Five Thread Twill Blocks

Squeezing every bit of juice out of a warp is one of my pleasures in life.  Since I seem to have a rather short attention span (blame it on TV), I can't stick with one weave structure more than a few yards without getting bored.  I started thinking about what other structures I could weave with the five thread blocks  and  decided I would try a five thread twill.  On the computer I played around with a variety of five thread twills, but the resulting cloth looked messy, so I went with tried and true 1/4 and 4/1 twill blocks.  What I didn't realize and should have, is that these blocks would create a textured cloth - almost embossed in appearance.  I deliberately did not press the cloth down flat so that the raised texture would be more prominent. 

Satin Structures

The first liftplan I used for this warp was converted from a profile draft using a regulation five thread satin tie up and it's reverse (replace the black blocks with white ones in the tie up you see here).  Satin makes one side of the block warp faced and the other side weft faced so you get some nice, almost solid color blocks.

The problem with this weave structure is that it is shaft hungry.  In order to weave two blocks, you must have 10 shafts.  I used 20 shafts in my design.  The cloth below is some of the first woven and I stayed with colors used in the warp.

It looks pretty good here, but I did a lot of warp repair during the process.  You can see a very narrow line of blue in the middle of the picture.  This is where I ended the last pick or so of the blue wool and started up with gold.  Because of the block configuration, this left a tiny little line.  Don't know if this is very cool or an unfortunate blunder!

After a couple of yards, I changed the liftplan and using the same satin structures, I made the blocks much shorter.  This produced a much more striped appearance in the cloth.  I suspect that it might be easier to use in clothing design.  There are no real repeats in the color sequences, therefore no plaids to match.  This is just a theory at this point.

This is a close up of the cloth above.  I'm thinking maybe fabric for big purses or decorator pillows?  I'm hoping that someone with a vision will buy the yardage.  That way I won't be forced to actually set scissors to the cloth.

I promised tribulations in my last post.  Because I like to see how many possibilities there are in weaving a warp, I do a lot of computer aided design work. The only thing I am locked in to with a computer driven loom, is the threading of the warp.  I take the threading and manipulate it every which way to see what will weave a viable cloth.  To make this explanation somewhat clearer to weavers who don't design their own drafts, I can change the treadling and the tie up configurations in my weaving program to see how the design will look before I test it on the loom.  However, just because it looks good, doesn't mean that it is good.  One of the major considerations is to make sure the floats in the cloth aren't too long.  I found that I could make an advancing twill design work nicely with this warp.  When I tested it on the loom, warp threads popped every few picks.  The only reason I could come up with, was that there was  less than a 1:4 ratio in the threads being lifted.  They were wool and they stuck to their neighbors worse in this design.  When the shed  opened, they didn't necessarily part cleanly for the shuttle to pass through and a flying shuttle will decimate a fairly weak warp thread. Long story made short, an advancing twill didn't make the final cut.

To be continued!

A Difficult Warp to Weave

Fast forward to a fully warped loom, threaded and sleyed and weaving underway.  I started weaving with the expectation that this was going to be a difficult warp to weave.  The first 12" didn't do anything to make me think otherwise, but after that I stopped breaking so many warp threads and everything settled down into a somewhat reasonable weaving rhythm.  Because I was concerned that my selvedge threads might break from drawing in too much, I used the clamp temple system.  These clamps hold the selvedges out, just the same as a temple would and have to be moved along as you weave just as frequently as a temple. They are, however, simpler and faster to reposition (in my opinion)  along the woven cloth.  I bought these several years ago and they are for fastening tarps, etc.  The company seems to be out of business now, and I haven't found any more like them, so these are precious, indeed.  However, if I don't lose them, they will probably last my lifetime.   The part you can't see in this photo is that the clamp has a cord with a weight attached which is hung over the side of the loom.  The clamp works well for delicate fabric because it doesn't have the needle like teeth of a temple and I have never had a problem with it marring the cloth.

Here is a shot of the warp without any mended warps in view.  Believe me, this was not the norm.  Usually there were a couple of T-headed pins in view.

