Four-shaft loom from a rigid heddle loom

 After the twill project, I got ansty. I just really wanted to do a balanced 2/2 twill, but this is a thing that can't be done on a rigid heddle with two reeds.

I've been dreaming for years of building my own loom. It shouldn't be that hard. The only part I couldn't work out was the ratchet and pawl that keeps the beams from unwinding so the warp stays at a good tension. Most loom supply stores don't sell just that part by itself.

But, I realized, I did have a loom that had a ratchet and pawl . . . my 24-inch Ashford rigid heddle loom. And I had already built a simple stand for it. All I had to do was replace the heddle block with some kind of four-shaft system.

I decided to make a countermarche loom, on the grounds that 1) they work well for every kind of pattern and fiber, since they don't rely on the fiber stretching or the pattern being balanced, and 2) I understand how they work. The mechanism of jack looms confuses me a bit, and the pulleys involved in counterbalance looms seemed like they'd easily devolve into a tangly mess.

I started out by putting each shaft on a mechanism like a towel roller bar--a string going from the top heddle bar, over a top dowel, down to the bottom dowel, under that, and up to the bottom heddle bar. My thinking was that they'd move easily but stay put, the way roller towels do. I forgot that shafts are much heavier on the shaft end and therefore would tend to go down. But it still did mean they didn't fall straight the floor while I worked out the lamm system. Plus, it ensures the top and bottom heddle bars move together, whatever else happens.

Originally I meant to have only upper lams, on the grounds that the pedals could attach straight to the bottom bar of the shafts. But that meant too much tying things directly to the heddle bar, which I worried would confuse things and lead to them falling off a lot. So I put a row of lower lams as well.

Initially, I used wood 1x2s with hooks on them for the treadles. But this caused problems. First off, the cords kept slipping out of the hooks when there wasn't tension on them. And second, the weight of the treadles weighed down the shafts on the sides, pulling them askew. So I replaced those with PVC treadles, less aesthetic but lighter. As an added advantage, they were narrower so they pulled down the shafts closer to the middle of each one. Though I spaced them out some, to make room for my feet!

The heddles, I purchased. Could I have tied 200 string heddles? Sure. Do I want to? No. And I was afraid I wouldn't make them exact enough to work for my purposes. I also used, as a reed, one of my rigid heddles, hung on two nails when not in use. Eventually, I want to buy a proper reed, and make some kind of a beater for it.

My first project was a twill scarf of handpainted silk yarn. The sett was too wide, leading to a weft-faced result. That's the fault of the rigid heddle reed--I only have two, a 7.5 and a 15 dent, but because I can only use the slots, they're essentially 3.75 and 7.5 dent. Plus the fatness of the "eye" part makes the gap in the reed awfully narrow, which can stop the warp threads from sliding around as easily as they should.

But I'm happy with the scarf all the same. Many more projects to come! 

Double heddle twill project

 It's been a while since I've posted. I have been spinning and weaving still, but nothing particularly interesting till I started this epic double heddle project.

I bought this loom early in lockdown, to replace my small scarf loom which is kind of .... permanently on loan to the school that had it when we locked down. Also because I wanted something much wider.

I bought a second heddle for it, because the possibilities seem to be endless. My first project using it, though, was an utter failure. I used handspun singles for the warp, which absolutely did not work. The heddles shredded the yarn. But the heddle is 15 dent, making it too small to fit the same yarn if I plied it.

So I decided I should use storebought yarn for my first twill project. But most storebought yarn is too chunky for 15 epi as well! I finally found some lovely thin yarn in a variety of blue shades. Till I got it home and found out it was not actually thin yarn. It was four thin strands, laid together but not really plied.

Well. That really stymied me. I tried winding the different strands into separate balls, but then someone would startle me and I'd drop a ball or two, and they'd tangle, and it was just a nightmare. Eventually, though, I had a brainwave to use my spinning wheel to separate the strands. I just tied each strand onto a different section of the bobbin, held the strands between my fingers, and treadled. The whole unwinding was done in under an hour!

I taped down the ends of three strands to wind off the fourth into a ball, and then untaped and wound off each other strand in turn.

Then it was time to warp the loom. I used the various shades of turquoise and aqua for the warp and saved the dark blue, medium blue, and very pale blue for weft.

This is a 3/1 twill (pretty much the only one you can do with two heddles), meaning one end went in the hole in the first heddle, the next went in the hole in the second heddle, and the third went in both slots. So my shafts were first heddle up, second heddle up, and both heddles down.

The sheds were sometimes a bit narrow, but luckily weren't sticky like my handspun had been. (It probably helped that this yarn was synthetic and quite smooth.)

As I got weaving, the twill pattern slowly took shape.

After a few inches of the lightest blue, I started phasing in a darker color, first as one pick of dark separated by a few of light, and then one pick of light separated by several dark, and finally all the next darker color.

This took forever. Usually the actual weaving is the quickest part of a project, but the yarn was so thin it took many times as long to get an inch as anything else I'd done before. I moved in the middle, still not done. It didn't help that I had nowhere to put the dang thing. It's a large loom, and it has to be braced against something as you weave. Initially, I'd used a table. After our move, I sat on the floor and used the bed. I noticed that if I changed my position too much, my beating also changed detectibly. You beat harder when it's propped up on something than you can when it's laid flat on the floor.

The cats were excessively interested. (Pardon the mess. There may be people who weave AND have kids AND have a clean house, but I am not one of them.)

Toward the end, I did have a lot of warp threads break and had to fix them. I also had several threads mysteriously lose tension. I shimmed them with socks, because if there's one thing I love it's slapdash fixes for problems I don't understand.

At last it was finished and gorgeous.

As you can see, one side is more warp-dominant and the other more weft-dominant. Because of how I had it set up, the side visible while I was weaving was the weft-dominant side (bottom picture). I think I like the warp-dominant side better. I mixed up the colors a bit more subtly.

Washed and finished, it looks pretty great. Does it look good enough to justify taking a year for me to make? Maybe not. But I enjoyed working on it.

All I need is a fancy occasion to wear this to!

Fiber types

I've agreed to teach a six-week course on textiles - super exciting! With so much time to work with, I'm going more in-depth this time. For the first class, we will be talking about different types of fiber: plant, animal, and synthetic.

Wool is what I have most of and know most about. Here are some Merino sheep:

Alpacas and llamas:

Angora goat:

Angora rabbit:

Flax in the field

Flax being hackled

What medieval Europeans thought cotton looked like -- a tree with lambs growing on it!

Cotton in the field

Silkworm moths

Wool under a microscope

Different types of fiber under a microscope:

Weaving presentation

Here are the pictures and videos for a presentation I am doing on weaving: history, materials, and a how-to.  At the end we'll make a scarf on my rigid heddle loom!

 Greek women weaving on a warp-weighted vertical loom:

Egyptian vertical loom

The Bayeau tapestry, all hand-woven

Tapestry loom

Heddles

Parts of a modern floor loom

Warp weighted loom

Backstrap loom

Tablet weaving


Jack, counterbalance, and countermarche looms


 Jacquard loom

History of spinning

This week I have a fun event coming up: demonstrating spinning for a friend's elementary school class! So I've gathered some pictures and videos of spinning to show them. Enjoy!