I'm in love with turned Atwater-Bronson

It seems you can put something on a back burner and not get to it for years.  And then, all of a sudden something kicks in and you decide to give it a whirl.  That's what happened to me recently when I revisited some turned Atwater-Bronson drafts in Strickler's book, #613-#628 contributed by Mary Smith. One of the problems is that you have to deal with a profile treadling.  The threading and tie up is given, but you do have to dig in a bit and figure out the treadling sequence.  Mary Smith spells it out in her explanation, but I had to talk to another weaving friend to get things to click in my brain. Here is a draft if you have the same problems that I did with the profile.  You will notice that I start with the plain weave picks on treadles one and two and then do the pattern picks (in this case on treadles 3 & 4 or 5& 6 or 7&8).  In the profile treadling, think of these as substitutions for Block A, B & C.

Draft #618

 Each of the threading sequences is 36 threads long in these drafts.  I have a forty shaft loom, so I put the threading into a straight draw and added a basketweave selvedge for a towel series on 15 yards of fairly crisp cotton.  I figured I wouldn't be able to weave all of the samples, but should be able to get through a lot of them.  I also decided that a crisp linen feel would be ideal for the drafts, not thinking it through to realize that the threads wouldn't distort as much as all cotton would have. 

 

I wove off my 15 yards and used lots of different linen, ramie and cottolin wefts.  The basketweave selvedge was superfluous and plain weave selvedges would have probably been a better choice, but the basketweave performed nicely.  I also used the trick of soaking my linen weft bobbins in water so that the threads would bend nicely at the selvedges.  It worked beautifully. 

 

You will also notice, if you have a copy of Stricker's book, that many of these drafts use more treadles than are usually available on an 8 shaft floor loom.  Another reason to put it into a dobby to weave.  The photo below is draft #628

 

After my towel warp was completed, I dug out a couple of painted skeins that I dyed in a class I had with Kathrin Weber.  The fiber is bamboo and I thought that perhaps the color variation would look good if used for both warp and weft.  I decided on a 15" wide piece for yardage for a potential garment (or portion of a garment).  When I had woven off all of the dyed yarn, I still had a little warp left and chose a coral rayon to finish off the warp.  Turns out, I should have used it for the entire piece because I like it much better (photo on right). These are woven with draft #621 and the details are mostly lost in the longer yardage piece because color interplay.  However, the texture is wonderful.



 

OK, still not done with these drafts.  Quite a few years ago I purchased some silk mill ends.  The quality of the silk is very nice, but there are knots and splices in the yarns.  Also, the colors were pale and really nothing that I wanted to use, so they rested in my stash for many years.  Several months ago, in a frenzy of dyeing, I wound off almost all of the cones into skeins and overdyed them in a myriad of colors.  I deliberately did not want an even dye job, so sometimes the original color peeks through, or maybe I poured in magenta after the pot was hot and it struck here and there.   

 

I wound a warp 5 yards long and 12" wide for a couple of scarves.  The warp was copper, with bits of blue showing through from the original color.  The first scarf was woven off with a light blue weft to see if I could get iridescence.  I did.  The second scarf weft was a celery color and it is also iridescent.  Am I done - probably not.  I still need to experiment with weaving these drafts in cotton and getting a nice deflection of the threads.



The upper photo is draft #622 and the lower photo is #681









It's a Lace Love Affair

I belong to several Complex Weavers study groups and one of my favorites is the Early Weaving Books and Manuscripts .  The leader of the group is Marjie Thompson who is a powerhouse of knowledge about old weaving draft books from the past.  Each year, some of us in the group participate in a sample exchange in which we use a weaving draft from a book or manuscript that is at least 100 years old.  This is a mighty sample exchange, because you weave 52 samples and get back 50 and they range from 2 shafts up to 40 (I haven't seen any jacquard woven samples yet). 

In a past exchange and also in another CW group called the Computer Aided Design Exchange, Laurie Autio has written extensively about lace drafts (her particular specialty).  I have not done a lot of lace weaving, but having figured out that I could use almost any draft as a profile for lace, I decided to weave my EWBM samples in lace this year.

I almost always use the Handweaving net  for my sample source.  First off, most of the books represented there are at least 100 years old.  And secondly, there are so many draft choices that there is always something interesting to try.  The drafts of Christian Morath are a treasure and there are an abundance of 16 shaft tie ups that would be problematic because of long floats if you wove them thread by thread. If you use them as profile drafts they work beautifully.  I found several tie ups that I liked and coverted them to a lace threading and treadling.  And then, of course, I lost track of where I found the particular draft I used for my samples.  This is a big no no for the sample exchange which wants to know where you got your draft.  I had to explain the error of my ways on my draft sheet because by the time I realized I didn't have a source reference, the sample cloth had been woven and cut off the loom.

The good news is that I really love the woven cloth.  The warp is unmercerized 16/2 cotton sett at 24 epi.  The sett was a bit loose, but I wanted the lace floats to be able to move around and settle in the finishing process.  The warp measured 21" in the reed and 17" after wet finishing.  Wow - what a lot of shrinkage. I wove another 5 towels after my samples were completed, using several different weft colors and a different tie up for each towel.  I'm hooked on lace and I'll be weaving more in the future with more interesting profiles.

Last evening I received some of the samples from this year's exchange and they are wonderful.  Mine are still sitting on the dining room table, waiting for more fray check finishing. But, I'll get them in the mail soon and finish my obligation for the year.  Thank goodness for all the weavers who participate in this exchange.  It gives us food for thought and a wealth of ideas for future weaving projects.