Adventures in Doubleweave

I had a bunch of horrible acrylic yarn I wanted to get rid of so I decided to sample some doubleweave. I plan to do a very large double width wool blanket but before I invest time and money on such a large scale doubleweave project, I think a bit more practice might be in order. 

I only have a 10 dent reed so I had to use a relatively big yarn to get close to 20 epi (10 epi per layer). 

I decided to mess around a bit with color so my warp was threaded with tan as the light color and 2 different blues as the dark color. I threaded 4d,2l,3d,1l for block A and 4l,3d,2l,1d for block B. 

My treadles were tied as follows:

1- shaft 1

2- shaft 2

3- shafts 1&2

4- shaft 3

5- shaft 4

6- shafts 3&4

Doubleweave with interchanged layers 

Doubleweave with 2 separate layers 

This just plain weave (only using treadles 3&4)

The sett was WAY too tight, but I'm happy with the selvedges and I only had one skip on the bottom layer. 

Happy Weaving!

A Few More Rugs

Ok, so now that I'm off pillows, for a very long time, rugs seem to be my favorite "mode of medium" at the moment 😉

I had previously woven a rug that I called the "Heavenly Handwoven Rug". It has been at the top of my Etsy site from day 1. Revisiting the rug this many months later, I felt the design needed to be augmented a bit. 

Where I used 2 ends of 8/4 rug warp per dent in a 5 dent reed before, I decided to sley 2 ends per dent in a 10 dent reed. I then realized that I didn't have enough 8/4 in natural. I did, however, have a massive cone of 8/2 in natural. I wound two threads together and treated them as 1 end. I hope it will add texture to the fringe as well as the rug itself.

When I last wove this rug it was weft faced with no warp showing and was woven in plain weave. I'm trying to make this warp multi-purpose. I'd like to make 2 of the weft faced puffy rugs and one rug, all in cotton, woven as overshot. To accomplish this, I am threading my 4 shaft loom in a design called "Tile" by Josephine Estes. 

I tried overshot with the fuzzy yarn & it wasn't working so I just wove plain weave. I love it!

Light as a cloud!!!!

For the next rug I used grey rug wool & 16/8 mop cotton to weave the overshot. I think it's looking pretty good. 

I've got 1 more rug to finish before vacation. Looks like I'll have a lot of fringe knotting & twisting in my future 😀

Happy Weaving!

A Rug in Summer & Winter on 6 shafts

I've been wanting to weave a few rugs, but have been so indecisive with a pattern. I ultimately chose Trellis by Bertha Gray Hayes, but opted to weave it as summer & winter, using the overshot draft as a profile draft. 

I used "Overshot for Rugs" by Tom Knisley as a guide and inspiration. For his rug, he used 8/4 cotton, doubled, in a 12 dent reed. I don't have a 12 dent reed, so I sleyed 2 ends per dent in my 10 dent reed. 

I had a few sleying & threading snags along to the way which might explain why I completely forgot to weave the "twill" border to the bottom of the rug. I put twill in quotes because what would've been a 6 thread twill border, when woven in overshot, now becomes 24 threads woven in 6 blocks in a converted draft.

After weaving for a while, I also realized that I had omitted a 4 thread block. I cut the weaving, added 4 string heddles, re-threaded and resleyed. Not fun.

Here I am weaving the rug at the Mercer  Museum in Doylestown, PA as part of their Heritage Artisan Series.....

Thank you to everyone who stopped by. I had a great time and I am so grateful to the museum for this wonderful opportunity. 

My rigid heddle loom is also very happy. It hasn't seen much use since got my floor loom. I warped it so visitors could try their hand at weaving. 

This is the work of about 5 or 6 children. It was really cool to see them weaving and to see how much they liked it! I know the museum got some pictures of me with the kids and I'll post them soon. 

Back to the rug. Always one to try several patterns on one warp, rug #2 was woven with doubled 8/4 cotton in Spanish Blue with a dark heather grey rug wool for pattern weft. I inverted the treadling for the blocks, ie.: 2-1-1-2 becomes 1-2-2-1 and 4-3-3-4 becomes 3-4-4-3 and so on. 

I had a bit of warp left, so I made a sample with dukagang treadling; only using the odd numbered treadles for pattern. This would make a fabulous rug and I'll definitely do this one again. 

I hand knotted all the fringe and, voila!

I love love love this rug!!!! Here is the blue & grey (pay no attention to the treading error 😢)

Happy Weaving!

From Four to Eight Shafts

Well, I've done it. 8 months after getting my 1st floor loom; a 4 shaft 36" Leclerc Nilus, I am now the owner of an 8 shaft 40" Macomber loom. I think it dates from the late 50's or early 60's. It's in great shape for its age. I don't think it's been used in a few years, so it needed some TLC. Thank you very much to my husband who drove me 5 hours, round trip, to go pick up my loom. He thinks I'm crazy, but I think he's amused by my new obsession with "looming", as he calls it. According to him, I don't weave; I loom. 

The heddles are not in great shape. I sanded about 500 of them with super fine sandpaper to remove the rust. The rest I'll leave off to the sides for added weight. I'll get around to sanding the rest, but for now, I think 500 should do it ;)

I don't have a bench for this loom, which sits much higher than the LeClerc, so I'll be using one of my end tables temporarily. 

I struggled to decide what to weave 1st. I drafted twills, summer & winter and overshot.  I ended up going with an overshot draft, "Whig Rose on 8 Shafts" from Madelyn van der Hoogt. Her draft has two large center motifs and uses 361 ends of 10/2 cotton, 24 epi. I reduced the draft to one center motif and sleyed 218 ends of 3/2 cotton, 10 epi. 

Let's the threading commence!

Happy Weaving!

From Flip to Floor

I am now the proud owner of a Nilus Leclerc 4 shaft floor loom! The loom was part of the collection of a local farming museum, but it did not meet the criteria for the collection; being less than 60 years old. 

Here is a picture of my 15" heddle from my Flip loom laying on top of the shafts for the floor loom. The floor loom is 36" so I should be able to make some HUGE projects with doubleweave. 

I took apart the loom and shined up the wood. I took every wire heddle off the shafts then burnished the metal bars with fine steel wool and then rubbed them a drop of oil. Thanks to Steve at Twist Knitting & Spinning for giving me a few hints about the heddles. He told me to thread a blunt end needle and draw the thread through groups of heddles then tie them into bunches before removing them from the shafts. A lifesaver!

I somehow managed to sley the reed and thread the heddles. The reed that came with the loom is a 5 dent. It is huge! I'll definitely need to get some finer reeds. 

In addition to the loom, I also got all the random parts and pieces that went with it when it was donated; arm loads of stick shuttles, a basket full of bobbins, 5 boat shuttles and several skeins of hand spun linen. 

Here we go..........

Happy Weaving!