Weaving Today

Silk Like A River

anne merrow — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:00:00 GMT

I love to spin and knit silk, but there’s something about perfectly smooth silk on a loom that’s simply irresistible.

The Winter 2011 issue of SpinKnit features silk in many forms: handspun in Mexico for weaving on a backstrap loom, stretched into mawata and attenuated into unspun yarn, spun for handpainting, and reeled using an indigenous Lao technique. All provide lovely drape and the unmistakable hand of silk, but two articles really show how silk shines when woven.


Dyed reeled silk awaits a project in the Wujin weaving studio.

Reeled silk can be so smooth that it’s difficult to knit with, but when held under tension for tablet weaving, it becomes a lovely glassy-looking warp. John Mullarkey, an accomplished and passionate tablet weaver, used just four colors of reeled silk as the warp for his Rocky River Band. Very simple patterns for threading and turning create a shimmery narrow band with a sinuous pattern. Between the rhythm of the turning cards and the sleek surface of the band, this is a project I’m planning to make on a sunlit day when I want to imagine floating down a river. (I prefer weaving to flyfishing!)

SpinKnit also includes an article about the silkworking traditions in Wuzhen, China, from legend to the twentieth century. Silk is reeled there for use in the town’s weaving shop, which is renowned for its woven brocade.


	In a crow's-nest perch, one weaver moves huge groups of heddles

In the weaving studio, simple looms are used for plain weave, the long shining warps converted quickly into exquisite cloth. The main attractions are the enormous wooden structures larger than some studio apartments, which are made up of thousands of pieces. Each brocade loom is operated by two weaving masters, one of whom sits on the stop story and manipulates groups of heddle threads with her feet. The other master weaver sits on the bench with a paintbox of tiny bobbins wound with colorful silk. Using a pickup stick, he lifts groups of warp threads and moves a combination of bobbins left or right, following the large cartoon at his side.

My weaving skills are limited (though not as limited as my Chinese language skills), so rather than attempting to explain what I saw, I’ll give you a video peek into the Wujin brocade workshop.

There are plenty of other silk treasures—along with woolly goodness—in SpinKnit. I hope you’ll join us on an armchair fiber trip around the world.

Learning About Yarns

Madelyn van der Hoogt — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:00:00 GMT

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Hi, Madelyn,

I am a very, very novice weaver and am trying to figure out the best way to learn about different yarn sizes and types. Everything I find seems to be about knitting yarns, not weaving yarns, and trial and error when buying yarns can get very expensive. Any ideas?

Thanks so much,

—Jan Rayford

Hi Jan!

Your question is probably one that every weaver asks when starting out. I was just going through a file cabinet drawer full of my first weaving year’s effort at understanding yarns. I taped every yarn I could find (taking snips from guild members’ stashes) on a 3 x 5 card and wrote down the fiber, yd/lb, and any comments the owner would share with me. Then I filed the cards by yarn size, finest to thickest. While I enjoyed this process and it took me into the studios of many weavers (as they probably rolled their eyes in amusement), it was not a productive exercise. It would make even less sense now, since so much information is available digitally. Not only that, but there are a few basic yarns that weavers use most—you don’t have to know about all that many.

So, the first thing you need to do is download the Master Yarn Chart from Weaving Today. It lists all of the yarns used in Handwoven since 2000 and gives their sizes (yd/lb) and appropriate setts (how many warp threads to use per inch). Then, take a look at the projects in several issues of Handwoven. You’ll discover that some of the yarns (10/2 pearl cotton, 5/2 pearl cotton, some specific wools, linens, Tencel, and silks) are used the most. To learn about them, the best thing to do is to weave a project from Handwoven that uses them. Some yarn retailers offer kits for these projects and for others. Kits include only the amount of yarn you need for the project. This often means small amounts of many colors, which would cost a lot more to buy individually on cones or skeins. When you are looking at the projects, also pay attention to the yarns that are used for the ones you really like. That’s the place to start as you build your stash.

Hope this helps!

—Madelyn

Life Saving Silk

Christina Garton — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:00:00 GMT

Silk is truly wonderful. It feels delicious on the skin, has a lovely drape when woven, and can keep us warm in winter and cool in summer. It is equally beautiful when used for clothing, upholstery, or anything, really. There are many things to love about silk, and now it seems there may someday be a new reason to fall in love with this fabulous fiber. Scientists in Germany are currently working on ways to use Tasar silk, a variety of wild silk produced in India, to rebuild damaged heart tissue.

Scientists have been working on growing replacement tissue in the laboratory, but first needed a base on which to grow it. A variety of substances had been tried, but it was Tasar silk that has proved the most successful. The coarse texture helps the cells adhere to the surface, as do the silk’s proteins.

While there are already many reasons to sing the praises of silk, someday soon its role as a life saver may be added to the list.

Of Tartans and Pandas

Christina Garton — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:00:00 GMT

Tartans have been woven and worn by the Celts and then the Scots for nearly three thousand years. Originally tartan patters would signify where the wearer lived, later clan specific tartans appeared, and today there are many tartan categories. A recent addition to the commemorative tartan category is the Edinburgh Zoo Panda Tartan.

