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Mostly Weaving, with a Little Philosophy
Jan. 15th, 2008 09:31 amFinally got back into weaving over the past several days, on the small floor loom. Had a couple of glitches in the warp I had to fix first -- a few threads that were twisted around each other, preventing one from going up when it needed to (they were on separate harnesses), and one that broke. The first was mildly annoying, the second more so, as it meant I had to advance the warp, losing some of what I could have been weaving on. I'd given myself an extra yard on the warp length, but advancing nearly half that could make the weaving at the end a little more interesting than I'd like.
With some warp you can leave the knot in the playing field for a bit, but this is very heavy yarn, so the knot was getting caught in the beater. I tried moving the beater a couple of times, and broke the thread again. So, repair and advance.
Current projects are new Crane bags for me and L. Threading pattern is for 2-2 twill. Basically the weft (horizontal threads) alternates crossing over two warp threads and then under two, all the way across. The pattern is set so that as you raise and lower the different harnesses, this process gets bumped over one space, so that you create parallel diagonal lines across the fabric you're weaving. The warp shows through rather distinctively in 2-2 twill, both color-wise and texture-wise. In some weaves you don't really see the warp (called weft-face fabric), and the texture is that the lines alternate being higher and lower.
These are going to be pretty bold-looking bags, for sure. My shoulder strap is blue w/hints of purple and some of the red warp showing through, L's is red on red. For consistency the warp for the body of the bags is of the same rust red as was used for the straps. But in addition to being a 2-2 twill, I'm also using two colors for the weft, in a pattern of 2 rows of one color and one of the other. The effect is a predominance of one color alternating with diagonal stripes of the red warp, but with a hint of the other color as accent.
Now, originally the bags were only going to have two colors, and of course my life would have been much simpler. But during the move the weft yarns we'd bought went missing, and eventually we went and bought new -- and then I found the previous yarns. Which, as it turns out, were not the same as what we'd chosen before. L suggested mixing the two, and while I wouldn't do it on something made for sale (how many people would appreciate the increased difficulty and increased time spent?), for personal use I was willing to give it a go.
I wove mine first, figuring I'd work out the bugs on mine before doing L's. It might have been wiser to do it in the other order as it turns out :D My two weft yarns are close enough in tone/color that if I lost track of what I was doing, I didn't always know if I'd thrown the 1-row color once or twice. One is the same as the strap, blue w/hints of medium lavendar-purple. The other is blue with bits of green. The two blue parts blend quite nicely, thanks. L's is working out much more smoothly, as his two weft yarns are emerald/forest green, and navy.
Since one shuttle goes back and forth, it always ends up on the same side (except when you're introducing something fiddly into the pattern, which of course I did a few times), so overall one shuttle isn't much trouble. The other needs keeping track of.
Remember how the pattern moves over one, to create the diagonal? Well, the 1-row shuttle does the same thing to the number row in the pattern, as to which color is being used for that row.
It's a simple pattern:
1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.
This is how it works with two colors:
1b, 2g, 3g, 4b, 1g, 2g, 3b, 4g, 1g, 2b, 3g, 4g
So, you go through the pattern three times before the blue weft end up back in the first row of the 4-row pattern.
***
The bags have a flap closure, so I had some fun with changing patterns. On the flap I do the straight 2-color 2-2 twill for a bit, then introduce a line of mustard or ochre yarn, then a bit of the first, then another line of the mustard, then back to the first pattern.
The mustard yarn is thinner than the other weft yarns but I wanted to bulk it out to be more prominent. If I'd had two cones of the color I could have wound two parallel/twisted onto the bobbins, but I don't. So I shot the yarn across, beat it down but left the shed open, looped it around one of the end warp threads and then shot it back and beat again. _Then_ I changed the shed to the next row in the pattern.
In the band I created on the flap with the two ochre lines I'll be doing some embroidery. I'll at least put in the Awen symbol, and maybe some other things... or not. This has been a rather fluid process in some respects ;) I had toyed with weaving in a pattern, but I really don't know much about picking, so decided against it.
