Updates

It was such a busy day at Missouri Town that this is the only picture I got of the weaving project. Unfortunately, you can't see the front where the pattern is. It was really fun demonstrating; there were so many people interested in the weaving process. The hard part was remembering where I was in the pattern sequence while talking to people. Needless to say, I had to unweave several times! I only got half way done, but when I finish and take it off the loom I will post more pictures. (Note the shawl and arm-warmers, it was chilly!)

Last week, my younger students felted balls and sticks and sewed them together to make little animals. This one is still getting its face stitched on. They had a lot of fun with it and were surprisingly good at the sewing part.

Here are students needle-felting. If you are looking for a super easy way to embellish, try needle-felting. It's instant gratification and no mess. The kids loved the "stabbing" motion, and thankfully only one needle was broken!

Close-up of a face in progress. She's felting very safely: foam underneath the project, pencil to hold in place (not fingers), and stabbing straight up and down.

And lastly, we spent all day Tuesday making apple butter. If my husband wasn't so motivated, I don't know if I would do it every year, but the end result is always worth it. This year we actually made twice as much as usual, which means more to share with friends!

Weaving 101: Starting to Weave

No matter what pattern you're weaving, you usually weave what's called a header in plain weave for one or two inches. This spaces out your warp threads evenly and can be used as a hem later. Here I've woven the header in the same cream as the warp.

My shuttle is ready to start the pattern in blue. A shuttle is what carries your weft thread back and forth through the shed (see previous post). It should be easy to throw through the shed with one hand. They come in various sizes and styles, but this one is a pretty normal model.

(I read that the word shuttle is original to weaving and later came to stand for anything that carries back and forth--such as a bus shuttle or a space shuttle. Interesting!)

Winding the bobbin is the same concept as when using a sewing machine, only you're probably going to do it by hand. Depending on how thick your yarn is, you'll have to stop weaving periodically and refill your bobbin. If you're weaving with more than one color, you'll probably have two bobbins in two shuttles going at the same time.

Here I've started weaving the main pattern. I haven't even gotten more than an inch done and I can already tell there's a problem with a certain area. Thankfully most of it looks quite pretty.

Squint your eyes when you look at this picture and you'll see what the pattern is supposed to look like.

Compare with this picture--I'm not just missing a thread here, it's also a skip in the pattern.

At this point, you grumble to yourself and rethread the heddles to fix the pattern. Bleck. Interestingly, this is the first time I've had to correct a problem this bad.

There won't be any more Weaving 101 posts until after October 4th. After I fix the pattern mistake, I'll save the main part of weaving for the Missouri Town Fall Festival. If anyone is in the Kansas City area, come by and see me demonstrating weaving the first weekend in October.

Weaving 101: Checking Pattern

The last part of the pattern set up is called the "Tie Up" (not to be confused with tying on). The tie up is diagrammed in your weaving pattern, it's the little square box with X's in the corner (see previous post). It tells you which shaft of heddles to attach to which pedal, or treadle (tred-le). This picture shows the treadles. The white strings coming down are detachable and you use these to determine which treadle will operate which combination of heddle shafts. All that means is: it makes your pattern come out.


When you push on a treadle with your foot (these are under the loom by the way), it raises whatever heddle shafts you've attached to it. So if you were just doing regular plain weave (over-under-over-under), you would only need 2 treadles: one to raise half of the threads, the other to raise the other half. I'm doing a twill, so I have the 2 left ones for plain weave and the 4 right ones for the twill pattern.


This is what happens when I press a treadle: half of the threads are raised and the other half stay down. This side view shows what's called the shed, it's a nice open space for your weft thread to go through.


Checking the pattern is important incase you have a threading error. I had one thread out of place that I had to fix (I'll spare you the details). This picture shows a close-up with my weft thread after 2 passes through the shed. It's just plain weave and should be the over-under pattern.

Weaving 101: Tying On

Now that I've wound on all the warp length, I'm ready to tie the front ends to the front beam. Here the picture shows the ends after I've cut the loops, hanging ready to be tied.


Starting to tie on to the front beam. Always start with the outsides so that your beam is held out and won't wobble (it wobbles if you start in the center). Then move in to the center one group of threads at a time, alternating sides. The knot is the same as on the back beam.


Here all the threads are neatly tied across the front beam. Notice the tail length, it's a little bit long, but is easier to tie that way.


Lastly, check the tension of your threads. Tension is very important, so tweaking it until you're satisfied is important before you start weaving. The goal is to get all the threads with the same even tension. I always have trouble with the two side groups being loose, so I usually go back and tighten everything, leaving the sides for last.

Weaving 101: Threading the Heddles

Here is the weaving draft for the pattern I'm using. It's a Swedish twill variation from A Handweaver's Pattern Book by Marguerite Davison. This book is a must-have for 4-shaft loom weaving. It's mostly overshot patterns, like this one.

I'm showing you the draft now because this is the first step where I'm using it in the loom set up. To thread the heddles, I follow the pattern of the top strip of W's and diagonals.


Heddles are these metal loops that raise and lower your threads according to the pattern. They sit in the middle of the loom, behind the reed, and are raised by foot pedals.

There are 4 shafts of heddles on this loom, and each thread must be pulled through it's own heddle on the correct shaft, in the correct order according to your draft pattern. This picture shows the succession of four threads in order, each on a different shaft, which will create one of the diagonals in the pattern. The view is from the back of the loom.