On December 4, 2011 two adult pandas, Tian Tian and Yang Guang, arrived at the Edinburgh Zoo on loan from China. In honor of these new additions to the zoo, and timed to coincide with both Burns Night and the Chinese New Year, the zoo commissioned the tartan with Kinloch Anderson, a family company specializing in highland dress, and officially registered the design with the Scottish Register of Tartans.

The tartan’s sett (different from the weaving term) was based upon the family tartan of zoo founder Thomas Gillespie. The colors of the tartan are black, white, and grey like the fur of the pandas with one green line representing bamboo and three red lines to represent China.

Model Kirsty Franey models the
tartan as Tian Tian supervises.
Photo by Jon-Paul Orsi,
courtesy of the Edinburgh Zoo

A C V Br f w e B i u t x v n y

Master Yarn Chart Setts

Madelyn van der Hoogt — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:00:00 GMT

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Hi Madelyn,

How were the setts for the Master Yarn Chart determined? For instance, the
sett for 10/2 pearl cotton is 20, 24, 28. Why these numbers and not 14, 16,
18, or 30, 32, 34? Have these worked best for a large number of weavers
over time or is it a practical reason (can only fit so many threads in a
particular reed or need a certain number of threads to fill the reed without
gaps)?

—Caryl A. Graham

Hi Caryl!

The middle number of the three given for each yarn is the sett that produces a balanced, medium-density plain weave in that yarn (24 ends per inch for 10/2 pearl cotton). It is the same number that you’d get if you wrapped a half inch of a ruler with that yarn without over-crowding the strands.

The three numbers have nothing to do with the reed you choose (most reeds, whether 8, 10, or 12, can be sleyed to get the density per inch you need).

The other two numbers are a bit more arbitrary; I don’t pay too much attention to them. In theory, they show the range between setting the yarn farther apart (the lower number) if you want a really lacy plain weave or closer together (the higher number) for a twill (with floats) to get a balanced twill. But the sett you’d really want for these situations would depend on desired fabric hand and/or the specific twill.

The reason the numbers for 10/2 cotton aren’t 14, 16, 18 is that those numbers would produce a very very very loose plain weave, and the reason they aren’t 30, 32, 34 is because you probably couldn’t even achieve a balanced plain weave with those numbers, no matter how hard you beat the weft.

—Madelyn

What Would Mary Meigs Atwater Blog?

Anita Osterhaug — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:00:00 GMT


	Gigi also likes to admire cloth on the loom.

Projects tend to linger on my looms, and while time is a convenient excuse, the truth is that I love the journey of weaving more than the destination. Coming to the end of a project is bittersweet, and sometimes I avoid the ending just so I can walk by and admire the work in progress. (Cloth never looks so handwoven as when it is on the loom.) My favorite part of a project is the planning, setting out on a new adventure with my yarns and looms, tools, and books, all possibilities before me.

In one of my favorite non-weaving books, The Fellowship of Ghosts, contemporary author Paul Watkins recounts trekking through the mountains of Norway as he reads the accounts of writers who made the same trek in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Watson has a gift for narrative, and it’s fascinating to hear how much and how little has changed between the times of the past travelers––the "ghosts" of the title––and his own. I can relate when I see pictures of women who climbed our Pacific Northwest mountains in the 1800s wearing thin-soled leather boots and wool dresses with full petticoats and tall starched collars. The magnificent views are the same, but thank goodness for microfiber clothing and Vibram soles!

Starting a weaving project, like writing a book or setting out on a trek, is an act of faith, committing resources, energy, and intellect against the vagaries of time. Like Paul Watkins crossing the mountains of Jotunheim, the "Land of the Giants," weavers walk in ancient paths. As I linger over my bookshelves, I feel the fellowship of weavers past and present who wrote to guide us on our weaving journeys, and I wonder what they would think of us. Mary Meigs Atwater, Mary Black, Berta Frey, Else Regensteiner, and even weavers a decade ago could not have predicted how the weaving experience would change. Warp and weft still interlace as of old, but we have a choice of materials they would never have dreamed of. Many of us use computers to draft or weave, and many more use them to share what we make and what we learn. I chuckled this week as I read the introduction to my ten-year-old copy of The Weaver's Companion, in which Linda Ligon and Marilyn Murphy urge us to treat this treasury of weaving details as our own personal Rolodex. My Rolodex is long gone, but my Weaver's Companion holds an honored place in my studio, and last weekend I loaded a digital copy on my iPad so it will always be at hand.

I think our foreweavers would be pleased that their books have stood the test of time, and they would be fascinated with our new tools. I think Mary Meigs Atwater would have taken to blogging like a duck to water. Just think how quickly ideas would have spread if she had been able to blog to the members of the ShuttleCraft Guild. I can see her sending .wif files of some fascinating Guatemalan motif to Mrs. Harriet Douglass for inclusion in the Guild bulletin, or smiling at the lively interchange we have today in print and bits and bytes. And if I imagine honestly, I can also hear her restless, no-nonsense spirit telling me to shut down the computer, quit philosophising, and finish my projects so that I can start a new weaving adventure. And so I shall. Some ghosts speak louder than others!

