A Day

Leclerc loom with 11 meter long warp, about 9 of them woven

AVL, still waiting to be threaded

Meg  from NZ suggested a Day in the Life of our looms, so here's mine as of 11 am January 1, 2015

The small loom is now empty, waiting for the next warp.  The mats are about half way through being cut apart and serged.

The parts for the AVL are en route so I need to get that warp threaded soon so that as soon as they get installed I can fly at weaving off this warp.

I am seriously hoping that the phone will ring next week to set the surgical date and once that happens it will be full speed ahead making arrangements.  

Until they call, I will be jumping every time the phone rings, so send lots of good vibes that they do call soon...

Antique

My AVL is an 'antique'.  Yes, that's right, it's number 00181.  It was probably the first loom shipped with a fly shuttle and the auto-cloth advance arrived about six months later.

This was in, oh, 1982.  So the loom is 'antique' at 32 years old.  That's 32 years of production weaving, with literally miles and miles and miles of cloth over the beams.

As the weaver using it has aged, so has the loom.  Bits and pieces of it are wearing out.  And so it happened today that when I changed the pick wheel from 26 to 28, all of a sudden the auto-cloth advance would not work any longer.

Doug came into the studio as I was tearing it apart and helped diagnose the problem.  It's hard to see but there is a lever on the underneath of the pick wheel (that thing with the teeth) that prevents the wheel from slipping when the long rod pushes against the top pawl (I think that's the correct word.)

Unfortunately the hole that the bottom lever sits in is worn.  Badly.  So badly the lever would not align properly and was preventing the mechanism from working to advance the cloth.

Doug was able to jury-rig a fix which I hope will see me through the last 5 yards of warp on the loom and then he will do a better fix which will hopefully allow the loom to continue to work as it is supposed to do.

While he is doing that I will hop on over to the Leclerc and finally deal with those painted warps for scarves.  Hopefully it won't take long to re-drill the hole and insert a bushing, but I'm not sure he can do it himself or if he'll have to find a metal worker/machinist.

I'm hoping that he can get it fixed so that it lasts the rest of my weaving life.  I rather suspect that when I'm done weaving, this loom will be, too.

Potholes

In addition to the nasty potholes in the streets I've run into a couple in the studio. :P~

Now that these three skeins are dried I realize that the mylar has broken in at least one place in each skein, sometimes two places.

Now if these skeins were for my own use I wouldn't worry about that too much. They are core spun and the broken mylar ply won't compromise the integrity of the yarn and I would just deal with it.

But these skeins are not for my own use - I'm trying to develop an inventory of handspun yarns I can work on when I can't weave, for sale to others. And I can't, in all conscience, offer them for sale when I know they have broken ply threads.

And so I have to look at alternatives. Not that I don't have some already in my stash!

I could also ply the mylar with something else to strengthen it, but that's just way more labour than I want to invest into something that I don't know people will be willing to pay for - at least pay enough to make it worth my while to make it. (Anyone interested in some 'seconds'?)

So I'll be digging through my stash to look for alternatives, two of which I'm pretty sure will work - just have to dig them out of storage.

The other pothole is the test warp I put onto the AVL the other day. I'm having problems getting it to beat in square and the auto cloth advance isn't working properly either. I think that's a function of the cloth not beating in to match the take up so I've just cut the second sample off the loom, removed the 8 dent reed and inserted a 10 and will change the set from 32 epi (4 in a dent) to 30 epi (3 in a dent).

Keeping fingers crossed that will fix that problem.

In the meantime I'm winding skeins and pushing for the scheduled dye day on Monday.

Currently reading Firestorm by Rachel Caine

Tweaking

Since I wasn't happy with the hem area of the illusion towels, I changed it to a 1/3 twill. I'd originally thought to have a mostly red hem, but decided I liked the beige better:




One of the great advantages of a computer aided loom is that I can program the entire treadling repeat for an item including the cut line and then I can just weave without thinking too much. Surface attention is required, of course, because the loom can go wrong! But if everything is working well only surface attention is required and I can get into the zone. It's like a working meditation with the added bonus of doing an aerobic workout, getting the benefit of the exercise and the endorphins that dump into your system as a result. What's not to love? :)




As previously mentioned I'm weaving this warp under high tension. Checking my twill angle you can clearly see that at 40 epi and 36 ppi, the twill angle is steeper than the ideal of 45 degrees.

