Let's start with adding another ingredient to great selvedges. 6. Sett: if your sett it too close you will be beating for days to try and get a decent ppi and you selvedges will not be happy. Now I realize sometimes you want to play with the sett to get a particular look but in my recent experience I was fooled, yet again, by the title of the weave versus the tie-up and it lead to frustration in getting the right ppi and sad little selvedges. In the picture above you can see how some areas are more dense than others because I was having to beat very hard in order to create a balanced twill. If you look off to the left of the image you can see my sad little selvedges all wrinkly and disappointing. From having read a million weaving articles I knew the sett was wrong so instead of the recommended 48 epi I rethreaded to 45 epi. Oh! here is an article from handwoven about this issue: 'How to fix your selvedges and achieve an even beat' Well, I started weaving at 45 epi and I was still getting streaks and sad selvedges. Luckily, my mentor emailed me that morning about how she was able to use a book I gave her ('A Weaver's Handbook of 8 shaft Patterns' by Deborah Chandler) as reference to help another person choose the appropriate sett for their project. "Oh really!" I thought, "well let me tell you about my sett issues then" ha! This is when she had to repeat a lesson she had already taught me but alas I have to hear some things three times before I remember it. Basically, look at the tie-up of the pattern for sett! If you look at the above tie-up you see a beautiful checkerboard pattern. That means there will be areas of plain weave. For this particular one it's a LOT of plain weave. So much so I should choose the plain weave sett from the master yarn chart. In all her great wisdom she said there was a method for getting sett besides the master yarn chart and wrapping yarn around a ruler but alas I forgot, I'll have to hear that one for a third time as well *shrug. Any way, I tried to protest to her that the title of the pattern stated 'Extended Point Twill' and as such it should be a Twill sett!!! But nope that's not how it works. The Extended Point Twill is referring to the threading you are doing. In beginner's books you learn threading, tie-up, and treadling separately, but they all work together to create the cloth! I wonder since I started weaving in the computer drafting age if that might have been something I would have realized sooner if I was forced to draft all my patterns by hand. I say that because after our chat I looked at the drawdown and yeah, a majority of the weave is plain with small floats here and there. Luckily, this is a project where I am exploring multiple tie-ups and treadling for the same threading. So I just switched to the next tie-up. When I get back to the plain weave though I'll have to re-sley the reed again but I have several weaving hours before I have to do that. Although, I'm now faced with wanting to re-sley anyway because the epi is sett too low (45epi) which means I'm getting a ppi of 50, so alas it's still not 100% balanced. My goal with this project is to gain experience with the flow of weaving and thus become a craftsman. Therefore, If I can at least continuously weave at 50 ppi, for this tie-up, then I will have met my goal for the project. And before I bid ado here is a pic of my happy dog! I had laid a blanket on him and I had given him one of my old woven blankets, which I figured he would just knock off but instead I looked around my loom to find this: Happy Weaving!
Val
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After talking with my weaving mentor I should add that there are various reasons for selvedges to smile and that it is a balance of all tricks individualized for every weaver and every loom.
To say that tension is the only thing is wrong and to say that the timing of the beat to changing sheds is the only thing is wrong, doesn't work. It should be thought of like the controls on a sound board. Which I might add the sound board must be adjusted for every speaker and every room, exactly like our weaving tricks. Here is my current list of tricks for good selvedges: 1. Tension: The tension of the warp should be just right. So far for me and my Louet David Loom it is a nice springy action. Not taught like a board and not loose like pie crust dough when putting it in the pie pan, but like a new trampoline. In fact sometimes I have my fingers do acrobatics on the warp because I'm that kind silly person. 2. Angle of Yarn: personally I shoot for about a 30 degree angle from the fell of the cloth to the exit of the shuttle in the shed. However, recently I was doing much less on a particular weave but there were more things going awry and after chatting with my mentor, the warp itself was at an incorrect epi. Now that it is corrected I'm back to my 30 degrees. 3. Weft yarn against edge Warp yarn: When I first started weaving this was my issue, I would pull the warp yarn so taught against the edge of the warp I would get smiles. Now I simply make sure the warp yarn is touching the warp edge like two friends hugging. 4. Timing of the beat to the change of sheds: This is what I proved was a thing in my last post. Though it also requires that you switch the treadling so that you are using the opposite foot every time you change the shed. I'm still working on this, and I should note that even in the book it states that for some weaves you want to beat before you change sheds and other weaves after. So, I suppose it is a refined technique that is learned with the rhythm of weaving itself. 5. Speed: Last thing I'll mention is speed, because sometimes when you fiddle excessively with your selvedges you are actually make things worse. I suppose this goes with trick number 4, where one learns the rhythm of their weaving style and then can proceed quickly through that rhythm. Okily Dokily, that's my two cents. Basically, every person and every loom is different and we all have our own balance of the above tricks, possibly more, that create the best edges for the particular weave we are working on. Happy Weaving! My post back in November was about a summer and winter project I would do with some yarn I found in Canada. Well when I tested the colors on the loom I didn't like it and decided to hold off and use that yarn for something different. Instead of the mottled yarn for the project I did a single block summer and winter weave with a pink boucle yarn as pattern and a pale rose chenille as the background. It definitely made a very thick fabric but it is a double sided fabric that will be fun for a vest. On the