I've been weaving! I decided to try my hand at double weave because it sounded exciting and I like the idea of weaving a decent width of cloth that can be turned into something rather than just weaving scarves forever and ever. Anyway, I used my Petlins 16/2 linen for my weft, and spent all of last weekend making a warp and dressing my loom. I ended up with 480 ends, which is an awful lot of heddles to thread. The 16/2 linen I got from Glenora Weaving and Wool that I used for my weft turned out to be really quite coarse and rough feeling. The Petlins linen was significantly softer. Anyway I'm not sure if it was because of the rough linen but the weave ended up not packing down very well so it was a very loose weave that looked and felt a lot like hessian fabric.
I also had some dramas when I put my warp on my loom. I swear I looked away for two seconds and when I looked back the warp had moved on my raddle. It was two inches narrower on either side, which was really weird. Also I ended up making up two separate warps because the pegs on my warping board were too short, and because they got moved around a lot they ended up a bit tangled. I spent ages winding the warp on my loom and untangling it as I went, and because of the issue I had with my raddle the warp threads ended up crossing each other and they were wound on the loom narrower than they should've been. Anyway, it was much less of an issue than I thought it would be as I wove, although I did end up with some saggy warp threads and I had to make sure I combed the warp with my fingers on the back of the loom every time I wound it on.
Double weave! This is where two layers are woven at once, one on top of the other. There are heaps of options for weaving like this, you can cross the warp threads through both layers to end up with cool patterns and a weave that is twice as thick as normal, or you can join the layers at both ends to make a tube, or at one end to make a piece of cloth twice the width of your warp. This is what I did. I wove a plain tabby weave using four shafts, one layer on two shafts and the other layer on the other two shafts. Since I have ten shafts, I can potentially weave a piece of tabby woven cloth that is five times the width of my loom, which I find quite exciting. Anyway, here's a picture:
It's not a very good picture, but you can see here I've lifted up the shafts of the top layer so you can see between them, and they're joined on the far side. I had to be really careful making sure my edges were consistent, especially the edge with the fold because that was to be the middle of my fabric. It took ages to weave because two picks were only really one, because I needed to go across and back again to cover the whole width of the fabric. There was a lot of hoping as I wove, because I couldn't really see the bottom layer and had to just try and weave consistently without really knowing if it was working. Pulling it off the loom was very exciting.
This is it, fresh off the loom! The fold looks weird because I couldn't lay it out completely flat since it was so used to being folded, and the weave is a bit wibbly from being wrapped around the tension bar of my loom. But it worked! I ended up with 132cm in length, and 69cm in width.
Here's a close-up of the fold. See how it's quite a loose weave? The stripey bits are because my reed was threaded in a 2, 2, 3 pattern because I have to just make do with a 14dpi reed. So it's not a true even weave, but I think it looked kinda cool. Next I tied off the ends and threw it in the wash for fulling. The washing machine in the house I'm living in is connected to the hot water, but I don't think it's turned on and it doesn't have a hot water knob. I tried washing it in hot and the machine didn't fill up with water, so I filled in with hot water from the tap with a saucepan which was a very ridiculous thing to do. Anyway, I washed it with soap and fabric softener, then put it in the dryer on hot, then washed it again with more fabric softener and put it in the dryer again. This is what I ended up with:
I lost 20cm from the length and 10cm from the width, but it's much softer now, and the weave has tightened up a bit.
I'm really quite pleased with how it turned out. It has quite a nice drape too. I'd originally planned to turn it into a smocked apron, but now I'm not so sure. I think a decorative apron would have been made out of finer, more tightly woven fabric. This fabric will be great for an apron, but I think it would lend itself to a more functional, plain kind of apron. I think a smocked apron will have to wait for another day when I'm better at weaving and can try my hand at using finer yarn.
Tomorrow my fabric is going to be turned into some sort of apron :)
I also had some dramas when I put my warp on my loom. I swear I looked away for two seconds and when I looked back the warp had moved on my raddle. It was two inches narrower on either side, which was really weird. Also I ended up making up two separate warps because the pegs on my warping board were too short, and because they got moved around a lot they ended up a bit tangled. I spent ages winding the warp on my loom and untangling it as I went, and because of the issue I had with my raddle the warp threads ended up crossing each other and they were wound on the loom narrower than they should've been. Anyway, it was much less of an issue than I thought it would be as I wove, although I did end up with some saggy warp threads and I had to make sure I combed the warp with my fingers on the back of the loom every time I wound it on.
Double weave! This is where two layers are woven at once, one on top of the other. There are heaps of options for weaving like this, you can cross the warp threads through both layers to end up with cool patterns and a weave that is twice as thick as normal, or you can join the layers at both ends to make a tube, or at one end to make a piece of cloth twice the width of your warp. This is what I did. I wove a plain tabby weave using four shafts, one layer on two shafts and the other layer on the other two shafts. Since I have ten shafts, I can potentially weave a piece of tabby woven cloth that is five times the width of my loom, which I find quite exciting. Anyway, here's a picture:
It's not a very good picture, but you can see here I've lifted up the shafts of the top layer so you can see between them, and they're joined on the far side. I had to be really careful making sure my edges were consistent, especially the edge with the fold because that was to be the middle of my fabric. It took ages to weave because two picks were only really one, because I needed to go across and back again to cover the whole width of the fabric. There was a lot of hoping as I wove, because I couldn't really see the bottom layer and had to just try and weave consistently without really knowing if it was working. Pulling it off the loom was very exciting.
This is it, fresh off the loom! The fold looks weird because I couldn't lay it out completely flat since it was so used to being folded, and the weave is a bit wibbly from being wrapped around the tension bar of my loom. But it worked! I ended up with 132cm in length, and 69cm in width.
Here's a close-up of the fold. See how it's quite a loose weave? The stripey bits are because my reed was threaded in a 2, 2, 3 pattern because I have to just make do with a 14dpi reed. So it's not a true even weave, but I think it looked kinda cool. Next I tied off the ends and threw it in the wash for fulling. The washing machine in the house I'm living in is connected to the hot water, but I don't think it's turned on and it doesn't have a hot water knob. I tried washing it in hot and the machine didn't fill up with water, so I filled in with hot water from the tap with a saucepan which was a very ridiculous thing to do. Anyway, I washed it with soap and fabric softener, then put it in the dryer on hot, then washed it again with more fabric softener and put it in the dryer again. This is what I ended up with:
I lost 20cm from the length and 10cm from the width, but it's much softer now, and the weave has tightened up a bit.
I'm really quite pleased with how it turned out. It has quite a nice drape too. I'd originally planned to turn it into a smocked apron, but now I'm not so sure. I think a decorative apron would have been made out of finer, more tightly woven fabric. This fabric will be great for an apron, but I think it would lend itself to a more functional, plain kind of apron. I think a smocked apron will have to wait for another day when I'm better at weaving and can try my hand at using finer yarn.
Tomorrow my fabric is going to be turned into some sort of apron :)