OTOH, since the warp is being held under high tension and I'm measuring under tension, plus the fact that the cotton will contract at a higher % than the linen weft, I expect that once wet finished this fabric will be very close to the ideal.

So how do I achieve the degree of tension I need for this warp?




The balance arm is jammed up against the loom frame.

Now I have been publicly chastised for telling people I do this because it can't possibly work, so don't try this at home, folks.

Oh - the string hanging down toward the front of the loom is a 'sling' that I use to hold the balance arm when the brake is disengaged.

Admitting Defeat

I want this fabric to be sturdy, so chose a set of 40 epi. If you click on the photo you should be able to see the first tie up I used (the lower end, rounding the beam) which had a lot of plain weave in it with just a little twill for flexibility.

Unfortunately this weave structure at this set with these yarns did not want to beat in square, even with the use of a temple.

After nearly half a yard of fighting with the loom and the yarns, I decided to change the tie up to have more floats and tried again. It still wasn't beating in square so I decided to admit defeat and do what the loom and yarns wanted to do in this instance. Since I'm weaving under quite high tension, I figure that once the fabric is wet finished it will likely end up pretty close to square anyway. So why fight it?

When I decided to do what the loom/yarn wanted to do I had to figure out what the actual ppi was. So I took a contrasting yarn and laid it into the shed, wove 40 picks and wove in the other end of the contrasting colour. Then I measured how long those 40 picks were actually taking up and figured 36 would be a much better ppi - one that would allow the weft to beat in the way it wanted to beat in and yet still wouldn't be too far off 'ideal'.

Decided that the more elaborate twill was much more visually interesting and decided not to change that but leave it as it is.

I can weave about 24 picks before needing to move the temple so I count to 24, put down the shuttle and move the temple. Yes, it's slow - much slower than I prefer to weave - but that is what it is going to take to get this fabric woven.

Once I'm done with this I can switch to a different weft, weave structure and purpose - shawls don't need to be anywhere near as sturdy as this cloth - and continue without the temple.

With 40 yards on the beam, using up this much yarn to sample isn't a hardship. I know that most people don't have the luxury of 'wasting' that much yarn sampling for a project. But this fabric won't be 'wasted'. I'll give it to my local guild for samples for the newsletter.

The guild has discussed from time to time sending out electronic newsletters but several of our guild members don't even own computers, let alone get on to the internet, so for now we're still sending out paper newsletters and samples when ever someone has one to share.

Have A Heart (or two)

cheese grater beam installed


scarf #2 and 3 off the loom, back and front sides...once the cloth has been wet finished I expect the motif side will 'read' better since the chenille will be all fluffed up and give better coverage...it already has a quite nice hand, though, not like how 100% rayon chenille woven in plain weave feels right off the loom!

Decided that the beams couldn't possibly weigh more than 6 or 7 pounds so when I finished scarf #3 I cut the web off and installed the cheese grater beam.

When I used to weave for a fashion designer, it would quite often be 10 yards of this, 12 yards of that, 3 yards of something else. When she was using rayon chenille and/or the long eyelash yarns it was just a whole lot more efficient to have two beams, one clad with the cg stuff so that it was a matter of moments to change over from one beam to the other.

The cg metal is actually a long strip about 2.5 or 3 inches wide and you install it by winding it in a spiral around the sandpaper beam. I worried about cutting my hands taking it on and off as often I would need to (at the time), not to mention the time it would take. In the long run it was much more efficient to just weave a few more yards to earn the money to buy a second beam. :)

With such a narrow warp my arms will be in danger of getting grated because the web simply won't provide much protection from the sharp teeth so as soon as the apron clears the beam I'll wrap a couple of ex-placemat rejects around the beam right up against the selvedges. I kept a bunch of these flawed mats for rags and other purposes, like wrapping the beams.

This morning I tweaked the tie up slightly to give more definition to the small hearts and wove a second scarf in that design but using a slightly varigated pinkish colour. I don't normally use a variegated in the weft much because so often the colours will stripe in various ways, some of them pleasant, some of them not so much. But this yarn only has the one hue and it changes from a medium light to a medium dark shade.

I like it well enough that I'll do another design with this colour - a traditional motif often used in things like charted embroidery - essentially it is four 'hearts' all with their points aimed at each other. It sort of looks like a flower. Well, you'll see tomorrow. :)

Auto-Cloth Advance

Peg asked about the sandpaper/cheese grater beams on my AVL.