Moving Forward at Warp Speed

Christina Garton — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:00:00 GMT


	Beautiful, bright yarns will make most anything better

When I started weaving on my little rigid-heddle loom it was love at first warp. I was amazed at how quickly and easily I could get everything measured and threaded with my little warping peg. Simply clamp down the loom on the table, clamp the peg on a bookshelf, and in around thirty minutes I was ready to weave. What wasn't there to love about that?

Well, a few things, actually. When I would warp the loom with multiple colors for log cabin pieces it would get fiddly. The warp threads would be a mess on the apron rod and I'd have to untangle sometimes as I wove. The length of my warp was also severely limited by the size of my small living room so large projects or many projects on one warp were out of the question. Eventually I grew tired of scarves and of untangling and found myself wanting more.

The only solution to my problem, I realized, was to bite the bullet and learn how to use a warping board. To me, a very beginning weaver, using a warping board was intimidating. There were calculations, mysterious pegs, and ominous sounding terms like "choke" and "cross." As it turns out, I had nothing to fear. All it took was a little confidence, the right yarn, and Liz Gipson.


The warping board in action as I try to remember why I was so nervous.

Liz's new video Slots and Holes: Three Ways to Warp a Rigid-Heddle Loom was what gave me the incentive to stop worrying and start warping. I found some lovely—but very inexpensive—cotton yarn so that if I somehow ruined the warp I would only be out a few dollars. I borrowed a warping board, put the DVD in, and got started. Watching Liz, I realized how simple it all was. Her explanations completely demystified indirect warping for me. As an added benefit, with the DVD I could pause, rewind, and even zoom in as I warped with her.

When you first learn to weave everything seems so complicated, especially if you are learning on your own. It can be scary to take a leap to the next level and push yourself further, but trust me, it's worth it. It's what we all need to do to grow as weavers, whether it's something as simple as warping your loom for the first time or something more complex like finally tackling doubleweave. Whatever your next step might be. don't be afraid. Just find the right teacher, book, or workshop video and see exactly what you're capable of. You just might be surprised how easy it all is.

Happy weaving everyone!

Reed Substitutions

Madelyn van der Hoogt — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:00:00 GMT

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Hi Madelyn!

I have recently purchased both the Doubleweave Basics DVD and Doubleweave (the book) by Jennifer Moore. Because I am a ”visual” learner, I have found her double-disk DVD to be just what I needed to start exploring this fascinating weave structure. She recommends an 8-dent reed sleyed at 4 ends per dent. I only have a 10-dent reed, so I used slightly finer warp threads and sleyed 4/dent for 4 dents and then skipped 1 dent, but the skipped dent is very obvious in the cloth. Any suggestions?

—Grace Mandle

Hi Grace!

With a density of 4/dent for 4 dents, that sudden empty space is very likely to show. Washing may spread the threads a bit, but probably not enough.

The instructions for Jennifer Moore’s sampler recommend 5/2 pearl cotton. The sleying of 4/dent produces a sett of 32 ends per inch or 16 ends per inch per layer. As you clearly understood, the arrangement of 4/dent has the purpose of placing the 4 threads of each threading unit together in a dent. This is especially important for doing pick-up, since it separates the units visually, making counting and selecting the threads to pick up much easier than they would be otherwise.

If you really need to use a 10-dent reed, I would advise changing the yarn to either 8/2 cotton or 10/2 cotton and sleying 4 ends per dent (40 epi, 20 epi per layer). If you have a 12-dent reed, you can also use it with 10/2 cotton at 4 ends per dent (48 epi, 24 epi per layer). The 8/2 and 10/2 threads will be finer and therefore not quite as easy to see and count as 5/2, but both can be used successfully for doubleweave pick-up.

—Madelyn

A Weaver on the Horizon

Christina Garton — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:00:00 GMT

Welcome to the Year of the Dragon! In honor of the Chinese New Year, which began this last Monday, here's the story of Huang Daopo, a legendary Chinese hero of handweaving.

Daopo was born in 1245 to a very poor family in what is now Dongwan Village. At age ten, she was sold into marriage. Daopo was very unhappy because her husband and in-laws mistreated her, so she ran away. She followed the Huangpu River and eventually ended up in the ancient city of Yazhou, known today as Sanya. For decades, she lived there with the local Li people who taught her their advanced methods of spinning and weaving.

Many years later, Daopo returned to the village of her birth where she taught her people what she had learned and introduced them to new technology including treadle-powered looms. Her teachings spread throughout the country and revolutionized weaving in China. To this day, Daopo is considered one of the most famous women in Chinese textiles. There is even a television series based upon her life: A Weaver on the Horizon.

The Unraveling of Penelope

Christina Garton — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:47:00 GMT

Penelope is the faithful wife of Odysseus in the epic poem The Odyssey. When Odysseus has been gone on his journey for ten years and is presumed dead, Penelope is left to deal with a hoard of suitors all wanting her hand in marriage-and her husband's wealthy. To delay her remarriage, Penelope tells her suitors that she will not choose a future husband until she has finished weaving a burial shroud for her father-in-law. Each day for three years she weaves the shroud, and each evening, unseen, she carefully unweaves it.

