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!

 

8/2 Bamboo on Rigid Heddle Loom

1st off, weaving with 8/2 bamboo is possible on a rigid heddle, but I Do Not recommend it.....at least for a warp. A weft is just fine, but the yarn will not standup as a warp to the constant friction applied to a warp when using two heddles. That being said, here are the results of the experiment. 

Since I got my 1st rigid heddle loom, I always wanted it to do more. When I got a 15" Flip loom, I went straight into weaving with two heddles and double weave. I finally got the courage to order some beautiful bamboo yarn in 8/2; by far the smallest yarn I've worked with and quite intimidating I might add. 

I warped the loom with two 10 dent heddles and kept my fingers crossed that the fabric would be about 20 epi. 

I wove a header then a bit with the bamboo weft, but the weave was very loose. I realized I had to beat quite hard for the 20 epi and 20 ppi I was going for. 

Everything was going along nicely and then, the warp began to break. I made the painful decision to cut the weaving off the loom. 

The fabric is gorgeous and by far the finest sett I've been able to achieve so far on the rigid heddle. 

So, what have we learned? 

A. Do Not use fine bamboo as warp with two heddle weave; the yarn just gets shorn off by the constant friction of the two heddles. 

B. A very fine sett is possible on the rigid heddle. Next time I will try an 8/2 cotton warp with an 8/2 bamboo weft.

Happy Weaving!

A summer sunset in beautiful Bucks Co., PA