50 Shades of Grey....Wool

I've never used Kauni wool yarn as a warp before, so after the tencel disaster, I thought I'd go back to the tried and true. Since I can't draft a color changing yarn, I was interested to see how this would work. I threaded birds eye sett at 10 epi. I used the Zebra color scheme, which is, as it sounds, varying shades of white and black. The yarn never goes to a true white or black; it is heathered. I was hoping that I'd get solid areas of color that accentuate the pattern and other areas of blended color that mute the pattern. That way I'd end up with 50 shade of grey. 

It's funny, I always seem to lose my place, in treadling, when weaving simple patterns. I can't tell you how many times I had to unweave to get the pattern right again.

Overall, it had the effect I was going for. I had to use a very light beat to keep the fabric from being totally warp faced. Now I'll twist the fringe and wet finish it. I'm hoping the diamonds will pucker a bit during fulling to add some more texture.

I had a bit of warp left so I tried plain weave for about 10 inches with 3/2 black cotton as weft.....

I like this effect much better. The sample looks a bit like snakeskin. 

My next experiment with color will be to use the same yarn for warp and weft. I just got this in the mail.....

So stay tuned for some crazy colors. I'll have to wait a bit for the color experimentation, as I've got a lot of pillow fronts to weave. I'm threading 200+ ends of 3/2 cotton for some large scale summer & winter. Should make gorgeous pillows.

A side note, I may soon be the owner of a 12 shaft 48" Macomber loom. If this comes to fruition, I'm not sure my brain can handle it! I'm just now beginning to see the intricacy that is possible on a 4 shaft loom. I'm trying not to get too carried away, but I'll admit, I've already drafted several patterns for this, hopefully, new loom. My head is just swimming with ideas. 

Happy Weaving!

Tencel, Take 2

So, it took me a few hours, but the loom is now re-threaded and my back is warped ;)

          Re-threading in progress

Before I re-threaded, I tightened up my loom. Thankfully, there were no threading errors. 

I sleyed at 20 epi again, and started weaving 2/2 twill. At 5 inches, I did 3 picks of plain weave, then reversed the twill for 12 picks. Then I did 3 more of plain weave. It resulted in a nice textural change and broke up the monotony of the the twill in white. I threw in a section of blue. 

I seem to have eliminated the draw-in somewhat, but I am still breaking the right hand side floating selvedge thread about every 4 inches. Now I'm thinking that it's not the Tencel but that this loom needs a good tune up. 

Happy Weaving!

Overshot in Tencel - An Epic Fail :(

As I work my way through my list of things to weave this winter, I've come to Tencel. I've never used it before. When I began warping, I loved the feel. So soft and light and shiny. When threading I was amazed at how easy it was! The Tencel is very smooth and very strong. I thought threading pearl cotton or linen was easy, but Tencel makes it a breeze. 

I used 8/2 Tencel in natural for warp sett at 20 epi, or 2 threads per dent in my 10 dent reed. 

I used the pattern Wreath Rose from Estes' Original Miniature Patterns For Handweaving, Part II. Here is my draft.....

Threading in progress, 1/2 way done...

Fixing a threading error :(........

Here is 16/2 Bockens Linen as pattern weft with the Tencel as tabby....

Nice, but the linen isn't thick enough. 

Next up, 5/2 pearl cotton in purple.

Still not completely happy with the 5/2, I then tried 3/2 in black.....

I like the look better. The 5/2 sample is woven more to square than the 3/2 but I'm hoping that it will even out when off the loom and after wet finishing....if it ever makes it off the loom. 

Fast forward a bit and my warp threads are breaking like crazy. 

I think there is too much draw in at the fell, but I don't have a temple that small so I'll try to make one. 

Fast forward another day, and I've given up on the overshot for now. My homemade temple just didn't work right. I'll re-thread in a straight draw and see if I have better luck with a 2/2 twill. 

Happy Weaving!

Deviating From The Pattern

I've been wanting to try the Fulled Wool Scarf project from Weaving Today for a while now and just never got around to it. The pattern is by Madelyn van der Hoogt.

I didn't have enough wool for warp, so I warped with 3/2 pearl cotton at 10 epi. Here is the initial sampling using various wefts...

I ended up using 3/2 cotton in a silvery grey as weft. 

For the next scarf, I changed the tie up and treadling and got a herringbone type pattern. I used linen for weft.  The pattern was a bit squished so I added a tabby pick after each pattern pick.....

Using the tabby really makes the design pop and gives it an almost 3D look. 

I can't wait to see this one after wet finishing 😀

Happy Weaving!

Amazing Weaving Draft - Take 2

Ok, after a bit more research on crackle, I decided to try again. I used the Ralph Griswold pattern again. This time I threaded at 8/8 cotton at 10 epi and used 4 repeats of the pattern. I wove tromp as writ using 8/8 cotton as weft

Success!!!!! Sort of.

Now to add the tabby.

