They were something of a challenge for me to weave. They are pretty long -- I was aiming for 4 yards per band. They're only 3 1/2 inches wide, but 8 yards of fabric is 8 yards no matter how narrow. And the warp is sett at 30 epi, which is much finer than anything I've woven on a loom before.
Because of the fine sett and longish warp, I decided I needed to warp back to front. I have Peggy Osterkamp's second book on warping, and have warped from the back once before, but really I didn't remember anything about it. And of course I was trying to do this as quickly as possible, in order to enter the bands in this year's Kingdom Arts & Sciences competition. So I would skim the book, do the next step, skim some more, figure out what I should have been doing in the previous step, fix it, etc., etc. It turned out pretty well, though. I especially liked the way I could easily spread the threads and heddles out while I was threading; they weren't crammed into their 30 per inch closeness until I put them through the reed. And I sure don't miss the headaches I know I would have had, trying to keep track of three ends per dent.
I made a couple of mistakes. When I was threading, I had four threads at the end. I chose to put all four through one slot in the reed, which crowded the selvedge and made it hard to pack the weft down. After about six inches I cut those threads and threaded repair threads two to a dent. What a difference that made! In fact, I could say that about so many things -- I fixed a lot of small problems and each one made a big difference. Usually I just put up with nuisances, but knowing that I had yards and yards of weaving ahead of me made it seem too foolish to do that.
I had decided to use a skeleton tie-up mentioned in Osterkamp's book -- you tie shaft 1 to the outside left treadle, 3 to the second one in, skip the middle two treadles, then shaft 4, and finally shaft 2 to the outside right treadle. This worked out very well. You "walk" a twill -- left foot on 1, right foot on two; move left foot to three for 2,3; move right foot to four for 3,4; move left foot to one for 4,1. By the time I'd woven a yard, I could do this without thinking. I always moved the foot towards which the shuttle was headed, which made it almost automatic. And raising one shaft at a time meant that the warp didn't stick; I never had to clear a shed. I will definitely continue to use this tie-up.
But at first I had trouble with my brake suddenly releasing. I realized that because I had only one shaft tied to each treadle, the treadle went down further; the lamms were pressing on the brake pedal and releasing the cable. For about a yard, I was very very careful about how far I pressed the treadle, but that seemed more and more foolish as I went on. So I lengthened the cord on the brake pedal, which took about 20 seconds. I think actually that I should have done this years ago, as it made the brake much easier to operate.
Later on I realized that my hips, knees, and ankles hurt after a weaving session because my chair was too low. I stuck a big book underneath my chair pad (Beyond Craft : the Art Fabric is the perfect size) and the difference was astonishing. Paying attention to ergonomics really paid off.
The other big mistake I made was during beaming. I'm not sure, but I think that at one point when I was tightening the warp I just forgot to tighten one of the edge bouts. As I was weaving along about four yards in, suddenly one selvedge was very loose. I weighted those threads which worked fine for a while, but I could see that the loose threads were sagging. Since I had another four yards to go, I worried that the loose threads would become more and more difficult to tension separately. My warp was superwash, and since that affects resilience, I didn't think I could count on any recovery between weaving sessions.
So I decided to end my piece of cloth at what I thought was the midpoint of the warp -- I had been measuring carefully all along, and I was right at four yards. I hemstitched the cloth, and then fixed the tension by weaving in some sticks and pulling up the loose warps. I wove a header, fiddled with the tension some more, and started the second band.
This worked pretty well. I still had some issues with looseness; almost every time I advanced the warp, I pulled the edge six threads forward a little bit with pins and fastened them into the web. And I kept a very close eye on the fell, making sure it wasn't curving up on that side. If I saw any hint of curve, I wove a pick or two a little more gently, but with the beater a little heavier on that side. That compressed the weft on that edge but let it fill out more on the rest of the cloth. And any time I added a new bobbin, I overlapped the wefts so that there was essentially an extra row everywhere but on that iffy bout of threads on the right. All these things together let me keep weaving a nice, even cloth; they did slow me down, though.
As an odd side effect, my selvedges improved dramatically on this second cloth. I think it's partly because of all the care I was taking, and partly because I had re-read several book sections and websites about even selvedges. I found the Glimakra FAQ especially helpful: everything in there is about boat shuttles. This made me realize that all the rules I know are for people using boat shuttles; maybe they didn't apply to my stick shuttle. So I abandoned the one about never touching the selvedge. Also I paid a lot of attention to how & where & at what angle I should bubble the weft.
As it turned out, I was right at four yards when I finished off the first band, but that wasn't the center of the warp. I had used more warp than I realized experimenting with wefts at the beginning, and despite being as parsimonious as I could be, I used about six inches splitting the two bands. So my second piece of cloth was only 10 1/2 feet. I like the 12 foot length much better; it's much easier to wrap it. But I like the actual cloth of the second band better -- it's more flexible, because I wasn't beating as hard, and of course it has better selvedges. It's also a different color, because with fewer picks per inch, more of the warp shows. Ah, well.
All in all, I think this was a successful project. I sure learned that details matter, and that fixing problems is much better than just accommodating them. And I want to do more back-to-front warping. But I want to get the high castle attachment for my loom, so that I can suspend the cross from it instead of using my Cendrel inkle loom / warping board:
My project was did fairly well in the competition. I had some problems with my write-up but now I understand the process better so I don't expect to have those issues in the future. And my husband has a new addition to his Viking wardrobe.