Since I didn't have much of a plan about where I was headed,  I started by collecting some of the same yarns I had used in my warp.  I wound a pirn  (bobbin) full of each color and wove until the pirn ran out, then started a new color.  Sometimes I started up with a new color just after or before the end of a block, leaving small color stripes.  I was a bit nervous about this in the beginning, but then forgot about control issues and just let things happen.

Next post -- more cloth, more colors and a few trials and tribulations.

Twelve Yard Sampler

Last November (was it really that long ago) I had the realization that I was relying on old skills too much in my weaving endeavors.  Time to introduce color to my work, try something entirely different and go out on a limb.  I had woven some turned taquete towels (see a previous post) that were full of color and thought that I would do something similar except that I would use fine wools.  The fine wool idea came from the fact that I have lots of partial cones picked up a weaver's sales over the years.  I thought that if I were to pick colors with similar values and alternate them in warp stripes, it would add to the complexity of the finished cloth.  In my haste to get this warp on the loom, I hadn't done much in the way of calculations about the specifics of weave structure and had merrily wound on several inch bouts of wool at 30 epi. thinking that I could always figure the pattern out later.  Woops!  My intended structure of turned taquete was going to use increments of four threads and 30 doesn't divide equally by four.  This could have been worked out easily on a plain colored warp, but with the stripes things needed to be exact.  My direction turned to five thread structures.  Easy, I would do five thread satins and five thread twills.  I continued to wind warp and got lost in the forest of colors, fogetting how many different kinds of wool yarns I had used.  Some were very fine and I was starting to get a bit uneasy about how this would weave.

This picture isn't quite large enough to show that each of the color stripes is actually two colors of wool.  The yellow and bright green stripes stand out too much, but afterall, this is a sampler.

Next post I'll share some of the trials and tribulations of weaving off 12 yards of experimental warp.

Handwoven's Not Just for Socks Contest

A few months ago, Handwoven magazine announced the details of a new contest for weavers.  The idea was to use sock yarn (the label had to indicate that it was sock yarn) in a woven project.  Sounded intriguing to me and off I went to my local yarn store.  I found a great magenta/moss superwash wool  with long  color repeats.  The brand is Ty-Dy Socks and each ball contained approximately 436 yards.  I thought that two balls would be just fine for a scarf. (more about that later).  I brought the yarn home and agonized about what would be a cool scarf.  Orignally I thought that I would use another yarn for the weft, but the contest details said that the primary yarn should be the sock yarn.  I remembered some great scarves that one of my online friends (J. Shubert Designs) had woven using stripes of wool that would shrink leaving the body of the scarf all ruffles and this seemed to be just the ticket for this yarn.  Maybe I would use sock yarn in both warp and weft; my calculations showed that I would  should have enough yarn.

I put together a draft using a six shaft crepe from Oelsner and added some plain weave stripes for the shrinking wool.   Directions for similar scarves from past Handwoven magazines, suggested that the warp be long because after the shrinking took place, a lot of length would be lost.  So I followed that advice and made my warp about 3.3 yards long, sett at 12 epi and 13" wide.  Warp on loom and  weaving away, I soon realized that I wasn't going to have enough yarn.   Back to the yarn store and all of the rest of this color was gone.  But, they assured me that they could get some through the magic of the internet.  About a week later, I had my third ball (this was getting expensive) and finished up the weaving in short order.  Off the loom the scarf measured 11.5" x 92"

I had made sure that my shrinking wool really did shrink by knitting up a small swatch and felting it, so I secured my fringe without twisting it and off to the sink to start the fulling process.  Well, let me tell you, I spent a good amount of time trying to get those long stripes to felt.  Finally, I thought the job had been done.  I let the scarf dry in the dryer for a short while and laid it out to get completely dry.  It was very disappointing because instead of ruffles, the scarf looked lanky with not a lot of shrinkage.  Back in the hot water, but this time I didn't felt by rubbing the scarf with my hands. I just got it totally wet, squeezed out the excess moisture and threw it in the dryer for about 20 minutes. This did the trick -- in fact the finished scarf is 10" x 58" plus the fringe.

I photographed it, and sent in my entry.  Only then did I see that Tien Chiu had made a shawl using the same technique for the contest.  My Complex Weaver's Journal arrived full of similar projects!  Yikes.  Differential shrinkage must have been in the wind and we all caught it at the same time.  And, no -- I didn't win:-(