At the Loom Again

It took me awhile after the accident (blog posts from February 20 and 22 about the injury in October and subsequent recovery) to get back to the loom, partly because of physical limitations and partly because I was trying to remember what I was doing (at least on the one loom that already had a warp on it). There are still some challenges with threading and picking things up that fall under the loom, but now I’m weaving on three looms. Although I think that I have always been empathetic, this whole experience gives me better insight into the physical limitations that some of my students may have. Something that came up recently made me think about writing a blog post to share some of the things that can cause problems when weaving and my fixes for those. I happen to have photos of a lot of these. That led to going back in time to other loom issue photos.

First though, here is what is on my looms now.

I put a 15 yard wool warp, 56” wide, on the AVL loom. This is the Timm Ranch yarn and makes lovely blankets and ponchos and there is a lot on cones here. The weft was the same yarn dyed with coreopsis. I have woven 4 blankets on this warp so far with a couple more to go. This is the loom at the south end of the shop.

The loom in the middle is an 8-shaft Schacht loom. This is a chenille blanket that was promised to my daughter-in-law about a year and a half ago. The accident is my latest excuse, but there wasn’t one (other than being busy) for the first half of that time. I am finally working on it now but it was a challenge to get set up properly.

The next loom has a chenille scarf warp. I have a lot of odds and ends of chenille and that is what is in this warp—I want to use it up and then clear out bags and boxes of cones with just a bit of yarn on them.

When I’m sitting at the last loom this is the view of the shop, all the way across the other two.

I need to explain some of the differences in these looms. I use the AVL for blankets because it is 60” wide and has a fly shuttle. With most looms you separate the layers of threads by stepping on various treadle. Then you throw a shuttle between the layers (through the “shed”). The fly shuttle is handy for wide warps becuase I don’t have to reach all the way to the edge. Instead I hold that black handle which is attached by cords to boxes on either side (see the gray cord?) When I swing the handle then it “throws” the shuttle from the box on one side to the box on the other. There are tricks to that so that it will work properly, but it can be very efficient. I wasn’t sure if I could do that with the shoulder problems I’m having. However I can weave one blanket a day—I haven’t pushed it beyond that.

Here is that chenille blanket warp and that is how the opening (shed) is supposed to look when I’m stepping on the treadle. Then I can throw the shuttle through the shed.

Notice what happens if there is either an error in treadling or the shed is not good. I am seeing “floats”—where the red thread floats over more warp threads than it should, creating errors. Chenille is notoriously tricky to work with. It sticks to itself and even though I have woven dozens (hundreds?) of chenille projects this warp was a challenge. There are a lot of criss-crossed threads in back and threads that are loose and saggy. Those make for a challenging shed. Here is my solution.

It is hard to tell from the photo but that is a mirror propped on a box and facing the side of the loom.

That is the edge of my cell phone at the top taking the photo. The mirror shows me that I have a clean shed and can throw the shuttle. Before I propped up this mirror I couldn’t tell about the shed and was making errors. It is still going to take me awhile to work through all the tangles at the back of the loom but at least I can be sure that each weft yarn will be placed correctly.

Now for more things I have done to fix problems with weaving projects.

I was weaving ruanas andponchos out of the Timm Ranch wool yarn and was supposed to have a gray stripe down the middle of that warp that is on the AVL loom. I got carried away with the white and forgot about the gray in the center. That warp beam is sectional meaning that the warp is put on on 2” sections. If it was warped a different way I wouldn’t have been able to do this but I was able to take the 4 sections of warp and wind that batch onto one of the other looms. That became a scarf warp.

This is what the loom looked like after I removed those four sections…

…and then replaced the white yarn with gray.

Another thing that can happen when you wind sectionally is that you lose track of yardage. OOPS! That one section is much shorter than the others.

I had already woven several blankets off of this warp but went ahead and wove this part knowing that there would be a missing warp section. I figured that I could make pillow out of the fabric. This points up something else. This is a good example of what happens when you use yarn that has had different treatment. Those dyed yarns did not behave the same as the undyed yarn—that’s why this whole piece is not at all smooth. I think I ended up making pillows and dog coats out of this piece.

Here is a warp that looks messy. This is not a sectional warp. I used the warping frame but had to wind 4 or 5 bouts. You can see that these yarns are also not the same as far as their stretchiness.

However I was able to get the warp on the loom and weave it off.

This is after the fabric was cut off the loom and it was time to tie or twist the fringe. This shows that you don’t have to weave all the yarn that is going to be fringe. You just need to weave enough to hold the last threads in and then have a header for the next one. It takes as long to do the fringe treatment as it does to weave the blanket.

This was one more warp problem from a long time ago. It is another sectionally wound warp and I remember that the sections didn’t wind evenly. I ended up pulling all this warp (cotton for baby blankets) back through the heddles and reed and then winding it back on. That was not a fun warp to work with.

So many people think that my weaving life is always perfect. Hopefully this will show you that it is not, but experience gives me the ability to work through most problems.