Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Bamboo on Spring loom


The bad news is that I forgot to take pictures of my weaving progress, but the good news is that I was so excited I kept weaving in between all the other things one does preparing for Christmas and finished weaving the whole warp. I haven't measured it, guess I should before washing, but I wove as much as I could of the 4-1/2 yard warp (assumption of length because I used every post on my 4-1/2 yard warping board).



Even though I'm a beginner, first warp on a loom, other than a rigid heddle or inkle loom, I had to try out a design and threaded this 8-shaft design which looks similar to a tiny braid, and would probably show up better with thicker, and more contrasting thread.

Along the way I learned many things, and will need to learn how to add plain weave selvedges, as I found that when I wove this pattern edge-to-edge, I had a loose thread along the outer edges that wasn't caught (maybe it would have been caught if I had started the shuttle on the opposite side?), so I only used it here and there, and played with using just two treadles at a time, creating a design that did catch the edges.

Once I used up all the bamboo weft thread I had, I wove the rest with a matching cottolin, which actually wove up without drawing in as much, and that area of the fabric is almost as soft as the all bamboo part.

Of course as soon as I removed this project from the loom, it was immediately warped again with another project.

2 comments:

Life Looms Large said...

Yay!! Congratulations!! Glad you had so much fun with this project!

I'm going to wildly guess that the patterned section was some kind of twill. A lot of people use a floating selvedge to solve the problem of threads not catching on the edge for a twill.

(I think a plain weave border can work, but I think it can also cause problems because of the different number of intersections in plain weave vs twill. I haven't figured that part out - but I'm a big fan of floating selvedges.)

It's awesome that you like your new loom so much!

Sue

Lynn Majidimehr said...

It's from "A Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns", page 11, #2. It's a plain twill threading on 8 shafts. I've also finished one more warp and have a scarf in progress that will be posted soon.