I was probably one of the very first people to order the auto-cloth advance on my AVL Production loom. I ordered it based on what AVL told me at the ANWG conference I attended in 1981 - both it and the double box fly shuttle options. When the loom was ready to be shipped in November of that year, I found out that neither of those options that I'd ordered was currently available. Apparently they flew a trial balloon at the conference to see if anyone was interested before they actually perfected proto-types. Eventually the fly shuttle was ready in February and the loom was shipped - without the auto-cloth advance, which wasn't ready until the following August. :(

So what I have is the original auto-cloth advance, not the newer, higher pick style.




This photo was taken from above and shows the end of the sandpaper beam, which is covered with a fairly coarse grit sandpaper. You can see the gear at the end of the beam meshing with another smaller gear, then lower is the pick wheel which dictates how many picks per inch the cloth will advance.



Here is a side view - not quite in focus - sorry. But you can make out that there is a pin in the bottom of the beater. (I have the lower mount beater, not the overhead.) When the beater is brought forward, the rod moves forward pushing the pawl which advances the pick wheel. In this case I've set the wheel to advance 24 picks per inch.

When the wheel advances, the chain moves the small gear up top, which rotates the sandpaper beam, which grips the cloth tightly and moves the cloth 1/24 of an inch every time the beater is brought forward.

The fell line stays in exactly the same place in relation to the reed/beater and the only time I have to stop weaving is when the bobbin or pirn runs out. While it may not seem like the savings in time is very large it does make the whole process of weaving more efficient because I don't have to stop every inch or so to adjust the fell.

Now why would I have to use the cheese grater beam for the rayon chenille?



the beam has bits of a very long eye-lash yarn caught on it - I've tried to clean it off but it would take more time than I'm willing to invest and doesn't appear to interfere with the functioning of the beam....

It's because the rayon chenille has a pile to it and therefore the sandpaper beam will stop gripping the cloth. When this happens the sandpaper literally sands the pile off the surface of the cloth. The cheese grater metal has much longer 'teeth' which dig into the woven structure of the web more effectively.

While the sandpaper will work for several yards it's a pain to have to stop and cut off and re-tie after every 2nd or 3rd scarf, so I will get Doug to help me swap the beams over after I weave another scarf or two so that I can weave all the way to the end of this 40 yard warp without having to stop and cut/re-tie.

Once the entire warp is woven the cloth storage roller will be moved to my inspection table at which point the scarves will get cut apart and serged.

These scarves will have hems, not fringes. The two different yarns in the warp are not going to make attractive fringes - in my opinion - so I'm weaving hems with just the fine yarn.

Diversified Plain Weave

a little oopsie...see the line???

This afternoon I tied on and started weaving on the Diversified Plain Weave warp I had prepared a while ago.

DPW is an interesting weave structure consisting of two different yarns, generally a thick yarn and a much finer one in both warp and weft. The thick yarn is what creates the pattern, the fine yarns hold it all together. The weave structure is perfect for using rayon chenille as the pattern thread as the plain weave tie downs hold everything together and help prevent the rayon chenille from 'worming' (backing out of the weave structure creating little pig-tails of yarn).

Given the complexity of the threading, even though I used a simple point progression for the units, it was a good idea to start with something simple to prove that everything was correct.

In fact, everything wasn't correct - I'd made a simple error in the treadling and while fixing it I left a slight imperfection in the spacing of the wefts. It may come out in the wet finishing, it may not. If not, I guess I have a new scarf. ;) Or it can go as a gift to someone who doesn't mind my 'seconds'.

It also became apparent that I did not have the tension set properly on the two warps - the fine warp was too loose - the thick warp was too tight.

I also realized after I'd tied on that I ought to have used the cheese grater breast beam but hopefully I'll be able to weave at least a couple of scarves before the sandpaper beam stops gripping. When that happens I'll have to cut off and insert the other beam, tie on and set off once more. Since this is such a narrow warp it may even go to more length before I need to change it but when it fails it generally fails catastrophically so I'll probably be a bit conservative and cut off before that happens. Hopefully.

The pattern in Diversified Plain Weave is balanced but opposite colour will show on the two sides. In other words, what is red on the face will be black on the back. You might be able to see that on the face there are thick red stripes and thin black ones while on the reverse there are thick black stripes with thinner red ones.

