Wednesday, February 13, 2019

What's on my loom and what a weaving pattern looks like

Ever wonder what is generally used by handweavers to set up their looms for certain patterns? Here's what I'm working on right now. The four component parts are:

  • The chart at the top left shows what order to thread the loom through which shaft; I just keep doing that until I run out of yarns. For my current project, which is quite wide, I have over 600 individual threads.
  • The chart next to it on the top right show which shafts to tie up to which treadles.
  • The chart at the lower right tells which what order to treadle in; this one is a very easy to treadle!
  • The lower left is what the smallest unique bit of this fabric


Here's the project on the loom


I also have to know how to space the yarn; the current project is pretty thick, 18 ends per inch, but the reed I'm using only has 12 slots per inch, so every other slot has two threads in it.  I'm using odds and ends of commercial sock yarn, including a couple of full skeins, some leftover green alpaca from Paulie sweater, and some over dyed partial skeins. This is an ambitious project; I need a piece of fabric that is 30ish inches wide and at least 2 yards long after being woven and finished; to do that, my weaving software tells me I'll need  1836 yds of weft (the sock yarn) and 1512 yards of weft (Jaggerspun Zephyr merino silk).

Normally one would "sample", that is to create a test piece to see if I like the fabric it ends up being when I take it off the loom. I need this fabric by next Thursday so I skipped the sampling step and am hoping that it's not a bad decision. I've woven sock yarn at 18 EPI before so I feel confident.

I'm over a yard into the weaving now; so should have finished pictures in a few days!




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