New Canaan Check Sample After Wet-Finishing

Here are the two halves of the sample.  On the left, obviously, is the unwashed half, and on the right, the washed and pressed wet- finished half.  Quite a bit of shrinkage.  I soaked it in hot water with Dawn dish soap to release any spinning oils, or natural oils.  I agitated it just a little after it soaked a bit, then rinsed in warm water, rolled it in a towel and hung it to air dry.

Just a comparison of the pressed sample and the unfinished half.  It passed the properly finished test--I couldn't poke my fingernail between the weave.

I actually like the backside, too.  It looks more plaid than the front.

From this view, it looks sort of three dimensional, almost like waves.  I like it!  Now, to get the rest of the 7 yards woven.  I'm going, I'm going!

Wool/Rayon Sample Done

The cough I have had for almost four weeks is really getting me down.  After a much needed three hour nap after church, I did get out to the studio and wove a sample on my wool warp. 

Here is the warp spread on the loom and ready to go.  It is 28” wide, with 1” stripes.

The weft is a chained rayon that I have had for quite a while, but just couldn’t decide what to use it for.  There are four colors, plum, burgundy, rust, and a rosy tan.  This photo is a pretty good representation of the colors.

I have more plum color than the other three colors, so my plan is to weave the plum after both of the other dark colors, and use the tan as an accent between pattern sections.

Well, here is how the sample turned out on the loom.  I need to work on my beat, to make the stripes end up the same width.  Right now, each color stripe is about three cm. wide.  I'm waiting for some glue to dry, and then I'll go back out and cut the sample off the loom.  I will cut it in half, keeping one half as is, and will wash the other half to see how the wool fulls.  After checking that, I will decide whether to beat harder, softer, or as I was doing.

Here is a close-up.  So far, I am happy with how it is turning out.  I’ll see if I am still happy after the wet finishing.

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.