When this situation exists, I will tie up my loom so that I lift the fewest possible shafts. Which means that for some of my patterns I may well be weaving them back to front.

I also need to bear in mind that what I am weaving are scarves which generally get draped over someone's shoulders. What will be upright at one end of the scarf will be upside down on the other. So motifs that are directional will quite often get alternated in their orientation.

While I have a number of ideas for motifs/patterns I've not actually hammered them out so my next task will be to start generating the liftplans (treadlings) for more.

Weaving on this warp is, as expected, very, very slow. But right now that's not a bad thing. :)

Just finished reading Hook, Line and Sinister (short mystery stories revolving around fishing). Currently reading The Complaints by Ian Rankin

Shawl It Up

Here is the beginning of the painted warp shawl.


And here it is coming round to the cloth storage roller at the back/bottom of the loom.

I really love my AVL for the cloth storage and auto-advance systems. I never have to stop to advance the warp (unless I'm working finer than 48 ppi), just keep on weaving until the bobbin runs out.

While it may not seem like stopping to advance the warp would take all that long, every time you stop throwing the shuttle is 'lost' time. Being able to just continously treadle, throw and beat stopping every 10 or more minutes instead of every minute or two adds a lot more productivity to the day.

I have extra storage beams. When I go back down to the studio this evening, the first thing I will do is cut the shawl from the apron, insert the plain storage beam and tape the cloth to that.

The bad thing is that sometimes I ignore the webs on the beams and then I have several beams to deal with before I can clear one or more of them off. That is the situation I am about to encounter now - one storage beam has some of the red shawls I wove months ago, still waiting to be fringe twisted and cut off the beam. One beam has some painted warp shawls that I've been ignoring for several months, and a third beam has the Diversified Plain Weave afghans on it. The fourth - and last - plain beam will go into the loom tonight.

Time to clear off some of the storage beams!

It's also time to start packing my suitcase for Missouri.

Back to Tea Towels

I'm back to the AVL and tea towels, weaving with the single 6's cotton.

My initial choice (to the left) seemed to be a bit flimsy to me, so I decided to change the weave structure and ppi. Instead of a fancy twill, I changed to an advancing twill treadling, and increased the ppi from 24 to 28. (the section between the red lines) The intention was to create a thicker fabric that was still supple. The advancing twill structure has fewer interlacements -the weft can pack in tighter without becoming stiff.

After a 3 day hiatus where I wove only on the Fanny, I went back to the AVL and looked at the web again. Even at 28 ppi, I felt the resulting fabric was still going to be a bit on the light side and changed to 30 ppi (to the right) You can see that the white looks more intense to the far right than it does to the far left or between the red lines.

Gearing down to 30 and 32 ppi, it sometimes takes an inch or two to get the ratio right, and you can easily see the section at the beginning where the auto cloth advance was actually advancing two clicks (I have the old gear wheel system) resulting in 15 ppi instead of the intended 30 ppi.

The down side of using more ppi is that it is going to take longer to weave a towel than at 24 ppi. The up side is that I will use up more yarn! :D

The yarn, being a single, shows the inconsistencies involved in spinning more than a 2 ply would, and the fabric has subtle weft wise streaks in it. This should even out to a large degree during wet finishing, which will include a hard press.

Many people do not understand that a hard press is not ironing.

When you iron, you sweep the heated iron back and forth across the cloth. A hard press is when you clamp the iron down tightly in order to compress the threads. This effectively notches the warp and weft together. The surface becomes smooth. Threads that shine become much more reflective and gleam - something that we prize in yarns like silk and linen (or Tencel, mercerized cotton, and so on.)

When I'm wet finishing my goal is to get a cohesive fabric, one where the warp and the weft come together becoming a whole that is greater than the individual parts. When I feel a fabric, I do not want to feel individual threads, I want to feel an integrated cloth.

Right now I am blessed with owning and being able to operate an industrial steam press. This makes the enormous job of hard pressing much more efficient. I used to use an Elna flat bed press - a small home press. Doug and I pressed literally thousands of placemats on it. Pressing yardage could be done, but it was difficult and slow. The industrial press makes short work of pressing yardage as well as smaller items.

I don't know how much longer I will be able to afford to house and operate the press. It's one reason I'm madly weaving up as much of my fine thread stash as I can. I can easily press scarves on the small flat bed press even though it takes me longer, but tea towels and larger items are more fiddly on the small press. :)