weave4fun

I spent a long time trying to figure out in my head how warp pile cloth was constructed. I knew that there were two warps, one for the ground fabric, and the second for the pile. This can be seen by pulling on a single loop in a towel. Eventually I came to a kind of idea of how this kind of fabric was woven. It turns out I was correct. I couldn't think of any other way it could be done. "To produce the pile a wire is inserted across the width of the warp into a shed formed only by the pile ends. When the pile ends are subsequently dropped into the bottom shed and interlaced with the weft they remain draped over the wires as shown at ..... (snip) ... Thus, the cross-sectional dimensions of the wire determine the height of the pile. After the insertion of a number of picks (and wires) the wire furthest away from the cloth fell is withdrawn leaving the loops which were formed over its shank as a surface feature in the cloth..."      - Watson, "Advanced Textile Desi

It took me a little while to wrap my head around this program, but now that I have it's certainly saving me a lot of time. I can throw idea out on the screen so quickly, and play about with bracketing and weft variations with the greatest of ease and not spend all that time at the pegging table cursing and weeping as I hammer out peg-plans for the Dobby. This is especially important methinx as I am attempting to combine colour and weave effects together into double weave. I am trying to go for either dots or stripes but am kinda playing with wavy patterns as well. If I use plain weave for the different faces then I can have 4 different interchanging blacks but not so much variation in shade, but if I use 4-shaft twills I can only get two interchanging blocks but get a lot more variation in shades to play with. It's a trade off really Here's some of what I've come up with so far, all on the same warp of 1 pink, 1 blue Straightway I'm noticing t

Ugh, the light in here is terrible. Poor photography, once again. A combination of poor light and the camera on my relatively cheap phone. Anyway, you still get an idea. These are the colour combinations I'm going with from the pink and blue warp. So yeah. I'm using doubleweave. Planning to use doubleweave, I should say (I'm not doing doubleweave yet. I'm sitting at the computer typing. And I don't have doubleweave on the loom at college. What I have at college is a silk warp that's probably going to get turned into a brightly coloured cord or something because I can't afford to waste any more time on it (woe betide me!)) Brackets inside brackets, now my writing is going down the drain. Ho hum, fairly happy with the combinations. I figure I can get a lot of different combinations from which to choose finals from a 2 section warp with only 2 colours in each. hmm. To do tomorrow: Lots of stuff not on the loom I'm a little behind with my CA

2 shaft Dryad Rug/Tapestry loom. Bought in the 70's, never used, stored in a garage for 30-odd years then sold to me today with the demonstration warp still on. Cleaned up and ready to go. The bearer doesn't slide, but I doubt it ever did. Anyone got any experience with these? I'm going to put up a post on weavolution later, see if anyone knows how to get this bearer moving smoothly

Lots of broken ends. Like, more than 40 in the first 5" of weaving. And mostly clustered in particular places, indicating that this is due to rough heddles or reed. I've not given up on 60's silk, but I won't spend any more college time on it as these looms aren't up to it.

1600 ends of 60nm silk at 90epi. Been at this all week. Couple of little errors, but nothing that can't be fixed once weaving is started. Just have to pay more attention and take greater care in my checking is all. Also, threading through yarn this fine is not easy. The next warp will be knotted on. Blatantly. Because the technician found a wee machine for the job, about which you will hear more later.

From the first colour sample warp.

But only a little bit. It's been mad busy over here the last few weeks, been in late every day and on saturdays too. I've finished weaving the first viscose colour sampler and got it cut up into samples. Think there must be something like over 100 samples from that warp, they're only little. Really pleased with the amount of different shades I can get from one warp colour simply by changing the structures and colours about. Going to choose my favourite shades and combinations then try mixing them together in double weave on the next viscose warp, from the previous post. While I'm thinking about that I will be continuing to work on a warp of silk as detailed below Silk 60's, 16 shafts in eight shaft blocks of about 1.5" each. 1600 ends at 90epi, sleyed 4 ends in a 42 reed (scottish system) I've been at the threading for a little while now and it's starting to do my brain in, but I'm nearly through. Should get it finished tomorrow afternoon, then

So delicious and sugary. Sadly this warp was rather slack down the side. Rubbish.