I continued with the original pattern over the top and down the back and bottom of the body, then changed pattern for the front. Here, I've alternated going forward 3 repetitions of the pattern and then reversing for 3 reps. This creates a zigzag going up the front of the body. Just another accent to the piece :)
***
One challenge with using more than one color is that you don't cut off the ends of the weft each time you switch - this adds unnecessary bulk and wastes time. You just leave the shuttle waiting at one end until it's time to use it again. Sort of. See, there's little loops that form on the edge, if you let them. Also, because the direction the shuttle is coming from isn't always in complete accord with what the warp wants, you can end up with an end warp thread that has no weft on it -- this will also happen in any twill pattern in which you have to reverse the pattern, like a diamond twill, for instance. One way to avoid this is to have a selvage (and edge that's even weave). Another is to have floater warp threads on either side of the weaving. I've never had much use for selvages in general, and I can't stand the floaters, so I chose a third option. I loop the shuttle over/under (whichever's needed) the end warp thread that would be passed over in the pattern, and _then_ shoot the shuttle the rest of the way across.
That takes care of the warp thread problem, but not the two weft threads problem. For them, whenever both shuttle are on the same end of the weaving, I shuffle them around each other once, to intertwine them. They help to hold each other in place this way, quite nicely. It's a slightly fussy move at first, but then you get the hang of it. And it's only necessary for some rows, not all. Sometimes I can just place the one I was just using down but forward of the other and pick the other up, and this automatically twines them, just enough.
The motion is a bit like water travelling down a stream, or the tide coming in at the shore. People who haven't really looked at water in motion probably think that streams in particular only go in one direction. But of course there are obstacles -- rocks, a curved bank, sticks and leaves. Watch water sometime, when it comes against a stone. You'll see quite a bit of it curl under, down, and backward against the flow, before it can continue on its journey further along its watery path.
***
Life is like that too. Sometimes it seems that we're going backward even when we're actually trying to go forward. An obstacle to our personal progress, be it financial, physical, spiritual, or some combination thereof, looms in the path. Perhaps, like a stream, it may be needful to rest a while in an eddy. Take time to rest, to build up strength, to study and learn, to meditate and pray. Then insight lights the way to the path around or through the obstacle, or perhaps like a leaf the obstacle is simply no longer there. Sometimes it simply isn't time to move 'forward', or whatever one's every day perception of forward may be. And eventually, you get there.
With some warp you can leave the knot in the playing field for a bit, but this is very heavy yarn, so the knot was getting caught in the beater. I tried moving the beater a couple of times, and broke the thread again. So, repair and advance.
Current projects are new Crane bags for me and L. Threading pattern is for 2-2 twill. Basically the weft (horizontal threads) alternates crossing over two warp threads and then under two, all the way across. The pattern is set so that as you raise and lower the different harnesses, this process gets bumped over one space, so that you create parallel diagonal lines across the fabric you're weaving. The warp shows through rather distinctively in 2-2 twill, both color-wise and texture-wise. In some weaves you don't really see the warp (called weft-face fabric), and the texture is that the lines alternate being higher and lower.
These are going to be pretty bold-looking bags, for sure. My shoulder strap is blue w/hints of purple and some of the red warp showing through, L's is red on red. For consistency the warp for the body of the bags is of the same rust red as was used for the straps. But in addition to being a 2-2 twill, I'm also using two colors for the weft, in a pattern of 2 rows of one color and one of the other. The effect is a predominance of one color alternating with diagonal stripes of the red warp, but with a hint of the other color as accent.
Now, originally the bags were only going to have two colors, and of course my life would have been much simpler. But during the move the weft yarns we'd bought went missing, and eventually we went and bought new -- and then I found the previous yarns. Which, as it turns out, were not the same as what we'd chosen before. L suggested mixing the two, and while I wouldn't do it on something made for sale (how many people would appreciate the increased difficulty and increased time spent?), for personal use I was willing to give it a go.
