Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Weaving for Uncle Jim

I've finally found time to work on the ecclesiastical stole for our Uncle Jim, the Jesuit priest.

I'm using only the center 4 modules (out of the 12 installed), which caused some anxiety at first. I worried that the loose threads still hanging from the outer 4 modules on each side would tangle with the tensioned threads in the center 4 modules. However, my solution seems to be working. The black warp threads on the outer 4 modules are on a set of lease sticks suspended behind the heddles, well below the level of the white warp on the center modules.

Although all modules rise and fall on each new shed, there is no sign the threads can touch and tangle. Here's a warp level view from the side:

And a view from the back, looking over the warp beam::

As you can see, there's no tangling happening here, thank heavens. I wanted to leave the outer 4 modules on each side threaded, with a cross behind the heddles, to make it quicker to rethread the loom once the white warp is woven off. Tying on and pulling through is much faster than threading all those heddles.

However, please remind me never to warp the jacquard with unmercerized cotton! This yarn is very stretchy and difficult to tension properly, and very "sticky," which just adds to the problem. Had I thought the project out more thoroughly, I would have used the much more firmly spun and plied 8/2 Tencel as warp, and used the 8/2 unmercerized cotton as weft. But the Tencel is much more expensive, and the cotton very inexpensive, so I was only thinking with my wallet. On this loom, with its long distance from warp beam to heddles, it takes *much* more warp than weft for a short project, so I chose to warp with the cotton. Bad idea.

The weaving will go very slowly, because I'll have to fix hook errors due to tension differences. As you can see in the small sample I wove yesterday, there are several places on the left where tension differences are causing hook errors, while the remainder of the cloth is error free.

 I'm using some green waste yarn for weft in the sample, to make it easier to see errors - it would be much more difficult to spot them with a white weft! Once I get the tension sorted out, I'll do a short sample with the real weft to check aspect ratio, and then the "real" weaving can begin.


Laura Fry said...

Yes, sometimes when it seems like a good idea at the time, it isn't. Like my 2/16 cottolin warp...


neki desu said...

those angled threads are mesmerizing.