The new installation "Penelope" by artist Tatiana Blass in the Chapel of Morumbi in São Paulo, Brazil, celebrates this power of love as well as weaving itself. Inside the chapel, on the altar sits a loom. Out of one side of the loom is a red carpet heading towards the door. On the other side of the loom is chaos: the woolen threads tangle with one another as they lead outside of the chapel through holes in the wall to cover the yard outside in a sea of red. Ultimately, the viewer is left to wonder: is the carpet being woven or, like Penelope's never-finished shroud, is it being unraveled.

Photo by Everton Ballardin;
courtesy of Tatiana Blass

Weaving Long Enough to Know Better

khdonde — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:30:00 GMT

When my latest beginning weaving students came in to finish their final towels last week (I have them warp three times during the class.), I had to conjure up some dialogue from “The Wizard of Oz.” Remember what the wizard bellowed when Dorothy and the gang noticed movement in the corner? “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain…” or something like that.

No good could come from my students seeing what a mess I had made, so in my scariest voice, I said, “PAY NO ATTENTION TO WHAT’S HAPPENING ON MY LOOM TODAY!” After I thought it over, I decided to use my misfortune to demonstrate what can happen when playing fast and loose with the warping techniques I had spent eight four-hour classes teaching them.


	Karen's recued warp awaiting its weaving destiny

A series of very bad decisions had led to a tangled four-yard supplementary warp that otherwise was the perfect fiber, color and size. If I had more of the yarn, I would have thrown it out and begun again, but foregoing the calculations to find out whether the cone had sufficient yardage was what started me down this ugly brick road in the first place.

Six inches into winding the warp, I realized the cone of 5/2 cotton wasn’t going to make it to 24 inches wide. With a deadline looming for the project, there was no time to order more. I scrounged around my stash and came up with a full cone of 8/2 Tencel in a similar color. Unfortunately six-inch stripes wouldn’t work in this design.

I devised a work-around. I tied off the cotton warp chain and wound six inches of the Tencel, making another warp chain. I wound the rest of the warp end-and-end, but still ran out of the cotton about 1 ½ inches short. So I wound three quarters of an inch of Tencel on the end of that chain, and a separate three-quarter inch Tencel chain for the other edge.

Now, I thought, I’ll just sley all these chains through a reed mixing the two separate warps and continuing with the properly wound sections. The loom I’m using has no second beam, so this warp would be suspended off the back with weights. No problem, I could wind it temporarily onto the warp beam of my Baby Wolf, straightening all the warp chains as I went. Then I could gradually unwind the warp from the beam and bind it all neatly with choke ties. Rather than hand-pick the cross, I decided I would hang the reed over the ground warp lease sticks and thread back-to-front from it. It sounded feasible.

Then, BIG mistake number…well I’ve lost count. Thinking the warp was only going onto the Baby Wolf beam temporarily, I decided to simply crank it on…no paper, no sticks, no worries the warp was a bit wider than the apron rod. I suspect you can guess the rest. I am just stubborn enough (cue hysterically laughing husband) that I eventually untangled every bit of that warp and got it tied neatly into bundles ready to thread, albeit a little shorter than the original four yards. It’s still lying in a pile on my work table, as my loom has no castle from which to suspend it, and I’m trying to figure out how to hang the reed back there.

Needless to say, the deadline will probably be missed, but that’s another story. My point in sharing this woeful tale is to remind myself and others there is usually a good reason why we were taught particular warping or weaving techniques. As Madelyn van der Hoogt says in the introduction to her Weaving Well video, “We all stand on the shoulders of the weavers before us, and all the tricks and tips we have come from somewhere else.” I would add, “Because they probably learned the hard way.”

No matter how long you’ve been weaving, when you’re tempted to cut a few corners or sidestep a few rules simply because you’re in a hurry or “you know what you’re doing,” picture your teacher standing over your shoulder.

I plan to spend more quality time with Madelyn over my shoulder, via her warping and weaving videos, before I thread those heddles. It never hurts to review the basics.

Mixing Fibers

Madelyn van der Hoogt — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:00:00 GMT

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Dear Madelyn,

I'm a beginning weaver with a small stash of various types of wool yarn I'd like to use for scarves, but I only have enough of most for weft. How can I determine if a different fiber will make a suitable warp? Is there a resource that explains how various fibers work together?

Thanks,

Penny

Hi Penny!

There are too many variables in this question to give a very specific answer (or even to refer you to a source that would be especially helpful). You have to think of several factors when you mix yarns: How they will look (this will depend, too, on the weave structure you are using), how they will feel (soft and supple for a scarf, firm and flat for a placemat, for example), and how they will finish (whether they shrink and full similarly if you plan a high degree of wet-finishing). And, when you are using different yarns even of the same fibers, there are differences in their behavior based on spin, ply, and thickness.

