Dyeing and small batch fleece processing
The back room for processing fleeces and storing wool
Main teaching space awaiting the looms
Networked twills
With the weaving barn works occuping all my daytime hours, I've been designing weaves on the computer. The joy of networked drafting is that you can move away from stripes, checks and blocks and start creating curves and swirls. This design I particularly like and will sample as soon as the barn works are over.
The first two images show the front and back of the same cloth.
The interesting thing is that even a subtle change in one of the colours of the four yarns used and the pattern completely changes to that below. I've had to be very careful selecting yarns....lets hope I've chosen wisely!!
Finally the weaving barn is finished (more later) and a first time to use the Megado.
The first sample was in cashmere and merino (both 28/2) at sett of 45epi. There were some threading errors and the megado was occasionally misbehaving. I could see the colours were all wrong and the sample too narrow so I cut it off the loom.
After more fiddling with colours on the computer and looking at my stash of yarns I changed to a warp of white silk 30/2 and dark blue merino 28/2 (the cashmere was fragile warp) and a weft of the same white silk and a pale blue cashmere 28/2. This time I "treadled the threading". Using the dobby loom to lift each shaft to be threaded in order. This worked well but also highlighted the Megado problems! After some investigation I noticed the knife blade magnet was in the wrong position and the treadle needed adjustment as the magnet was not aligning with the sensor....hey presto everything worked! I also found an old bit of warp caught in one of the shaft pulleys!
This sample is looking much better, even though the finishing has been done yet. I ll try a few different blues. The blue should "full" as it's wool, whilst the silk should remain flat yet shiny.
Two final threading errors corrected and more samples and finishing later the results are below - front and back of each sample. The double waves behind the circles should be more evident in a wider cloth. When viewed at angle they are more apparent.
Weaving Stool
Just before I got my Spring loom I built myself a weaving stool from some oak. Splay legged for stability and wide for reaching all those 14 treadles.
When I picked up the Megado, I hadn't realised how high the breast beam was. The stool needed to be 70cm high, nearly 15cm higher. It's difficult to start weaving without so I searched for some offcuts. I quartered a piece of douglas left over from the roof trusses for the legs and planed it the right section, some old curtain poles made the foot bars and some oak from an old desk the seat and rails. A days work et voila! As the megado has a single pedal, width isn't so important.
Sampling networked doubleweave
This draft was going form the basis of the first sampling. The blue is 28/2 superwash merino and the white is a 30/2 silk. I'm hoping for a little differential shrinkage between the two yarns so that the areas with two separate cloth layers (they appear the whitest in the draft) puff just enough to separate. It comes down to how the superwash behaves...otherwise I might try some cashmere in 26/2. The sample is 16cm wide in the reed and has 240 warp threads. First sample will be at 15 epcm (38epi) and depending how it feels, I might try a wider sett too. I need 2 or 3 samples at each sett to experiment with the finishing process to control the differential shrinkage. The final piece is a commisioned shawl.
After contemplating the above I realised the areas of the raised silk layer will only be on one side...fine for a wall hanging, not so great for a shawl. So I revisited the draft to get the pattern more evenly distributed on both faces.
After reading Alice Schlein's book on network drafting and several other books besides (some given to me by Pat Foster when I bought her Megado) I succeeded in getting a networked draft with the silk squares alternating on each side backed by squares of wool....then my silk yarn finally arrived!
It's beautifully lustrous and as I know from the swedish lace doubleweave scarf I just completed, that shine is killed by plain weave. I drafted something in doubleweave with each layer as a 5 end satin, but it wasn't pleasing to me. Finally I redrafted a design with 3/1 twills - a compromise but a good one I hope. An extract from the draft below. Using the same yarn I originally intended, the change from plain to twill increases the warp density to 25 epcm, so the sample is only 22cm wide with 550 ends. I ll weave three samples and finish them differently. The new Megado will enable me weave these 18 shaft samples.
The megado has landed
Sometimes you are in the right place at the right time. I was looking at facebook just as Pat Foster posted on the Megado loom group that she was wondering what to do with her 20 year old Megado loom, she was 90 years old, not it the best of health and down sizing, would it be cheeky to try to sell it? The Megado is the flag ship loom from Louet with 32 shafts and an electronic computer controlled dobby, my dream loom! Brand new they retail for over 18,000 euros, Pat was asking £1500. I immediately registered that I would be very interested, but someone beat me to it. 30 mins later she got back to me to say the first buyer had dropped out...was I still interested?
I would have to go to Reading, disassemble the loom and take it away asap. With Susie's dance and yoga lessons the car is only available to use Saturday, Sunday and Monday. I decided it was possible.
So Saturday I left the house at 6.30 and drove pretty much none stop to Calais (11hrs). The next morning I got the 6am ferry to Dover and drove to Reading to meet Pat and her sister Dorothy. Two lovely ladies with amazing life stories. Pat is an amazing weaver and it turns out that Cally Booker (another amazing weaver) is Dorothy's daughter!
It took a few hours to disassemble and load everything into the car, thankfully Dennis a friend of Pat's was available to give me a hand loading. I had already taken the rear seats out of the car so that there would be enough space for the castle to stand upright, but in the end it didnt quite fit so I had to lay it on its side fit. Everything else had to be completely disassembled. Pat was very kind to give me some yarn, some books, four extra reeds and CDs that she no longer had space for.
Back to Dover for the 6pm ferry. Both crossings were very windy but amazingly the sea was calm as a millpond. Good for me as I am seasick. At Calais I was expecting to have to pay VAT and import tarifs, but amazing there were no checks and I drove straight out of the port into the town.
