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Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Pull of the Loom

I wound this warp a few weeks ago and it has been waiting its turn at the loom.

90 ends, 12" in the reed, 6 metre length

I was pleased with the warp itself, but I'm thrilled with the actual weaving of it!

September 13, 2016

It's turning out so much better than I expected. 

Goodnight pretty weaving.

In fact, watching the colours play out against the mixed warp is so enthralling that the pull of the loom is irresistible, and I find myself back at it even when I should be doing other things. 



4 comments:

steelwool said...

Lovely. I enjoyed you Charlie yarn too. How do you make a hat out of the weaving. Do you just weave for a bit, sew it up and use leftover warp as "tails"?

Marlene said...

For this particular style of hat you weave enough length to go around your head with ample shrinkage allotted. I have a fairly large head and don't like my hats tight so I wove for about 30". After wet finishing that was several inches shorter of course.

The beginning "loom waste" (your tie on tails) are used at the beginning end as fringe. I personally do a hemstitch at both ends of the 30" of weaving, but technically you can get away without it. At the end of your 30" (or chosen length) of weaving you cut the weaving free leaving another generous fringe. You then tie the two fringed sides together, using overhand knots on bundles from each side, forming the hat length into a cylinder, no sewing required. Your tied bundles of fringe can be twisted. After twisting the fringe I wet finish (wash and then hang to dry or tumble dry depending on your final care preferences).

When the woven cylinder with twisted fringe is dry you carefully pull on one or two of the warp threads at one long edge gathering the edge as tightly as you can. I find that I can't completely close the crown of the hat this way and must either secure it further with a few stitches and 'darning', or knit it closed by picking up stitches all around the gathered hole and then doing several rows of knitted decreases until I can successfully draw it closed (about 8 to 10 sts remaining).

Flip up the other edge until the hat is the desired depth and then, where the brim folds over fringe, pull the fringe through the spaces between knots so that all the fringe is now on the outside.

I also do another type of hat that starts off the same but uses a narrower piece of weaving (only about 7 or 8") but a longer length. For that one I pick up and knit the brim along the selvedge edge and knit several inches of ribbing making a tam sort of hat.

Gene Black said...

All of the novelty yarn in this is interesting. Did any of it give you trouble winding it on? Do you do the Saori front to back wind on?

Marlene said...

I'm not much of a "yarn snob" Gene, and if a yarn suits my purpose I'll use it whether or not it is a natural fibre. I wash all my items in tepid water and hang them to dry so mixed warps are not a problem. In this case I'm after the novelty yarns for the texture and interest that they add.

I had very little trouble winding on despite the fact that I completely lost the cross right at the beginning of sleying the reed! I'm not even sure what happened, but suspect I mounted the chained warp into the cross holder incorrectly. When I tugged on the warp to bring the ends into proper alignment instead of making the intersections clearer the cross completely disappeared. Although they no longer were crossed at least they were laying in the holder in somewhat of an order.

Yes, I wind on from front to back. Sleying the reed, threading the heddles, tying onto the back, beaming the warp, then tying onto the front and checking for even tension. I find it works fabulously. I've never had any sort of Saori lessons though so I still use the "yank and crank" method for getting the warp tightly and evenly wound.