Staying Flexible

 

I cut the last warp off over the weekend and starting prepping the next one.  I have about 1/4 of the warp threaded, and hope to finish that today and to commence weaving tomorrow.

As I worked with the Swedish Snowflake design some things bothered me about the draft.  Since I had to 'shorten' the threading draft in order to accommodate the lower epi, I decided to edit out the areas of satin weave threading/tie up.  In the end I'm more pleased with this slimmed down threading draft and I will be working with this draft as I sort out the treadling sequences I will be 'testing'.

I used to have a neighbour who was Swedish, then moved to Canada to marry her Canadian sweetheart.  She had a tough time adapting to a different culture - at times - and one day I showed her a design I was playing with - Swedish Snowflake.  She nearly jumped out of her chair saying that the design was the version of snowflake twill that represented her 'province'.  

It was then I learned that there is a whole 'collection' of snowflake twills and I explored designing with them for a while

At any rate, she asked me if I could make her some tablecloths.  Her table was from Sweden, wider than most tables made at the time here, and she had 3 leaves she could use to make the table longer.  She asked from time to time if I would make her a 'set' of tablecloths for her table and I refused because at the time I only had a manual dobby and I couldn't face pegging a double width version.  My 60" wide weaving width AVL could not make a table cloth as wide as she needed without doing it double width.

As the years went by, AVL offered a computer assisted dobby.  I waited a year for them to (hopefully) work the bugs out, then bought one.  I was also taking a bit of a  hiatus from production weaving, so I told my friend that if she bought the yarns, I would make her tablecloths.  The thing was, she would have to wind off some yarn onto spools because I would need 72 yarn packages and I didn't want to purchase 72 tubes of 2/16 cotton.

She agreed, I ordered the yarn and brought her my small electric bobbin/spool winder so she could wind the yarn onto the spools.  

Beaming the warp was a bit...interesting...given my spool rack only held 60 spools and I had to jury-rig for the additional 12 spools, but eventually I got the warp beamed, threaded, and the treadlings designed.

She wanted the table cloths to have a 'border' all around the edge, not to just have the pattern 'fall off' the end, so I had two treadlings - one for the border, and one for the main body of the table cloth.  I had taken copious measurements of the table with each leaf installed to show the 4 sizes she wanted.  And then I had added about 10 yards in case of 'oopsies'.

This warp was probably the most 'technical' I've done, insofar as I needed to make them 'perfect'.  Her Swedish sensibilities would not tolerate the dimensions being 'off'!

It was also the slowest weaving I've ever done.  Instead of 9 yards a day, I could manage 9".  Every single shed had to be checked that it was 'clear' before throwing the shuttle.  I did NOT want the two layers 'stitched' together!

It was a challenge!  And one I won't repeat.

However, I managed to weave the four tablecloths, and handed them over 'loom state' (in part because in Sweden, when you bought linen cloth it was never wet finished for you to prove that you were buying 'new' and she had lots of experience with wet finishing and cleaning linen textiles.)

After that I still had about 10 yards of warp left and I had some somewhat thicker linen weft so I wove myself and a friend each a tablecloth with the blue linen.  Our blue tablecloths were not 'perfect' but I wasn't about to mess around changing the epi to make them more 'perfect'.

Am I glad I did the tablecloths?  Yes.

Would I do this again? Hell, no!

Sometimes you just need to go more slowly to get the results you desire.  The double weave fold is in this photo.  Can you see it?

Challenges

One of the challenges in the Olds curriculum is that of weaving double weave, both double wide and double width.

The top sample was woven by one of my students, the lower one by me.

The fold in each of these textiles is visible in the photo.  Well, that's the point.  It isn't visible.  One can speculate where it might be, but in real life?  It really isn't visible and the only way I can tell where it actually is?  I need to fold the cloth in half.

Recently I read a discussion on line about how horrible weaving double width is, that it is impossible to ever get a decent fold and it's essentially a mad waste of time for anyone to ever do it.

I'm here to say it can be done.  I show proof that I'm not the only one who can do it.  In fact several students this year completely rocked the fold but their homework has been returned.  This one will be returned to the student at the conference.  I'm hoping she will allow me to display her work during the seminar on the Olds program.  But I have to ask first, and I haven't, so I'm not saying whose it is.  I'm sure that if she reads this blog post she will recognize her work.  

Even if you can't get the fold 'perfect', there are ways to disguise it.  In the upper photo the fold shows one way to partially disguise with the colours of the stripes, plus a really nice fulling of the wool yarn.  Although I think she was playing it 'safe' because even without that, the fold was invisible.

In mine, the warp was 2/16 cotton, 36 ends per layer for a total of 72, and the weft was linen 20 (I think - it's been a while)  There was no 'disguising' the fold.  I've mentioned this project previously and the best I could do weaving this cloth was 9" per day.  Because every shed had to be checked, and two of the four routinely cleared, then the fold had to be very carefully laid in.

This warp was a once in a lifetime project.  And I do not regret doing it.