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. Well I finished the chenille scarves finally and I'm reading a bunch while weaving with the knitting yarns. Here are the finished chenille scarves: I'll have to keep them though because there are some errors I don't like. Like the fringe is a bit frayed at the ends and the length is just under 60 inches, so it's a little short in my opinion. But the Chenille warp with chenille weft is absolutely beautiful! While finishing my chenille scarves I was reading in my Color and Fiber book about the Bezold effect with textiles. Basically, the phenomenon of how colors look next to each other. Well the Color and Fiber book is my afternoon reading for studying and furthering my weaving career. Then in the evenings I read random weaving related magazines. My favorite being Robyn Spady's Heddlecraft. Well coincidence hit while I was reading September/October 2017 issue that same evening and found Robyn Spady had written about the Bezold effect as well. Ha! Did it have to be the same day? I've never heard of this effect with textiles before and I've been around textiles a long time and then, POOF!, the universe is like you must learn this! But that wasn't the only coincidence last week.
I'm also reading 'The Complete Book of Drafting for Handweavers' by Madelyn van der Hoogt and I was in the section discussing Unit weaves and Lace weaves. When I decided to take a break and and sit outside for a bit, have some lunch, breathe fresh air, that kind of thing. So I grabbed HGA's Shuttle, Spindle, & Dyepot magazine in case I wanted to flip through something. And guess what was in the Summer 1998 issue I took out with me. Yep, Lace Weaves! The HGA does a learning exchange internationally and this was the culmination of their understanding of Lace weaves. And it just happened to be the same day I was reading about Lace weaves in my study book. This last week was a strange week to say the least. And this week is the HGAs Spinning and Weaving week! Yesterday I watched most of their talks and studio tours. I loved it! Lots of people talking about the craft they love while sharing stories and lessons. Pretty much my mecca :) Which the tours have started already today so I should jump over there and listen. Maybe there will be another coincidence around the corner. Happy Weaving! Val Today I decided to work on a project that has been sitting on the loom for several months. It's the warp from Jennifer Moore's Double Rainbow class. (Hence Rainbow Bright!) It was a good class though I can't truly judge since my energetic personality doesn't do well in front of a Zoom screen, but alas, the ideas were wonderful and the techniques enlightening. Before I took the double rainbow class I finished the 4 shaft sampler from her book 'Doubleweave: revised & expanded'. Practicing the double weave concept before hand seemed helpful in understanding the evolution of the colors and blocks used during the class. Any way, after lots of samples I finally came up with something I would like to make. A continuously growing rainbow of blocks that will eventually become pot holders (maybe, I'm only 80% sure they'll be potholders). To make this rainbow in the weft direction there are a lot of color changes, but like I said the yarn is beautiful! Considering this project has been on the loom for more than a month already I'm not sure when it will get done, but hey I worked on it!
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Author: Vader
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