Counter-balance to countermarch

After completing my second weave, my search for the next project and continued reading about weaving, I have realised the limitations of a four shaft counter-balance loom.

After some designing, I worked out that I can convert my loom from a counter-balance action to to a countermarch action using offcuts from various joinery projects and some bought items - texsolv cord and anchors. As I'm making fundamental changes and there is room on the loom frame, I've decided to increase the number of shafts to 8 and the treadles to 10.

I choose to have a horizontal countermarch action with pairs of levers for each shaft

A key decision has been how to organise the "tie-up" - the connection of the treadles to the shafts via upper and lower lams (levers that either raise or lower shafts). I discovered a recently developed system called "top-o-the-lam". You can read more about it here. It makes changing the tie up much quicker as one only needs to move anchors rather than moving cords as they all remain permanently in place. It does take a lot of texsolv cord though!

Adjustment of the shaft level is mostly made where they attach to the levers

 

Overshot

After finishing the my first weave, I packed the loom away. It was pretty large in our living room and I had many other projects calling for my attention. After two successive COVID lockdowns my mind has turned once again to weaving and after some searching on the web I found an interesting weave structure called overshot that allows for more curved structures. 

The pattern is called Wandering vine table runner by Tom Kinsley and I bought it on line from Handwoven magazine.

The pattern wefts are in a 8/2 jagerspun wool, alternating with a finer 10/2 cotton tabby (plain weave). It is very difficult to find 10/2 in Europe and in the end I ordered the cotton from the US as I don't have enough knowledge yet to be certain of the effect of changing yarns.

With this weave I decided to try some new techniques. 

Firstly I warped the loom in the opposite direction - from front to back. Difficult to know if this was easier because this warp is much easier to deal with being 2m long and having just 454 ends at 24 epi.

Secondly, I decided to use floating selvedges. A pair of seperately tensioned warp threads at each edge of the warp, which do not pass through the heddles. Every weft shot goes around the floating selvedge which helps create neater selvedges and is particularly useful for the woolen pattern wefts which don't always end at the edge of the cloth.

This is only my second weave and the treadling sequence is more complicated and requires I pay some attention. I have it written on a piece of paper hanging from the castle. the weaving is more engaging than the my first "rep" project.

Off the loom and rather than hem the ends as suggested in the pattern, I tried some hem stitching to create a little fringe. My selvedges are far from perfect but they are markedly better.