outside you have interest and on the inside you have soft and fuzzy. What I wanted to share today was what I learned about changing sheds and beating. Recently, I became the owner of the encyclopedic set of the Master Weaver series by S.A. Zielinski So every evening I read a little bit before I go to bed and I found a little nugget of information that I thought I would test out. In volume 1 there is discussion about beating the yarn in at the exact same time that you change sheds. It elaborates by stating if you beat before you change sheds your edges will smile (edge is too tight) and if you beat after you change sheds your piece will loosen at the edge. "To make the edges tighter we beat a fraction of a second before changing. To spread the edges we beat after changing." -Master Weaver Library Vol 1 pg 32. So I thought I would test this theory since my edges were starting to smile, aka draw in too much. When I saw this I realized that I was beating way before I was changing sheds. In the past, several people have stated that to fix this issue simply change the angle of the yarn as it goes into the shed. Which probably helps a bit but for my experiment I tried to keep it the same. Also, it should be mentioned that you need to advance often. If you change the distance from the fell of the cloth to the reed drastically you will add in yet another reason your selvedge is funky. Okay, so here is my experiment. Problem: my selvedge is drawing in too much. Solution: keeping all things equal (angle of yarn in shed, distance in from fell to reed, tension) I will only change the timing of beating and changing sheds. And there it is! It took weaving about 8 inches to really fix the problem but with only changing the timing with my beat and shed change I was able to fix the selvedge. Totally new idea for me! And I love it! After having read the whole book I remember it stating somewhere the reason as to why this happens, and it has to do with the epi changing at the edges. An example would be if you are beating before you change sheds there are more threads clumped together at the edge (you have both weft and warp now). Whereas if you are beating after changing sheds you're keeping the original epi while placing the yarns into the fell. I might be making it more difficult, but I loved the concept of paying attention to how many epi you're creating at the edge. Obviously, if your warp is drawing-in the epi is becoming more dense at the edge, which then means your uptake is more and then means more tension at the edges. It's a great concept that I haven't heard in my weaving circles yet so I wanted to pass it on to the ether :)
Hopefully, this helps someone else out there! And before I go, here is the fabric after washing. Okay first off I should address my little bio and how I 'ditched the great paying job for something more fulfilling for my soul.' Holy moly! Mother of Pearls! This is the hardest thing I've ever done! I'm insane... absolutely insane! Who quits health benefits and free retirement money and consistent rent money!
Wow, that felt good. I have now realized why all the business books talk about setting up your new business before quitting your day job, because otherwise you have no idea what to do with yourself when you have the inevitable bad day! A simple groggy day turns into "what the hell should I be doing!" or worse "what the hell am I doing?!" Which isn't the most inspiring chat you want to have with yourself. Well, for now I've come up with a few things for my soul fulfillment job. First, I have a goal of 4 hours a day spent weaving and 4 hours a day spent on the business side of weaving and, hopefully some day, selling. Since I am technically working for myself and I'm also helping my mother in law to doctor visits I figured 4 hours/day is the goal but I will accept 20hr/week as well. **Geesh I winder if people who work for themselves have a bit of a split personality: 'You must work' - 'But there is a really cool video I want to watch' - 'No get back to work!'** The Second thing I am attempting will be research and development. I recently read a book about selling your craft, which was written in 1969 by an extremely sexist guy but I read it anyway since I figure everybody has their faults but there are usually bits of truth stated by even the rudest of people. Anyway! in the craft selling book it discussed creating a Line to sell. The example given discusses how GMC is an automobile company that sells high end vehicles and low end vehicles, and within these groups are cars or trucks, and within each of these groups they have specific Lines that their customers have come to expect. Think the Chevy Suburban versus the Chevy Tahoe. The Suburban is a Line of vehicle that the company builds and from time to time upgrades for its unique users. And there are unique users who want the Suburban over the Tahoe for specific reasons and GMC knows this which is why they are separate Lines. To transfer this over to weaving I need to create an item that I can make repeatedly in order to become the best at making this one item and allow the customer to expect the same quality for many years to come, with subtle upgrades welcome. This concept reminds me of an article I read in one of the very early issues of Handwoven magazine. It was an interview with a professional weaver and he stated something like Americans are obsessed with being able to make everything, and in their rush to make everything they never allow themselves to become a craftsmen. Craftsmen being someone who has repeated a task so many times that they could produce a perfectly sculpted, or woven, or painted, or spun, object with very little thought on their part because it has become ingrained in their muscle memory. So with that long explanation the research and Development (aka: my challenge for myself) is to weave 60 black and white napkins; 20 napkins will be produced with 20/2 cotton, then 20 will be in 10/2, then 20 in 5/2. Having completed this I will have developed an idea of how the weave looks and have obtained some semblance of muscle memory for these patterns. Depending on what I learn from this experiment I may create a line of napkins to sell in the future, or I will find out this is a crazy endeavor and that I should probably go work for someone else while I'm still 50% sane. Hmmm.... I started off thinking I was going to write about the project I just finished. Guess I needed to get this off my chest haha! I'll make a different post showing off what became of the crazy yarn and the Summer and Weave pattern. |
Author: Vader
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