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.