Usually, for a scarf, you’d be choosing a structure with a single warp and weft (plain weave, lace, or twill) for a light and supple fabric (or, if using wool for a warm scarf, for a plushy fulled fabric). For these weaves, you usually want the warp and weft to be the same fiber and thickness. You could also choose a supplementary weft structure, such as overshot, and place patterns in the border of a scarf (where you could use your bits of wool weft). But even these possibilities will depend on your yarns’ fibers, thickness, ply, and degree of loftiness. And you would have to be careful if your scarf’s ground cloth is cotton and the overshot patterning wool not to wet-finish the fabric to the point that the wool shrinks (since the cotton will not).

The upshot is: Try different combinations in samples!

—Madelyn

Seaweed and Vvv-rrrrooooomba

Anita Osterhaug — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:38:00 GMT


Lovely Sea Silk warp waiting for an open loom.


	Time for naughty Gigi to give up her hammock!

OK, new year, new beginnings. In honor of our upcoming March/April issue on plant fibers, I'm designing a handwoven scarf made with Handmaiden Sea Silk fingering weight yarn. (After all, seaweed is a plant.) The skeins are in a dark green that reminds me of the water of my native Puget Sound this time of the winter, and a beautiful variegated mahogany the color of giant kelp. The scarves will (I hope) be a visual pun: cloth in a kelp forest pattern woven with yarns made from seaweed. I'm doing a variation on an undulating twill from Marguerite Davison's Handweaver's Pattern Book.

Sadly, however, the course of both true love and weaving never did run smooth. Before I start my scarves, I have to weave off the warp on my Baby Wolf loom, which has been there long enough to become a cat hammock. (More new beginnings: naughty Gigi cat needs to find a new place to sleep.) Then I have to shovel the snow off our driveway because we've been snowed in for days and we need to get out for groceries. But the warp is wound and waiting, and I'll be happy to sit and weave after the heavy work of snow shoveling, so it will be a cozy evening.

If you need a short break this evening, here's your chuckle for the day: check out tapestry weaver Nicki Bair's blog about the dangers of letting a Roomba loose in your weaving studio. I laughed so hard I nearly fell off my chair!

Converting Yarn

Madelyn van der Hoogt — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:00:00 GMT

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Hi Madelyn,

I have a question about converting a yarn in project instructions. I have instructions that call for 10/2 pearl cotton sleyed at 24 ends per inch. I want to use 5/2 pearl cotton. How do I do the math to figure out how many ends at what number per inch of the 5/2 to use for the same effect?

Thanks,

Lucy

Hi Lucy,

First of all, you need to know the desired width of the piece you want to weave. Let's say it’s 20 inches. (At 24 ends per inch, you would have needed 480 ends of 10/2 cotton.) If you have the Master Yarn Chart, you can look up the sett for 5/2 cotton appropriate for the weave structure you are using. 24 epi is the sett for balanced plain weave in 10/2 cotton, so you’d probably be looking for the sett for balanced plain weave in 5/2 cotton, which is 16 epi.

To get a 20 inch width using 5/2, therefore, you’d need 320 ends.

Next, you need to look at the draft you plan to use. It may include a repeat that does not easily divide into 320 ends the way it divides into 480 ends. You might have to make some adjustments to the total number of ends, either more or fewer, to accommodate the number of repeats in the draft.

—Madelyn

P.S. And, thank you to all of you who pointed out my bad math in the last Ask Madelyn. I said: You can have 4 threads/dent in an 8-dent reed (32 ends per inch) or 3/dent in a 12-dent reed (also 32 ends per inch). Er, that would be 36 ends per inch. The sleying order would have had to be 2-3-3 to get 32. This wasn’t really related to the question I was answering, but shame on me anyway.

Exploring Fiber Horizons

Christina Garton — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:00:00 GMT

Recently, Kathy O’Hern sent us some information about the wonderful display her guild, the Helena Weavers and Spinners Guild, created for theAssociation of Northwest Weavers’ Guilds Conference. The conference theme was “Exploring Fiber Horizons” so the guild chose to portray the explorations of Lewis and Clark using nothing but wool and other weaving materials.

The display, part of which can be seen above, covered two tables and featured wool batts for the base and background, needle felted people, animals, teepees, a fort, trees, and more. Members worked together to create the display and member Laurel Orthmeyer, an accomplished needle felter, made large versions of the Lewis and Clark characters (shown below) to hold the display's banner.

All the guild’s hard work paid off when they were awarded the People’s Choice award for this delightful display. To see more photos of this woolen wonder, check out our Roving Reporter gallery on Weaving Today.

A Tale of Twill

Madelyn van der Hoogt — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:00:00 GMT


	Handwoven's new eBook will have you singing the praises of twill

The first item I ever wove was a twill “sampler.” It was an assignment by my first teacher. She gave us the warp (mine was orange carpet warp) and the weft (mine was army green Aunt Lydia’s rug yarn). I still have the sampler, and it is somewhere safe, where I can always find it if I need to. However, I can’t seem to remember where that is. If I could find it, I’d show a photo of it here and ask you: Should this person become a weaver? The reason I want to keep track of where it is is to make sure I destroy it before it ever has the chance of becoming part of some retrospective show of my “work.”

