Saturday, August 30, 2014

August TotM - Huck

The latest in the Towel of the Month series was in a huck threading, 40/2 linen warp set at 30 epi.  The weft is 40/2 linen as well.

I wove two towels, one using the huck lace tie-up and treadling (on the right in the photo), and one in huck spot (left).  I think the huck spot is more practical as a towel, so that one has gone off to its new home.


For the threading, tie-up and treadlings to make this towel yourself, see the draft in this post.

Monday, August 25, 2014

Light through/on heddles

I walked by one of the looms the other day and noticed the late afternoon light shining through the heddles and that there seemed to be two light sources.  It's reflecting off of something, I thought, but I couldn't see what... until I realized it's reflecting off the heddles themselves.

Saturday, August 16, 2014

Doup Leno Setup Part 2 - What Goes on Behind the Castle

To get a good shed with the doup setup, the ground and doup warps need to be tensioned separately.  I used the method in the monograph by Hella Skowronski, Doup Leno.  In it she describes how to construct and place "jumpers", or tensioners, behind the harnesses.

With the loom threaded in blocks in a point twill arrangement, the warps make a pretty pattern going through the jumpers.


The jumpers are simply dowels, placed on top of the warp and attached with big rubber bands to the loom frame to hold them down.  Here is a side view of the first set of jumpers I was using.  These are just wooden apron rods or lease sticks.






The rubber bands allow them to move up and down as needed as the different sheds are raised, keeping enough tension on the warp to make a clean shed, and keeping them from slipping out to the side.  I attached them to the rod where the treadles pivot near the back of the loom.  The bands are actually lengths of surgical tubing.

Skowronski describes the process of setting up the jumpers for two sets of leno harnesses, but I found the description a bit ambiguous.  I tried several interpretations of what I was reading, but I found that I had the most success when I tensioned each harness separately.  With the doup harnesses raised through the whole process, I raised all but one of the back or ground harnesses, leaving the one lowered, starting at the back of the castle and moving forward.

With these jumpers in place, the shed forms cleanly.  But I found that if I open the shed completely wide, some of the warps raise up off the shuttle race a bit.








It works better if the shed is not opened completely.










In weaving doup leno, the beating takes some getting used to: because of the jumpers, the warp although taut is not held fixed like when it's coming straight off the beam as in regular weaving.  It's more like weaving against a warp that is entirely weighted across its width.  It bounces, and there's really not much to beat against.  So it's sort of easy and gentle, not strenuous, nice summer weaving.

Monday, August 11, 2014

Bonds & Connections

The Ties That Bind, 19' x 19". Deanna Deeds, 2014.  Cotton.  Doubleweave, warp wrapping, knotted netting.  On exhibit at Bonds & Connections.
What:           
·       Designing Weavers present Bonds & Connections a fiber exhibit exploring the diverse and intimate links between ourselves and the world.
 
·       In conjunction with the Fiber & Art Quilts 2014 Open; the 4th biennial fiber juried open with DW member, Debra Jarchow as juror.
 
Where                       Escondido Municipal Gallery
                                  262 E. Grand Avenue
                                  Escondido, CA 92025
 
Key Dates                  Exhibit Dates:     August 8 (Friday) - Sept. 27, 2014
             R
eception:          2nd Saturday in September 5:30-8pm
 
Viewing Times             Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday 11-4pm
                                    Closed Sunday, Monday, Wednesday
 
 More info:                  www.designingweavers.com
                      www.escondidoarts.org

Saturday, August 9, 2014

August TotM Weaving

Here's the huck lace version of the August towel, in natural 40/2 unbleached linen.  To make the design square, weave the plain weave between the lace treadling sequence the same size as the plain weave threading between the lace threading blocks.  If you are weaving evenweave (the same picks per inch as ends per inch), this will be 36 picks of plain weave between the lace.

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Doup Leno Setup Part 1 - Doup Threading

The leno/gauze weave studies I've been doing are turning out to be quite a fun adventure.

In doup leno, the warp works in pairs, each pair having a side-to-side stationary ("ground") warp and a side-to-side moving ("doup") warp.  The doup warp can be raised either to the left or to the right of the ground warp, causing the pair to twist back and forth with each other, with the weft holding the twist in place.
The doup warp is threaded through a ("back") harness at the rear of the castle, then it passes under the ground warp (also threaded near the rear), and finally it's threaded through the doup (string) heddle which has been threaded through a harness (the "standard" harness) in the front of the castle.
The doup heddles are the green strings hanging down from the standard heddles.




When the standard and doup harnesses are raised together, the doup warp is raised in the crossed position under the ground warp.

You can see the crossed warps in focus in the background, with the standard and doup heddles out of focus in the foreground.





When the back and doup harnesses are raised, the doup warp is raised in its normal position beside the ground warp.

Here the standard and doup heddles are in focus.  The standard remains lowered, but since the doup is raised, the doup heddles are able to slide up through the standard heddle eye, allowing the doup warp to be raised without a cross.


If these two steps are repeated, raising the doup warp and leaving the ground warp down on every pick, the result is plain gauze weave.









But you can also raise the ground warp alternately to get plain weave in between the twists, forming more complex structures.  This is "fancy gauze", also called leno.

Friday, August 1, 2014

August TotM - More Lace Weaving


Summer is flying by, isn't it?

The Towel of the Month for August uses a huck threading in blocks, surrounded by plain weave.  Here are the stats:

Warp: unbleached 40/2 linen
Weft: same as warp
Total number of warp ends: 564
Warp setting: 30 ends per inch (epi)
Width in reed: 18.8"

Thread according to the draft shown here.

There are two different treadlings for this towel.  You can make huck lace using the first tie-up and treadling, or you can make huck "spots" with the other combination.  Make one towel using each!