Next morning the long drive home. 12 hours due to horrific traffic in Paris and protests from the farmers blocking the autoroutes around Toulouse.
Today I have reassembled the loom, but not yet plugged it in. A few missing pieces, which I have refabricated and I hadn't realised now much higher the breast beam is on the Megado compared to the Spring, so I will have to make a new bench.
Spring and Megado Side by the side, The Megado has a 115cm wide beam compared to the Spring which is 90cm although in this photo they look like it is the opposite.
Checkerboard swedish lace
I revised the draft developed in the last post to get it back to 10 shafts and 10 treadles. Repeating the treadling at the changing of layers to create a closed selvedge.
At first I was just going to weave a sample but in the end I added a few more warp ends so that the sample could be a scarf. After the first square was woven I noticed a couple of misthreadings, so corrected them and started again. The yarn is 15/2 silk (14 wraps/cm) so each layer was sett at 7epcm (18epi). I experimented with zquares using weft in both of the greens in the warp and alternating them.
Networked doubleweave
Gone down a bit of rabbit hole with this. Above is a networked double weave fabric with areas of double and single cloth. Eva Stossel has done some very interesting work with networked doubleweave using yarns with different shrinkage. I ll probably try some similar things or maybe a wool that felts and one that doesn't.
I've been trying in vane to network something with two different structures. Its complicated because ideally you need structures transposed to a straightdraw threading, but the number of shafts becomes too big, even with frequent turning of the draft and using a treadle reducing program. In the process, I came up with a chequerboard design for Swedish lace over plainweave. It reduced to 10 shafts but I added a couple more to try and get a firm border. The lace appears in the opposing squares on the reverse.
Network drafting with doubleweave
Having experimented with double weave using 2 different weave structures in some previous projects (Swedish lace and twill, huck lace and plain weave) my mind turned to networking double weave. This would produce a cloth where rather than the two distinct fabrics changing place instantly, a gradual transition would occur. Some research revealed that this technique is already being explored notably by Alice Schein and Paul O'Connor amongst others. I had seen a recent project by Eva Stossel but hadn't really appreciated ( despite the title) that this is exactly what she was doing.
This paper by Paul O'Connor attempts to explain what is going on. It is rather mind blowing and I am already thinking about possibilities for my next weave!
Textile museum - Lavelanet
I had to drop a planning application into the Mairie at Aigues-Vives, so whilst we were in the area Susie and I visited the Musée des Textiles in nearby Lavelanet. Once a major industry in the town employing over 3500 people, it is now all gone.
Interesting to see a variety of machine looms including jacquard looms and many machines for carding, spinning, warping and finishing fabric.
Part of the museum also explains another now lost local industry that made bone combs....now of course replaced by plastic!
Jacquard loom
Inside the jacquard loom
Machine loom
Various carding machines turning fleece not a thing continuous rolag ready to be spun.
Bateman Park 303
Warping underway for 4 table-runners in two designs off the same warp based on Bateman Park (303) weave. The 7.2m warp is in 8/2 red cotton with 8/4 cotton in alternating blue and white on shafts 2, 3, 5 and 7 which create a counterpoint to the main pattern. The weft is 16/2 white cotton for the tabby, with blue, orange or white in 8/2 cotton for the rest. Sett is 9 epcm (24 epi) for a fairly stiff cloth.
I spent a long time playing with colours and the final choice (subject to sampling) is much simpler than my first designs!
First few sections completed until I ran out of red yarn!
Draft showing the edge (right handside) and part of the centre panel for the first pair of runners, Starting point was Bateman's Park sample 303-2.
The second pair, which started as Bateman's Park sample 303-6.
Weaving underway but not without a few hiccups. After the first six inches of weaving I realised the pattern was all wrong. Eventually I figured out that I d tied up the loom for the second design but was treadling for the first. After redoing the tie up things seemed better but still not quite right. After more investigation I deduced that the draft I d produced for the second design had a slightly different warp threading to the first, In one I had groups of 1, 8, 2, 8 and in the other they were 1, 8, 3, 8. Too late to change, so I'll have a slightly different fabric for the first design.
The second design has quite a bit of texture in the orange sections, we'll see how this plays out in wet finishing.
The runners finished
The new Weaving Barn
After 16 months of hardwork the first floor of our barn renovation is complete - a new studio for weaving, spinning and yoga. Downstairs is next to create teaching space and washing/drying/dyeing spaces for our ouessant fleeces.
Hopefully we'll be announcing dates for courses in spring 2026.
Huck Lace
460 ends of 30/2 silk on the loom for a new project in huck lace. It's a shawl design by Susan Foulkes that caught my eye. You can see hers here
It's the first time I've used pure silk. Its slipperiness meant an overhand knot was necessary on the warping wheel to prevent each section from sliding off as I warped it onto the beam. The weaving went easily although a gentle beat was required to to stop the square motif becoming diamond shaped.
Normally with lace weaves the warp and weft are the same colour but I used brown for the warp and yellow for the weft. The result is a gold, lustrous fabric. With so many ends I decided to hem stitch and leave a fringe. Hem stitching a fabric with 26 epi was excrutiating and required a large magnifying glass and several hours!
The cloth has a lovely softness and drape as you'd expect from silk. I gently wet finished than hung to drip dry.
Close up of the structure
The shawl with the plain weave border and fringe
One repeat of the draft, 9 shafts and 9 treadles
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