In the first place, I didn’t know twill was a “balanced” weave. And since neither orange nor green were colors I liked at the time (blue and white were the only good colors from my point of view as a lover of antique coverlets), I tried to obliterate the orange with the green. So my “rosepath” turned out to be a weft-faced mass of army green. We were given several treadling variations of straight, zigzag, point, and rosepath twills to follow, but with my firm beat, they all looked pretty much the same. My conclusion was: I don’t like twill (or orange, or green).

At the time, in the early 1980s, the only basic resource for weavers that included very much information about twill was Marguerite Porter Davison’s A Handweaver’s Pattern Book. Since the photos of the woven samples are all black and white, they are not necessarily inspiring unless you look closely at the patterns. It took several years of steadfastly not liking twill before I noticed that, for example, you could thread her Herringbone Mixture and get thirteen different designs on the same warp (the point my original teacher was probably trying to make). Multiple types of twills are scattered throughout Davison’s book with their many treadling variations, but even so, two major elements are missing: color and fiber. Not only are twill patterns infinite in number, but their appearance is infinitely changeable through the use of color, and depending on yarns and setts, the fabric hand can be literally anything: soft and supply, firm and flat, thick and plush, whatever you need for absolutely any fabric use.

The 1980s gave weavers publications with color, and twills took off. The latest Best of Handwoven eBook, Twills on Four Shafts, gives ten truly beautiful twill projects that cover the gamut of twill types: herringbone, rosepath, dornick, straight, undulating, and more. Included is even the use of an advancing twill on four shafts. If I were to show you the placemats and runner designed by Barbara Elkins that are shown on the cover of this eBook, you would swear they took more than four shafts to weave. Since this technique eBook includes steps for designing and drafting twills, you can use her article to create advancing twills of your own as well as adapting all the other twill types for original designs (including weaving damask-like patterns with a simple pick-up technique).

If I had had this eBook back in the early 1980s, I would have loved twills from the get-go, and my first weaving would have looked a lot better.


"Twill-Block Towels on Four Shafts" by Gloria Martin		"White Rabbit Tea Towels" by Alison Irwin		"Glowing Embers Scarf" by Leslie Voiers

Seeing the Forest

Tom Knisely — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:00:00 GMT

Tom Knisely has taught weaving in a lovely, wooded part of rural Pennsylvania for over thirty years. Last year, Tom had a great idea to help weavers and their looms live in greater happiness and harmony. Here he is to tell you all about it. ––Anita


Tom Knisely is a man who knows his looms

There is an old expression that “you can’t see the forest for all the trees.” Many times in life this is true, but sometimes there is a moment of profound realization. For me, about a year ago, a redwood fell, figuratively, across my path.

It all started with a telephone call concerning a sticky shaft that just would not fall back down to where it should when the foot was taken off the treadle. When I finished with that particular customer, I went to wind a bobbin and found the winder needed a good oiling. After that was finished I pulled out a shuttle on which to put the newly wound bobbin, looked at it, and thought “Yuck!”

The tips of many of the shuttles were rough from falling onto the concrete floor for years now. The finish was grimy from hundreds of hands passing it back and forth over the years. I wondered how I had let it get like this.

I sanded the tips of the shuttles and washed them well with Murphy’s Oil Soap. I also put a little furniture oil on them and found out firsthand how much faster it makes them fly. Wow! When it was all said and done I thought, “These are just a few small tips that people need to know about. I need to do an instructional video on loom and equipment maintenance. They do, after all, need to be in good working condition.”


	Tom will teach you how to keep the bits and pieces of your loom from misbehaving.

When I passed the idea to Anita Osterhaug, she was as excited as I was and The Loom Owner's Companion was born. She also agreed with me that The Mannings Handweaving School would be the perfect place to film. The Mannings’ studio has over a hundred looms of different makes, models, and sizes. There are jack, counterbalance, and countermarch looms. There are also table looms, and floor looms that weave up to 60 inches in width.

I have to tell you that working with Anita and the crew was fabulous! We all worked together with such ease and had hardly any “do overs.” The only time we had to stop filming was when the neighbor next door was mowing her lawn.

I am hoping that my new video The Loom Owner's Companion helps people to better understand how their loom operates and how to correct a problem when it misbehaves. It should also prove beneficial to those folks buying used looms who need to know what to look for. I hope that you enjoy the video and find some good ideas on how to maintain your looms. I also hope it becomes one of your most valuable tools to keep them in good working condition.

Happy Weaving!

—Tom Knisely

Our Apologies to Mr. Lindbergh

Christina Garton — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:00:00 GMT

In the most recent issue ofHandwoven, we made a boo-boo. During the editing process, the description of Charles Lindbergh's flight was changed from "famous" to "infamous." Many thanks to alert reader Frances McClure, who first alerted us to our gaffe. For penance, thisBeWeave It is dedicated to the history of aviator scarves.

