curtains revisited

I'm revisiting the first weave I designed a few years ago. It made curtains for the kitchen but they were always a little bit too small and it's been annoying me ever since. So I'm weaving some more fo the fabric to widen each curtain. Four different coloured bobbins makes for a crowded workspace!

The finished fabric on the curtains

Doubleweave experiments

I started thinking about doubleweave. Usually one weaves two (or more) layers of plain or sometimes twill weave and through altering the tie and up, treadling and number of shuttles, one can play with which layer is on top and whether they are joined to form a single double cloth, a tube, two separate layers, etc. But what would happen if the two layer were completely different weave structures? What if they used different yarns, at different setts? 

After some experimenting on fibreworks, I decided to mix plain cloth on one layer with a classic swedish "mosquito" lace on the other. The plain cloth was in 8/2 cotton, whilst the lace was in 20/2 both at 24 epi. Because of the way the weaving progresses in doubleweave with alternating picks in each layer, I figured that the weft density of the plain weave (24ppi) would control the density of the swedish lace to the same number of ppi. With the much finer 20/2 yarn this give an even, open weave. 

The resulting two layers are tied together in the weave at intervals and I hoped this would create a transparent lace cloth with windows to the plain cloth beneath. Rather like a stained glass window.

I used up lots of stash to make a multi coloured plain cloth, but kept the swedish lace white.

warped at 48epi combined

fabric on the loom, the windows in the lace aren't evident until the fabric is washed and finished

the finished cloth

I think there are lots of possibilities with this method, monksbelt springs to mind as another suitable weave structure for one of the layers. One could also fill the pockets formed between the layers with 'objects' as the weave progresses, sealing them in forever once the layers are woven together at intervals. A project for another day.

 

Rug

I needed a new runner for the bathroom which I had recently refurbished and decided to weave something in diversified plain weave. The structure seemed a good choice for bold pattern, though I haven't heard of it being used for rugs. There are some notes on the structure and example drafts in Strickler's "8 shaft pattern book".

She says that ideally the pattern and background threads should have a difference in diameter of 5-6 times. This seemed a lot, but eventually I choose 8/2 cotton for the background and a mini-mop from lankava.fi to achieve the difference. Usually rugs are woven in wool to be hard wearing but in the bathroom the frequent wetting and need to machine wash made the cotton the more natural choice.

Strickler also recomends that each set of pattern and neighbouring background threads on each side be sleyed through a single dent in the reed, advice I followed.                         

I should probably have done some sampling to test the structure but as is often the case I was impatient to get going.

There didn't seem to be any tension problems warping the 8/2 and mini mop on the same beam (I only have one in any case) and during the weaving there wasn't ny noticeable take up differences.  The main issues I noticed were firstly that it was difficult to beat the mini mop hard enough to get the density I was after (subsequently I have realised that the overhead beater on my old loom effortless beat very hard because of its weight, on the spring II I often need a double beat) and secondly that the background threads had a tendency to slip over or under the thicker minimop, which for me destroyed the effect I was after in the fabric. It would have been much better if in fact the background threads had been in different dents to the minimop to help keep them in place. Whether they would have slipped around during finishing I don't know. A generally denser sett for warp and weft may have helped.

The finished rug is pleasant enough and functional, if a bit too drapey. A reminder to always sample first!

 

bateman sampling

Whilst I m waiting for a new loom reed suitable for the bathroom rug project, I put a narrow warp on the loom to do some sampling. Playing with bateman blend and basket weave twill.

 

Tea towels

Oscar A Beirus tea towals are a classic design but nearly always woven in black and white. I thought I'd give them a lift with a technicolour warp! I changed the weft for each towel, keeping just the square outlines in pink, so each is slightly different.

 

Pleats

 

I ve been reading Ann Richards book Weaving textiles that shape themselves and wanted to try something self-pleating. A fan of origami I decided to repeatedly reverse the pleating directions to create something truly 3D.

I used alternating cords combined with half-hopsack. Linen for the sides of the pleats for stiffness, 16/2 orange cotton for a soft fold, silk/stainless steel for a sharp crest. Alternate high twist wool wefts are ready to spring into action and form the pleats during wet finishing.

Following origami ideas I worked on changing the pleat directions to create a complex cloth.

On the loom the cloth is flat and the weaving is relatively easy, once off and wet finished the magic begins to happens!

echo scarf

It's taken a long time to recover from COVID. No great illness just generally tired, with lingering aches and pains. 

The specialist yarns I ordered from the UK last November were lost by Royal Mail. A second set were dispatched to Jasper but they didn't arrive in time for Susie to bring them back to France with her. Jasper posted them and Royal Mail have lost them again. even though they were tracked delivery (they never made it beyond the Post Office). So now we have to wait 4 weeks before we can get compensation will only cover half the cost. Very frustrating, I think I will only use DPD or DHL from now on.

So a weave on the loom using the threads I have here left over from other projects - 8/2 cotton. An iridescent moiré on 12 shafts from Marian Stubenitsky's book Weaving with Echo and Iris page 24. 

finished scarf