After winding the second half of the warp, I rough sleyed it. I prefer to use a reed rather than a raddle to spread the warps out. In this case I wound two ends at a time for 16 epi, so the warp went into the raddle four ends every second dent in an 8 dent reed. It didn't take very long to do and will give me better separation of the ends during beaming which ought to make that part of the process go smoothly.
A little extra preparation at one stage to save time during the next is not a waste of time, so far as I am concerned.
But I know people who adamantly refuse to consider rough sleying because it is a 'waste of time'.
Ultimately everyone has to do what they think best.
There are some people who swear that front to back warping is the best thing since sliced bread. There are others who are just as devoted to back to front.
Personally I am in the back to front camp, even though I dressed the loom front to back for quite a long time. Eventually I found that that particular method just wasn't giving me the results I needed so I changed what I was doing.
Bottom line? If you are happy with what you are doing, there is no need to change. But if you are running into difficulties, you might want to look at a different method.
There are lots of videos, DVD's and plenty of books available which will show either way and variations on those methods.
Find one that works for you and stick with it until you are proficient. If it still isn't working, figure out why and what you need to do to make it work better. Become proficient. Still not working? Analyze and repeat. And keep repeating until you are happy.
First choose your expert. Then become your own expert. Only you will know what is right for you - your physical strengths and weaknesses, your equipment, your space.
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7 comments:
Thanks Laura for more info about rough slaying and the review on winding the warp. I'm ready to take my warp off the board and I'm going to drop it into a box instead of chaining. I'm also going to rough sley for the first time. I built my Glimakra Julia and I'm still working up the nerve to wind on the warp and do all the tie up, I'm so nervous and procrastinating! It also doesn't help that I'm exhausted from working at school 10 hours and dealing with our excessive heat!
I would like to thank you Laura, you're doing wonderful work showing us how diversed weaving is.
And one question to the beaming method using a reed instead a raddle. Is it possible without warping valet?
Sunny greetings from Poland :)
Yes, the reed just spreads the warp to the width it needs to be. When there is no valet available, I weight the warp and let it hang from the breast beam. If the loom is narrow enough and the warp not too wide, I can actually just hold the warp in my left hand and crank with my right. But I have long arms. A short person might not be able to do it that way. The main thing is to apply tension to help the threads roll onto the beam without tangles.
cheers,
Laura
Thanks for the answer :-)
I'm a new weaver, still establishing my preferred method of loom-dressing. I'm intrigued by the idea of rough-sleying (since I don't have a raddle), but I can't seem to find instructions. How do you get your ends through the reed without losing the cross? Or do you just not worry too much about keeping the ends in absolutely perfect order?
The cross is held by the lease sticks. Check out my other blog posts on rough sleying or reed as raffle for more info.
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