Aviator scarves, now a fashion statement, were once vital to pilots. The first airplanes had open cockpits, exposing flyers to extreme cold. Aviator scarves helped to keep the neck warm without restricting motion.The original scarves were woven of white silk on one side to protect pilots from chafing against their leather aviator jackets, and wool on the other side for warmth. Thesix-foot-long scarves could be tied snugly around the neck with enough material left hanging to wipe off dirty goggles. The shiny white of the silk may also have made the scarves useful as a signal flag in an emergency. When airplanes cockpits were enclosed and scarves were no longer needed, these iconic wraps moved from the cockpit to the department store, where they remain a popular accessory to this day.

Threading Dents and Heddles

Madelyn van der Hoogt — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:00:00 GMT

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Hello Madelyn,

My question is this: I read the patterns for a project and one of the things that confuses me is, say you have a 12-dent reed and you are told to put two ends in a dent to make it 24 ends. Now what do you do with these when it comes to putting them through the heddles? Do you put both ends in each heddle? Do you put them singly in the heddle, but use two heddles on the same shaft? This may sound very silly to you, but I can find nothing in any materials I have that answers this questions. Your help would be appreciated.

—Catherine Smith

Hi Catherine!

This is the kind of question a new weaver often has because there are so many aspects of weaving that become obvious with experience. No one thinks that they need explanation (as, for example, in the way Marguerite Davison says in her book to “use tabby” without saying what “use tabby” means that you should do).

So here's the scoop: the number of threads per dent only determines how many threads there are in an inch of warp width. You can have 4 threads/dent in an 8-dent reed (32 ends per inch) or 3/dent in a 12-dent reed (also 32 ends per inch). After the threads go through the reed, they are threaded in the heddles as individuals according to your threading draft. The only time you’d put 2 ends in one heddle is if the intention is for a thread to be twice as thick as the yarn you are using, and the instructions for the draft would specify this (by calling these threads “doubled” warp ends).

So, each warp thread should go through a single heddle no matter how many go through each dent of the reed. And, unless there are two adjacent symbols in the draft on the same shaft (very unusual, though it can happen if a doubled warp thickness is desired to be more ribbon-like than plied-yarn like), you won’t thread any heddles side by side on the same shaft.

—Madelyn

Walking Tie-Up

Christina Garton — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:45:00 GMT

- a tie-up designed so the weaver can treadle in a walking motion, using the left and right foot alternately.

Make a Handwoven Fashion Statement

Anita Osterhaug — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:00:00 GMT

For millenia, handwoven garments have varied

from simple to sophisticated.

I've told you before about my great fondness for Powell's Books (a local and, I'm sure, national treasure), and my weakness for out-of-print weaving books. Well, I did a little online browsing over the holidays, and my latest treasure trove just arrived in the mail. Among the precious finds this time were several books on woven garments. There were Handwoven, Tailormade by Sharon Alderman and Kathryn Wertenberger, a timeless book that I wish I'd had when I first learned to sew, let alone weave; Woven Fashion, by Vivienne Bateson, a tour-de-force of wonderful pictures and patterns for classic 1980's-style woven jackets, scarves, and accessories (the warp-faced necktie and the jacket fabric with inlaid feathers are just too much fun); and Barbara Wittenberg's charming, down-to-earth "or. . . alternatives to the fig leaf.", a lovely little notebook of ideas and inspiration.

I indulged in these books (said I to my long-suffering spouse) because we are madly finalizing the details of the 2012 Handwoven Garment Challenge. There were so many fabulous entries for last year's garment challenge with Väv magazine, we decided to do it again, and I hope many more of you will join in the fun. The theme this year is "Look Ma, No Sleeves," which should leave the field wide open for your fertile imaginations. Entries could include tabards, vests, shawls, shifts, sarongs, ruanas, ponchos, or peignoirs. . . you name it, as long as they’re sleeveless. There is no runway fashion show this year, but the winning garments will be featured in the September/October 2012 issue of Handwoven, and there will be prizes! We're looking for original ideas and excellent execution, so bring on the garments, simply elegant or sophisticated and tailored. Watch this newsletter and the Weaving Today web site for entry information, prize categories, and other news. In the meantime, please put your imaginations in high gear and start weaving!

As I browsed through the new additions to my weaving library today, I thought how wonderful it is that anyone can weave a garment. For most of human history, all woven garments were hand woven, so there are millenia of inspiration to draw from. You don't need a fancy loom or a complex pattern. I hope this year's entries will include some garments woven with rigid heddle looms, cards, maybe even backstrap looms or Weavettes, if that's your thing. I also hope some of you will experiment with handspun yarns and knitting yarns. Whatever takes your fancy.

As your brains start buzzing, let me leave you with an inspiring thought from Barbara Wittenberg's introduction: "'There is nothing new under the sun' -- yet when you discover it through your own experimentation IT IS NEW and you are entitled to be excited about it." So please go forth and discover, get excited, and, above all, have fun!