My 1st attempt was with the warp cotton as the tabby weft and Bernat Roving as the pattern weft. 

It looks and feels great, but now the design is skewed vertically instead of horizontally, as is was with my 1st attempt at this pattern. 

For the 2nd attempt I used 8/8 cotton for pattern weft. 

I love it!!! I'll post pics of the finished pieces soon. 

Here is little experiment I tried. I was messing around with tie ups and after about 2 inches of weaving, I saw it wasn't working and decided to start a new piece. I cut the pattern threads to see what the fabric would look like.

Apart from the weft tail hidden in there and me moving it around when I pulled the threads, it's a nice even plain weave. I always wanted to try that!

Happy Weaving!

8/2 Bamboo, tabby & twill, on a 4 shaft jack loom

I love bamboo yarn almost as much as I love cotton yarn. After years knitting and crocheting with bamboo, weaving with bamboo was the natural progression. A few months back, I wove with 8/2 bamboo on my rigid heddle loom(see previous post). I used two 10 dent heddles to get a sett of 20 epi. I was having problems with broken selvedge threads, so I cut the fabric off the loom and it has since been my favorite sample. The bamboo is light and luxurious with a fabulous drape and shine. 

Fast forward to the floor loom. After finishing a backlog of projects with different weights of cotton, it was time to revisit the bamboo. I warped the floor loom with the same colors as the rigid heddle sample, just in a different configuration. 

 Yes, I'm still warping on my dining room chairs ;)

Threading the heddles 

I wound a warp long enough for two scarves. For the stripe pattern I used 24 ends for the wide stripe, 8 ends for the thin stripe and the center stripe was 28 ends for a total of 224 ends. My 1st scarf was plain weave. 

After trying out a few inches of twill, I hem stitched the bottom of the scarf. Surprisingly, the hem stitching on this finer fabric went much faster than most of my other pieces. 

The bamboo has a tendency to slip, but for the most part, the plain weave scarf was smooth sailing. 

Onto the 2nd scarf. Since I had threaded the loom in a 1,2,3,4 straight twill, I thought I'd see how a 2/2 twill looked. I added a floating selvedge at each edge and began weaving. 

I noticed a few things right away. Because I did not change my sett of 20 epi from the tabby weaving, my ppi was way off. I tried to count it and it's somewhere near 34 or 36 ppi. I also noticed that I had to beat the weft harder for the twill. With the tabby, I sharply angled the weft and on an open shed, didn't beat, but squeezed the weft into place with the beater. With the twill I had to use more force to keep the fell straight. I also realized, that in weaving almost 6 yards of fabric, I had only broken 2 warp threads 😀

Here is a side by side picture showing the rigid heddle cloth on the right and the 4 shaft floor loom cloth on the left.

Now for some wet finishing experiments. I'll post the results soon. 

Happy Weaving!

 

Tying One On.....a new warp, that is ;)

After warping my floor loom with 254 threads, I decided I would tie on my next warp. Now I know that to some people, 254 ends is nothing, but when you have 3 kids under 10 running around, 254 might as well be 1000. 

When I got to the end of the 1st warp, I secured the rear apron bar with some scrap thread so it wouldn't pull out all my threading. I chose to cut the warp in front of the reed so I didn't have to re-sley the reed. My loom came with a 5 dent reed so I have been sleying 3 ends per dent to get 15 epi. 

As you can see, the old warp was green and white. The new warp is yellow and white. I divided the old warp into sections then tied the ends in front of the reed to secure them. Then I began knotting. 

In this picture you can see the new warp and it's cross at the left. You can also see how I isolated the 3 threads coming through each dent. This made it easier to see which thread got knotted next and also eliminated any tangles. 

To tie on a new thread, you make a small slip knot in the new warp thread. 

Then you place the old warp thread through the slip knot. 

Pull on both ends of the new warp thread. You may hear and feel a small pop which means that the knot is secure. To check, pull on the old thread and the new thread at the same time. If your knot was successful, the ends will stay tied. If your ends come apart, make a new slip knot and try again. 

Here is the knotting in progress. Since the tails were not too long, I didn't trim the knots. Actually I did trim some in the beginning, but got lazy and didn't want to trim the rest. You should really trim all the knots, especially with finer more "sticky" yarn. 

After tying all the knots, I pulled the knotted threads through the heddles. It was easier than I thought it would be, probably due in part to the fact that I used a slippery 3/2 pearl cotton. 

Finally, I tied the ends to the front apron bar and I was ready to weave. 

After weaving a header with scrap yarn, I found a small threading error. 

I followed the threads back to the heddles and found I had skipped one. I measured out a long length of the warp yarn. I attached one end to the weaving with a pin. I sleyed the other end through the reed and through the empty heddle. I attached a weight to the end of the new warp thread and let it hang off the back of the loom. After weaving a few picks, the new thread was secure and I removed the pin. 

Happy Weaving!