You know It's winter when this falls onto your warp. That was clue #1, clue #2 was the fact that it was f****g freezing last night when I was walking the dog

I've been obsessively weaving these big massive samples when I don't need to do so. It's been pointed out to me by my tutor (for the second or third time, but I'm too stubborn to listen to anything the first time because I always think I'm the first person that was ever correct) that I should be concentrating more on variety in colour and weaving more smaller samples on one warp than what I am doing now. Basically I'm making work for myself and it isn't necessarily going to be that helpful at the end of the day. This is probably the most important part of the design process, taking feedback and allowing others to challenge your preconceived notions. It's probably the only way anyone ever moves forward artistically or philosophically. If we don't allow ourselves to be changed by others then we stagnate and drop out of creative life or else become an obstacle in the way of those who wish to change things for the better. So I've changed my appro

And though my selvedges aren't much better, I haven't had to retie a single selvedge thread in 2 full days of weaving that included much cursing as the shuttle kept attempting to break orbit. This I think is being caused by the fact that the upper shed is pulling the lower up just a wee bit on the right hand side. It wasn't an issue with the last pegging plan I was using, but it is now. I'd spend more time adjusting the levels but it's impossible to get anything just so as the shafts are held up by ancient cotton string that's all ragged and every shaft is different. I'm considering requesting that the uni invest in Texsolv to tie up the shafts on the George wood looms. What do y'all think?

Here's an interesting thing. So those of you who use blogger.com to throw portions of your brain at the internet may have noticed that they've changed their layout and suchlike for the account settings page. I hadn't of course because I'm a bit slow and I've also posted all my recent blog posts (the ones that are basically a photo and caption) from my phone, which is a very convenient way of throwing images at the web but not much use for writing long screeds of text because of it's tiny little keyboard. I plan to buy a bluetooth keyboard for the thing sometime in the future when I have some money, but don't hold your breath, that day may never come. Anyhoo, that's enough rambling introduction. Here's the thing I noticed. They have statistics on the main page. And mine are fairly expected, it's hardly a high-traffic blog, I don't promote it anywhere and I rarely comment on other people's blogs (and that's where most of my visito

After building up a selection of colours I'm happy with, I then decide to myself it's a lovely idea to test these colours in various warp and weft combinations and weave structures. This warp is the pinks and the blues which together make up my first colourway. I am threading them in a block draft on 12 shafts, in 3 4-shaft blocks. Primarily I intend to combine various 4 shaft twills, but will also experiment with other combinations of 4 shaft weaves, such as hopsack or honeycomb, bearing in mind that I have no intention of resleying as I am being economical with my time. Which brings me to the other thing. Depending on time factors this will be the first of either 3, 6 or 9 identical warps, the next being tied onto the last in much the same manner as Blossom ( The Weaving Monk ) does in production. I expect this to save me about 8 hours of labour for each warp. Spread that out over 6 warps and its an entire working week.

Yes, definitely worth the effort.

It's finished now, see what you think. It has just the.most wonderful handle and drape. I can't believe I've never woven with fine silk before. All the extra work is absolutely worth it.

Ok, so I drafted the pink silk in blocks of 4 shafts each on a total of 8, and I set the lift plan to have the first 4 shafts doing 3/1 twill and the others 1/3, so sect and warp face, and then alternating. And I wove that for q while to get a sample, then it occurred to me there was a bit of q curve where the blocks meet, so I've been weaving a whole scarf length in solid stripes (it's taking ages) and I've got this very interesting wavy effect when I remove the tension. I'll have to make an extra wee sample to see what happens when I steam press it.

672 ends of 33 Tex silk. To weave 1 sample and 4 yards at 56 epi. Varying twills, to hopefully create an interesting shimmer. Weave plans to follow this evening when I get back from the CAD lab.

This is the first post in a series, in which I'll be illustrating my design process, now that I'm taking it properly seriously. As I can't the now find the images to illustrate my inspiration source, the first list shall instead show you some collaging. I have made 3 books of collage for this semester, 50 tpages each. The first two are explorations of colour and basic proportion, and in the third book I take my favourite colour combinations and experiment more with placement and angle, sometimes creating a subtle effect, sometimes a lively and even violent one. in the next post I shall illustrate what I have been doing to attempt to get a feel for illustrating fold and (the all important) drapes in my sketchbook.

Hey there I've taken some pictures of that shawl I was going on about last week. I'm just being a little impatient. I should probably have waited to get a model or use a tailor's dummy or something. Sod it, I'll do it on monday. Anyway, the sun's almost out today, so I took these pictures on the dining table and hanging off the end of the mop handle What ya think? My photoing skills gettin better? I think so. More of this thing next week, when I get back to college Andrew