Trying it Myself
It is my goal on this project to try as many of the techniques as possible so I can describe it on the blog, in lectures or in an eventual book. So I gathered up my hutzpah to ask Justin and Kate if I could ‘drive’ the loom. They were very gracious and helped me in the steps. Open the shed, grab the shuttle, throw it through (and CATCH), beat it and start again.
As you can see in the pictures – I found this to be much harder than I thought! It is like chewing gum and rubbing your head while hopping on one foot. Opening the shed by pushing on the foot petals took strength as I am shorter than Justin. But the hardest part was throwing the shuttle. I thought it would fly out the other end and I would have trouble catching it. NOT a worry! The shuttle kept getting stuck between the two layers and I would have to stick my fingers in between the warp to scoot it along. Justin made it look so easy and fast. You can see me looking close after beating down the weft to see if the weave was tight enough there. I don’t want that ‘defect in the weave’ to be because of me!
You can see the wonderful length of woven silk at the bottom take up – he estimated it to be between 1.5-2 yards at that point. I can only take credit for maybe three or four passes – not even an 1/8″ of it! Working on the sequence, it was really physically demanding and I can’t imagine doing a piece of fabric that is wider. You need some wingspan for that!
Tricia
Tags: loom, plimoth, plimoth plantation, plymouth, weaving
January 16th, 2009 at 8:47 am
Thanks for sharing Tricia. This post took me back to my early tries at weaving, usually with a litter of kittens ‘helping’ me warp and weave (one on the treadles, one on the warp, between the warp, riding the boom…
. But oh, the zen of getting into the rythm with the shuttle!
January 16th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
I actually have woven fabric (not nearly as fine as the silk that Justin is weaving. I wove a wool plaid fabric out of which I sewed a jacket, skirt and pants when I was in high school. I was very proud of that suit, but alas, it does not fit anymore, although I can’t bear to get rid of it!
I always found that the hardest parts of weaving were 1) keeping the edges straight (although I notice that Justin actually has a gizmo to help with that (not sure what it is called), and 2) beating the passes consistently so that the fabric has the same tightness of the weave all the way through.
I was a new weaver at the time, and I was not so good at either of the above. If you were to look closely at my suit, you would notice that the plaid is not always completely matched as it should be, since my fabric was not as consistent as it should have been.
Now, my latest weaving projects are Navajo-style, since I can’t fit a floor loom in my home….maybe when the kids move out….
January 16th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Hi Norma,
That little gizmo is a tenter-hook, or temple, and unfortunately, doesn’t do a thing to keep the selvedges straight. What it does do, is counteract the draw in which almost always occurs in a web, where the tension of the weft thread exiting the shuttle pulls the cloth in. This is actually a good thing, since it keeps everything pulled together and tidy, but it can start to wear out the threads on the selvedge when they are pulled narrower than the distance that they were set in the sley of the beater. The hook/temple is set to the width that the cloth *should* be, each end of teeth is sunk into the web, and it’s set flat against the web, forcing the selvedges to the width they were meant to be. This is advanced every inch or so to keep the threads from wearing, and the beater from slowing.
January 16th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Hi Norma,
That little gizmo is a tenter-hook, or temple, and unfortunately, doesn’t do a thing to keep the selvedges straight. What it does do, is counteract the draw in which almost always occurs in a web, where the tension of the weft thread exiting the shuttle pulls the cloth in. This is actually a good thing, since it keeps everything pulled together and tidy, but it can start to wear out the threads on the selvedge when they are pulled narrower than the distance that they were set in the sley of the beater. The hook/temple is set to the width that the cloth *should* be, each end of teeth is sunk into the web, and it’s set flat against the web, forcing the selvedges to the width they were meant to be. This is advanced every inch or so to keep the threads from wearing, and the beater from dragging.
January 18th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
Errr, could someone delete one of those duplicate comments above? Thanks!
Something else about the selvedges and draw in that I want to add to what I was saying above is that the bulk of the draw in is caused by the woven structure of fabric, and the demands we weavers have to put on the threads. If you picture a plain or tabby woven peice of fabric, every thread goes over one, under one, etc. the whole way across. To make this happen, the threads are opened to create a space called a shed through which the shuttle is shot leaving a weft thread behind. This thread follows the arc that the shuttle has traveled, which is a pretty direct path from one side to the next. When this thread is beaten in and the shed is changed so that all of the threads that were once up are now down and vice versa, that poor unassuming weft thread is no longer allowed to sit in a straight line from side to side, but rather bend its way up and down over and under all those warp threads (the warp has to bend too, but it’s less pronounced in the weaving since it’s under tension). This pulls in the sides since the thread is, after all, only so long. Left on its own, it will continue to pull in smaller and smaller which will damage the threads on the selvedges, unless it’s kept in check by the temple. Now, some weave structures don’t have this problem, like a rep weave, where a thread much thicker and stouter than the warp is used for the weft which makes a nice ribbed cloth, think gros grain ribbon. Because the weft is more sturdy, it doesn’t yeild and bend up and down, instead, the warp has to do all of that. This leaves the selvedges at the exact same width without the temple, but means other things for the tensioning on the warp, but I’m going to stop there, before my comments are longer than the blog posts themselves.
January 29th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Gosh I am so jealous I have wanted to try that for so long. It looks so fun. Oh well I appreciate the wonderful pictures. Thanks!