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!