Saturday, March 19, 2011

Wool and Rayon Project Started

My favored yarns are washable, so mainly I weave with cotton, rayon chenille and other types of rayon.  I have had a large quantity of 9/2 wool in my stash (that needs reducing!), so a few days ago, I finished winding a warp of that wool.  My vague goal is to weave some fabric to eventually make into a jacket. 

The warp was wound in 1" stripes at 16 epi.  It is sett at 2 ends per inch in an eight dent reed, measuring 28" wide.

I wound it onto my Leclerc Artisat 36" loom last night, using my trapeze.  It was a nice tight winding, and went on very smoothly, with no glitches.

Here is another view of the trapeze.  It keeps the warp taut with the milk jugs about one fifth full of water and hung on the ends.  The best part of this way to warp, is that I can put a warp on the loom without help is most cases. 

After I got the warp on the backbeam, I took some time to reconsider the twill I was planning to weave.  Looking through Marguerite Davison's Handweaver's Pattern Book, I found New Canaan Check on page 118.  It has a 16 thread repeat, so I played around with it a bit on Fiberworks on my computer.  I ended up choosing version XI, which is showing on my monitor (a bit stretched out for ease of reading while threading).
It was getting late, so I only threaded three of the stripes and then headed for bed.  I will get going on it again this afternoon.

2 comments:

  1. I had never seen the use of a trapeze before...great idea! My "tensioning device" for my old Harrisville works on my Oxaback, so I can warp the loom by myself, but it certainly isn't wound as tightly as yours with the weighted milk jugs. Maybe a little "jerry rigging" is in order........

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  2. Now that I've used a trapeze or valet, I don't think I'll ever hold onto the warp again while winding on. I've used it on a small table loom too and it worked great. I've also used the 2 stick tie on method from Peggy Osterkamp and I love that technique too. Great for multiple project warps.
    Tom Z. in IL

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