A Woman of 'Stature'

 

Another old photo of myself at the loom, pre air assist.  

I hated the original centre pull activation of the fly shuttle and eventually got Doug to help me change the system over to the kind of cording shown in Laya Brostoff's book Production Weaving on the Fly Shuttle Loom.

The AVL was 60" weaving width and I routinely wove the full width, or as in the above photo, very close to the full width.  I believe my production warps for placemats/table runners were about 50" in the reed.  I could, in fact, throw the shuttle that far by hand because I was tall with long arms, but using the fly shuttle was just So Much faster.  The original set up was for two boxes which made doing things like weaving in a cut line or the space to be left for fringes really easy.

In this photo you can see the shuttle exiting the shed heading for the box.  My hand is on the box changer and I always used my right hand for the fly shuttle.  I never did take the time to figure out how to change hands which put all the 'load' onto my right hand side.  Never mind I knew I should get comfortable using either hand, I never did.  I got really good at finessing the shuttle using this system.

It looks like this photo is from before the Compu-Dobby, so sometime in the late 1980s early 1990s.

Weaving rhythm on this loom with a single fly shuttle was about 90 ppm.  Of course part of that speed was due to the auto-cloth system because all I had to do was change pirns, not stop to advance the warp and reset the tension.  The auto-cloth system is probably the one assist I miss the most on the Megado.  Not that I can't advance and reset - just really miss the fact that I can't just keep weaving until the bobbin runs out.

I removed the hearing protection that I always wore for weaving for the purpose of this photo.  It was used as a 'promotional' photo.  I paid a photographer to come to the studio to take some photos of me at work which were used as part of a magazine article.  I even went and got my hair done 'fancy'.  :D  Not sure you can see the 'highlights' in my hair but yes, I was already turning obviously grey.

My hair has remained essentially the same cut since I started seriously weaving.  At my peak production I would sweat because when you do something resembling ditch digging in the hot sun for 5+ hours a day, sweat happens.  So I would shower every night and didn't want long hair that would take ages to dry.  A wash and wear haircut was just the ticket.

I also stopped wearing a watch because the constant 'hammering' from the beater hitting the fell was breaking mechanical watches.  I only recently - as in about 2014 - started wearing a Fitbit.  The digital fitness trackers seem to stand up to weaving better than mechanical watches used to do.  And now Fitbit monitors my heart rate (a feature I wanted after my by-pass surgery to make sure I was taking it 'easy' recovering from that) and now it gives me updates on my aerobic activity.  It thinks weaving is swimming, but never mind.  :D

If you look at the sectional beam, there are sections that have colour in them.  They are not part of the woven cloth, but markers for where the cutlines were and where I needed to pull threads to create a 'ditch' to sew in.  Then the 'excess' ends and picks were pulled from the cloth creating a textile with fringe all the way around.  

This is a different design from that on the loom, but used the same technique.  Doing this allowed me to weave 3 mats/runners at once, then process them into individual units during inspection.  The coloured threads for the ditches remained in place until I was sat at the sewing machine because the web is pretty fragile until it has been 'finished', both dry and wet.

This photo shows me separating the mats using an electric Chickadee rotary cutter, using the cut lines to separate one group from another.  Then the three would be cut apart and the selvedge cut off in preparation for the four sided fringe.

One thing about writing the essays is that they are dredging up a lot of memories.  Do I miss those days?  Not much.  I do miss the 2" or so that I've shrunk - who knows it may be more by now, it's been a while since I checked my height.

I DO miss my stamina and ability to weave for 4 or 5 hours a day.  But never mind, I'm still weaving, and that is all that counts...