Tranferring the Cross

Madelyn van der Hoogt — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:00:00 GMT

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Hi Madelyn,

I just tried Deborah Chandler’s recipe for warping front to back because I haven’t got a raddle. In her example, she only puts one thread per dent so it is obvious which thread comes from which part of the cross when it comes to threading the heddles. But I only have a 12-dent reed and I needed a 24 epi sett, so I would have to put two threads in each dent. How would I then know which thread comes from which side of the cross so that I can thread the heddles in the correct order?

I got round it by sleying one per dent, and resleying at two after I had threaded the loom. This worked OK since it was a narrow warp and I had enough room. But I can see that wouldn’t work if I had a wide warp.

What do you suggest?

Best wishes,

—Mog Bremner

Hi Mog!

Depending on the yarn (if they are smooth yarns, such as pearl cotton, Tencel, rayon), you can put two ends in a dent and just choose whichever one you want when you thread without worrying whether it was truly the next one in the cross. But for some yarns (twisty or sticky) it does matter; they will not want to separate when they get to the heddles. For these yarns, what I usually do is “transfer the cross.” You sley the reed, but leave lease sticks in the cross as you sley. Then, you turn the lease stick closest to the reed on edge and slide another stick in the opening on the other side of the reed. You take the stick out that you had on edge and bring the second stick up to the reed, turn it on edge, and slide another stick inside the opening on the other side of the reed. The lease sticks are now in the cross on the side of the reed where you need them for threading. Then you put the reed in the beater and secure the lease sticks in front of the shafts as you sit behind them to thread.

It’s awkward to do this transfer; you have to hold tension on both ends of the warp to make the openings as you turn the sticks on edge. But it works.

—Madelyn

Contemporary Weaving in a Medieval Church

Christina Garton — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:00:00 GMT

This coming May 12th and 13th, the 800-year-old Medieval Church of Persingen, near Nijmegen, Holland, will host some exciting and innovative weaving. Textile artists Anneka Kersten and Roos Cox play with texture, color, and structure using silk, cotton, linen, and less usual fibers (copper, paper, steel, glass, and horsehair) to create stunning works like the one at left, which was woven by Cox using horse hair.

While these experiments may take textiles to the extreme, they are based on a firm knowledge of weaving. Kersten first learned to weave at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon while on a sabbatical there in the 1980s. After returning to the Netherlands she continued her studies at the Audax Textile Museum in Tilburg where she did her thesis and final project on doubleweave, a structure she still commonly uses. Cox first started weaving at age ten, which led to studies at the Lindenberg Cultural Center and, later, a two year course at the Tilburg. If you can't make the trip to Persingen, check out the artists' website for photos of their works and information (in Dutch) about future exhibits.

Colorful Cotton

Christina Garton — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:00:00 GMT

Cotton balls, today thought of as white and fluffy, have a surprisingly colorful history: there was a time when cotton came in a variety of colors. Around 5,000 years ago, strains of naturally pigmented cottons were developed by people living in the Andes. Green, red, brown, and tan cotton strains were grown throughout the region and woven into colorful un-dyed masterpieces. These weavings were so lovely, when the Spanish first came to South America they sent some of these pieces back to the royal court in Spain.

Unfortunately, naturally pigmented cotton has some shortfalls. These plants have lower yields and require special harvest techniques. The cotton itself has short staples making industrial level spinning difficult. When chemical dyes became commonplace, colored cottons lost favor and white cotton became king.

Fortunately, while they were close to extinction for a time, many of these cotton strains survived in rural villages of Peru and even in the Mississippi Delta. With people becoming concerned with the environmental impact of their yarns, naturally pigmented cotton yarns are starting to make a comeback through the efforts of dedicated people such as Sally Fox. These colorful fibers need no mordant or chemical dyes, and when grown organically are also pesticide free, making them an ideal choice for the environmentally conscious weaver.

A Strange Selvedge

Madelyn van der Hoogt — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:00:00 GMT

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Hi Madelyn,

As a relatively new weaver, I am still discovering things. I was weaving some plain-weave towels and noticed that my left edge was much neater than my right edge. I had an even number of warp threads so that meant that the edge thread on the left was UP when I threw the shuttle from that side and the edge thread was DOWN when I threw from the right. So I dubbed in another thread on the right, making the number of warp threads an uneven number thus forcing an UP edge thread on both sides, and that greatly improved my right edge. Question is: Is this something most experienced weavers know to be a fact? Or is it just me? I don't remember seeing this stated in all the books and articles I've read.

Sincerely,

—Del Bevan

Hi Del!

This is a most interesting question. Weavers often say that one of their selvedges is better than the other and try to change the way they throw the shuttle on that side. I have always responded that in most cases, it really isn’t the way they are turning the weft; it’s the way the twist of the yarn (Z or S) causes the weft yarn either to cuddle with the selvedge warp thread or be repelled by it (you can sort of picture how this might work if you think about how two plied yarns might work together) What you are suggesting is that you are changing the direction that the weft yarn takes around the selvedge thread when you add a thread to it. So the same factor of yarn twist might be operating. I guess the way to test this is: Start the selvedge from the opposite side and see if it makes both edges worse! And let me know!

Thanks so much for this observation,

—Madelyn