view of two towels from the 'side' - upper is loom state, lower is wet finished
We 'know' things in different ways. There are things we know consciously; there are things we know subconsciously; there are things we know intuitively.
Consciously, I know that wet finishing a web will change it, sometimes radically, sometimes subtlety.
The things I know intuitively are based on marrying both the conscious and subconscious and extrapolating what happens when I think through all my choices and make an assumption on what will happen when I change certain things.
One of the challenges of teaching weaving is articulating all of those ways of 'knowing' in a way that someone else might understand.
The photo above doesn't really do what I'm going to talk about justice because it is really hard to get a good clear picture of something that is better felt, but here goes...
Over the years I've woven I have noticed changes that happen during wet finishing. Most of the time I don't spend too much time analyzing, but file the change away in the deep recesses of my mind. But now that I've been writing again, and doing deep dives into the craft in a more organized way, with an audience I *hope* will be as interested as I am in going deep, I have been weaving samples. Weaving samples in much the same way I did for my GCW master weaver certificate. Weaving and then analyzing the results in a much more organized and conscious way.
I have subconsciously noted many times that the change in the web includes the fact that it becomes thicker after wet finishing. It was not something that was particularly important to me until now, when I'm looking at the cloth from all the angles. And a lot more obvious with thicker yarns than thinner ones.
And I know the photo doesn't really show it, but it is *obvious* in the hand that after wet finishing *including a hard press* that the wet finished cloth is thicker than the loom state.
Why? I can think of lots of reasons, but it reminds me of this simple fact - it is very difficult to make thin cloth from thick yarn.
When I started weaving I came to the craft with a broad base of textile knowledge from sewing my own clothing, to knitting, embroidery, and that one year class in spinning and weaving on small looms. It was only after learning to wet finish my webs that I became completely absorbed in trying to make cloth that *I* would want to use. I soon realized that I needed to work with yarn a whole lot finer than most weavers to achieve the quality of cloth I wanted to make.
It was largely that goal that spurred me into becoming as efficient as I could possibly become, doing time studies, then tweaking my processes to iron out road blocks in the processes.
And I did it, for a while. I used 2/60 silk to make clothing fabric, and loved the results. But people were not willing to pay me to make that, so I scaled up again and largely worked with 2/8 cotton for most of my production.
Even now that I'm 'retired' I still work as efficiently as I am able, and even though I have had to slow down and cut back on what my body will tolerate, I can still weave fairly quickly.
I've been working on tea towels using 2/16 cotton for the past few years and I know how long it takes me to beam a warp, thread/sley it and how many picks I can (usually) weave in a 45 minute weaving session (the most my therapist will encourage me to do in one sitting).
And I can confidently say that using 'friendly' linen or cotton weft, I can throw 1000 picks in 45 minutes. That includes stopping to advance the warp and change bobbins. That's about 22 picks per minute.
Should everyone be able to do that? No. Everyone should do what is 'best' for them. What I have hoped to do is let people know what is possible, and then let them decide if it is desirable - for them - to work towards their own goals.
I taught a workshop somewhere that had a brand spanking new weaver in the class. I was told that she was so new other guild members had helped her dress her loom and I thanked them for letting me know so that I could adjust what I was focusing on with her - keeping my advice more direct, simpler, allowing for the fact that she didn't have a base of knowledge others in the class had. At one point I asked if people wanted me to demonstrate how I wove and when they said yes, I sat down at one of the floor looms and gave a demonstration of holding and throwing the shuttle, discussed how to beat, control the weft, treadle, etc.
Later, that new weaver approached me and thanked me for showing that weaving didn't have to be painfully slow, that if she kept at it, she could become more efficient, and less 'clumsy'. I encouraged her to keep going and find out what would work best for her.
And so I hope that with the things I've written, here and elsewhere (you know where to find my books and classes, right?) that people will find the best way for them.
Recently I've had a couple of my Olds students contact me and reference the earworm 'what would Laura do'. Heart; cockles; warmed...
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