loom.

Let’s go back to the flying shuttle – that’s an important idea.  Go look at the site above – scroll down.  I’ll quote.

In 1733 John
            Kay patented his flying shuttle that dramatically increased the
            speed of this process. Kay placed shuttle boxes at each side of the
            loom connected by a long board, known as a shuttle race. By means
            of cords attached to a picking peg, a single weaver, using one hand,
            could cause the shuttle to be knocked back and forth across the loom
            from one shuttle box to the other. A weaver using Kay’s flying shuttle
            could produce much wider cloth at faster speeds than before.

Okay – basics.  A nice smooth shuttle fairly races across the warp threads.  If you’re not gentle when you throw the shuttle, you miss your own catching hand on the other side, and it sails off and hits the wall.

It seems to me, that the flying shuttle is a couple of boxes that you use a cord to tip.  You set the shuttle in one box, pull its cord, and it slides down and across to the other box.  After changing the shed (weaver jargon for alternating the threads necessary for the weave), and beating the shuttle’s thread into the fabric, you pull the cord for the other box, sending the shuttle back in the other direction to its first box.  This wouldn’t be hard at all to set up, and I can see how it would be much faster weaving, and allow broader fabric.

But back to the underlying question: how wide were medieval fabrics?  The answer I come up with today – is that sails and sheets and sacking could have been as wide as 48" plus or minus whatever premium you’re willing to pay a particularly long-armed weaver, or a shop that used two people.  This means piecing wider pattern parts.  And sails, and sheets, and mattress covers, curtains, etc.  The good news is that since you’re sewing selvedges,  you don’t have to protect cut edges from fraying.  But fancier weaves would’ve been limited in width, or done by shops with more than one person throwing the shuttles.