Here is a better shot of the threading in progress. You can see the reed at the top of the picture, which is the front of the loom. The threads pass through the reed, then get pulled through a heddle, and are placed out of the way on the left temporarily. To the right I have more heddles to thread. This is the longest and most tedious part of set-up. It's also very important to pay close attention to your pattern and try not to stop in the middle. I think it took me 2 1/2 hours to thread them all.

I'm almost done with set-up!

Weaving 101: Sleying the Reed

Sleying the reed, pronounced slay-ing, is a short step. The first part of putting the warp threads onto the loom. This is when you need the very important warp cross keeping all of your threads in order. All you're doing is putting each thread into its own slot in the reed. The reed keeps all the threads spaced evenly and also acts as the beater when you're weaving. This top picture shows the end result. (Note that I've tied groups together temporarily on the other side of the reed to keep them from coming back out!)


Here I'm using the sley hook to pull a thread through a slot. I apologize for not getting a close-up shot. I'm inside the office at Missouri Town, which explains the costume. I'll most likely be in costume in all the following shots.

Here is the basic sleying process: first, you take one of your warp chains (that you measured previously) and find the warp cross. Place the cross in your left hand with fingers between each of the four sections of the cross. This will protect it while you're working. Then you can untie your strings holding the warp cross in place, also untie the string at the closest end of the warp chain. Then you get to cut the loop at this end (scarey!). Now you have a lot of loose ends of thread only being held in order by your precious warp cross.

Next, to start threading the reed, take the top thread from your cross and make a small loop at the end. Then use the sley hook to pull the loop through to the other side of the reed. (You can make a great sley hook from a paper-clip by just straightening it out except for one hook at the end.)

One down, 300 to go! It took me about an hour and a half to thread 300 ends through the reed. Make sure to leave a generous tail hanging through the other side, and when you finish a warp chain, tie the loose ends together in an overhand knot to prevent them from falling back out of the slots. An important thing to know when you're starting this step: once you cut the loop and have the warp cross in your hand, there's no turning back. You really can't stop in the middle of this to get up and do something, like use the restroom or answer the phone. Which is another reason to divide the warp chains instead of having one giant chain. Once you finish a chain, you can stop and come back later if you need to.

Are these instructions making sense, or is it really worthless without step-by-step illustrations? I'm just curious.

Next step: threading the heddles, which determines part of your pattern.

Weaving 101: Preparing the Warp

I'm starting a new weaving project and I thought it might be nice to post the step-by-step process. (I suppose this could be either really interesting, really confusing, or really boring to different people, so be forewarned!) To explain the project, I have to give a little bit of background story first.

This summer I've been working part time at Missouri Town 1855, a historic site with old buildings and a few reenactors (nothing fancy like Williamsburg). I was hired to help mostly with the livestock (you guessed it, scooping poop) and with maintaining the gardens (weeding). But when it's too hot to work I get to dress up and interact with visitors and demonstrate things. I've been doing a lot of spinning, which I needed the practice. So, they found out I can weave. They have a loom that some donator bought, a nice new loom. Nobody has done anything with it. Would I like to do something with it?

Hence my project is born. I knew I did not want to make a boring rag rug (if you've ever been somewhere like a renaissance fest., it seems like everyone's making rag rugs.) So I thought I'd make an overshot coverlet. I'd read about pioneer women in Appalachia weaving them and so I knew they'd probably be a fit for the time period.

So here is a picture of my yarn, the white for the warp and the blue for the weft/pattern. It's a 3/2 perle cotton, which means it's one of the thicker weaving yarns and it's got some sheen to it. I get all my weaving supplies from The Yarn Barn in Lawrence, KS--I highly recommend them for supplies and help.

The first thing to do is measure the warp on my handy warping board. (Actually the first thing to do is all the mathematical calculations for how much warp and weft you need, but I'll spare you that part.) The warping board has these pegs spaced a yard apart so you can measure anywhere from 1 to 10 yards on it. This is not the only way to measure a warp, but it's the way I was taught.

I needed 300 ends of warp that were each 5 yards long. So I stood in front of my warping board and strung the yarn on for 5 yards and counted in twenties to 100. (I would recommend traditional Irish music for this activity--it gives a good beat and keeps you from getting bored.)

Here is a very important picture: the warp cross. It is the only thing keeping your strings in order, instead of in a big-huge-giant-awful mess. As you are measuring the warp onto the pegs, these two pegs at the top are close together and towards the beginning of the length. You always go over one, under the next and then opposite on the way back (yeah, that makes no sense I know)--it's pretty much a figure-8 concept just on a larger scale. Even if other stuff goes wrong when you're setting up the loom, if you still have your warp cross then not all is lost.

Here I've finished measuring 100 ends and before I can take it off the pegs, I've tied it several times with a contrasting string. This prevents it from getting tangled immediately, but more importantly, see how I have tied around the warp cross and just before and after it to make sure it doesn't get lost. If you don't tie anything else, tie the warp cross!

Here is my warp chain, just taken off of the pegs by starting at the bottom looped end and crocheting it onto itself with your hand as you slide it off of the pegs one by one. This helps keep the yarn from going crazy and it makes it a lot shorter and more manageable. Since my warp cross is tied securely, I can pull it right into the crocheted part. Because I needed 300 ends, I made three of these groupings of 100. Take my word for it, divide up your yarn unless you're doing a belt or scarf or something really skinny.

This whole process took me about an hour. When I wove 8 yards for my skirt out of really fine yarn, it took a lot longer. My next step is to start putting the warp onto the loom, which I have to do at Missouri Town. So check back for the next installment of weaving 101, and I'd love to hear your comments/questions.