Dixie Weaver

So while I’ve been quiet here, I’ve finally been weaving on the 12 harness Leclerc.  The design of the loom, it turns out, has some major, and annoying, flaws. Worst is the way I can’t adjust the harnesses so that the string, traveling from back to front beam, lies flat.  Since the heddle eyes are below this level, the strings all come off the backbeam, slant down, go through the heddle, and then slant back up.  There’s enough distance between the first and twelfth harness that when all the harnesses are down there’s a visible deformation … And there’s tension issues, too.  Between that, and getting the loom warped, and then trying to fix it, it took a little longer to get weaving than I had hoped.

But as long as I’m weaving relatively narrow ware, and am careful, I can make it work. So I’ve been working on the rug mugs. In this picture you can see the pattern below, as well as previous pattern. The warp’s path was particularly problematical when the higher-numbered harnesses were down. The edges are not ideal (I keep meaning to weight those two edges, and then I keep forgetting, but …)

 

The pattern I used for the latest rug mug is an earlier variation of the one on the left.  The other challenge of that pattern is that in some places there are floats over 5 strings.

So the next two mug rugs are going to be a) the left pattern, and then b) the right pattern.

And I’m still playing with the same warp so I haven’t changed the threading through the heddles on the harnesses at all.  There is still so much room to play here …

So last night my new 12 shaft Voyageur Leclerc table loom arrived.  Unpacking her was an adventure; she was packed in a wood shipping crate in a cardboard box, with much tape.  Pity the customs inspector who had to open her up.  (Although I don’t think anyone did, actually.  She arrived ship shape and bristol clean, as it were.)

So my first project is going to be a series of mug rugs.  My goal is to experiment with the weave structures, so I’ve measure up about 5 yards, give or take, of 4/8 superwash wool (which is heat resistant and flame resistant).  79 ends, which I will be using at 12 ends per inch.  One copy of the pattern is 22 threads, so this gives me enough room for 3 repeats, with about 5 threads on each end.

So patterns.  Turns out you can do a lot with 12 harnesses … The following are just a small collection of possible patterns, all warped identically.  It’s how the harnesses are lifted and in what order that makes all the difference …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So much twill …

So I’ve been idly daydreaming, along with friends, about getting looms with moar harnesses! And wondering how much of a difference it would make, and how I could draft patterns for it …

And I like brick-work.  One of the first patterns I worked out how to tablet-weave from first principles was the woven in version of Birka strapwork.  So here, for my first case of many harness pattern drafting, I present the 8 and 12 harness versions of birka strapwork.  Now all I need is the loom to weave them by …

Developing these was actually an interesting exercise in Escherian tilings; you have an 8×8 (or 12×12) grid that’s tiled horizontally and vertically, and so you want to set it up so that the repeats tile nicely.

An M-W threading is named for the threading through the heddles, which looks like repeating Ms and Ws on the form. The pattern I was playing with is a modified M W, where each M and W has three high (or low) points.  I’ve warped up umpty yards (he warp was measured for a sampler, so … I forget?), and enough ends for 8 repeats, warped alternating 2 olive repeats and 1 tan repeat.  The goal is to vary the weft in multiple projects.  Unfortunately I forgot to photograph the first two stretches, where the weft was respectively burgundy, and white, so that will have to wait until it comes off the loom.

Once the threading through the headings was decided, and going with a simple twill tie up, the next step is to decide the treadling. (I.e. in which order do the four harnesses get raises, or in what order are the treadles pressed?)  This first version looks more complicated than it actually is, mostly because I didn’t pick the best starting point.

In a simple twill weave, the treadling is 1-2-3-4 and repeat.  A twill diamond pattern, on the other hand, will treadle 1-2-3-4 followed by 3-2-1-4 for a 8 line pattern.  In my way of thinking, that would be a 4 row diamond.  In the pattern above, we have a 6-row diamond twill: 4-1-2-3-4-1 followed by 4-3-2-1-4-3.  This looks confusing at first, but by thinking of it as a six row diamond, I can reuse the muscle memory from previous projects.

On the other hand, the pattern looked very horizontal; it’s hard to make striped with just diamonds, but by golly I managed.  Also; I had woven two 19 or so inch lengths, and was bored.

Time to start playing with alternating treadlings.  This is where I once again thank my husband for the gift of a lovely piece of software (Fiberworks Bronze) which allows me to both typeset and change patterns up quickly and easily.  I’m still far from adept at pattern design, but the software lets me experiment with different treadlings really, really quickly.

My first idea was to treadly the same way as the heddles were threaded in extended Ms and Ws.  As it turned out, that gave a slightly unbalanced pattern and I experimented a little more, resulting in this pattern.

Oddly enough, I didn’t realize that this is still an extended MW treadling, except that if the extended M’s are treadled just as they’re threaded, the extended W’s are shifted one over, resulting in a 3-2-1-4-1-2-3 effect.  There’s exactly 1 extra treadling (using 4) between the M’s and W’s which makes this pattern again really easy to memorize.  Plus there’s lots of visual cues in the weaving, of course.

So what does the fabric look like? The weft is a lighter brown than the tan warp, keeping the pattern visible (albeit more subtle) on the tan stripes. As well, the edges are the best I’ve had on this yardage yet; there’sa floating selvage on both sides, but here I’m always treadling an even treadle when entering from the right, where in the previous bitsy bobs I always entered from the right on an odd treadle.  Funny the different that can make.