I wove mine first, figuring I'd work out the bugs on mine before doing L's. It might have been wiser to do it in the other order as it turns out :D My two weft yarns are close enough in tone/color that if I lost track of what I was doing, I didn't always know if I'd thrown the 1-row color once or twice. One is the same as the strap, blue w/hints of medium lavendar-purple. The other is blue with bits of green. The two blue parts blend quite nicely, thanks. L's is working out much more smoothly, as his two weft yarns are emerald/forest green, and navy.
Since one shuttle goes back and forth, it always ends up on the same side (except when you're introducing something fiddly into the pattern, which of course I did a few times), so overall one shuttle isn't much trouble. The other needs keeping track of.
Remember how the pattern moves over one, to create the diagonal? Well, the 1-row shuttle does the same thing to the number row in the pattern, as to which color is being used for that row.
It's a simple pattern:
1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.
This is how it works with two colors:
1b, 2g, 3g, 4b, 1g, 2g, 3b, 4g, 1g, 2b, 3g, 4g
So, you go through the pattern three times before the blue weft end up back in the first row of the 4-row pattern.
***
The bags have a flap closure, so I had some fun with changing patterns. On the flap I do the straight 2-color 2-2 twill for a bit, then introduce a line of mustard or ochre yarn, then a bit of the first, then another line of the mustard, then back to the first pattern.
The mustard yarn is thinner than the other weft yarns but I wanted to bulk it out to be more prominent. If I'd had two cones of the color I could have wound two parallel/twisted onto the bobbins, but I don't. So I shot the yarn across, beat it down but left the shed open, looped it around one of the end warp threads and then shot it back and beat again. _Then_ I changed the shed to the next row in the pattern.
In the band I created on the flap with the two ochre lines I'll be doing some embroidery. I'll at least put in the Awen symbol, and maybe some other things... or not. This has been a rather fluid process in some respects ;) I had toyed with weaving in a pattern, but I really don't know much about picking, so decided against it.
I continued with the original pattern over the top and down the back and bottom of the body, then changed pattern for the front. Here, I've alternated going forward 3 repetitions of the pattern and then reversing for 3 reps. This creates a zigzag going up the front of the body. Just another accent to the piece :)
***
One challenge with using more than one color is that you don't cut off the ends of the weft each time you switch - this adds unnecessary bulk and wastes time. You just leave the shuttle waiting at one end until it's time to use it again. Sort of. See, there's little loops that form on the edge, if you let them. Also, because the direction the shuttle is coming from isn't always in complete accord with what the warp wants, you can end up with an end warp thread that has no weft on it -- this will also happen in any twill pattern in which you have to reverse the pattern, like a diamond twill, for instance. One way to avoid this is to have a selvage (and edge that's even weave). Another is to have floater warp threads on either side of the weaving. I've never had much use for selvages in general, and I can't stand the floaters, so I chose a third option. I loop the shuttle over/under (whichever's needed) the end warp thread that would be passed over in the pattern, and _then_ shoot the shuttle the rest of the way across.
That takes care of the warp thread problem, but not the two weft threads problem. For them, whenever both shuttle are on the same end of the weaving, I shuffle them around each other once, to intertwine them. They help to hold each other in place this way, quite nicely. It's a slightly fussy move at first, but then you get the hang of it. And it's only necessary for some rows, not all. Sometimes I can just place the one I was just using down but forward of the other and pick the other up, and this automatically twines them, just enough.
The motion is a bit like water travelling down a stream, or the tide coming in at the shore. People who haven't really looked at water in motion probably think that streams in particular only go in one direction. But of course there are obstacles -- rocks, a curved bank, sticks and leaves. Watch water sometime, when it comes against a stone. You'll see quite a bit of it curl under, down, and backward against the flow, before it can continue on its journey further along its watery path.
***
Life is like that too. Sometimes it seems that we're going backward even when we're actually trying to go forward. An obstacle to our personal progress, be it financial, physical, spiritual, or some combination thereof, looms in the path. Perhaps, like a stream, it may be needful to rest a while in an eddy. Take time to rest, to build up strength, to study and learn, to meditate and pray. Then insight lights the way to the path around or through the obstacle, or perhaps like a leaf the obstacle is simply no longer there. Sometimes it simply isn't time to move 'forward', or whatever one's every day perception of forward may be. And eventually, you get there.
