February TotM update - trying a different supplentary warp

Since this is a supplementary warp, I didn't beam it with the linen.  In fact I didn't beam it at all; it's just weighted off the back of the loom, over the second back beam.  This keeps the cotton warp from hanging directly on the linen and changing its tension.  (I've had problems with this when doing my sprang-and-weaving work in which I weight the sprang sections.)  If you don't have a second beam and want to weight the supplementary warp, you might devise a way to keep the weighted  warp up off the beamed warp, or spread the beamed warp a little to make a place for the weighted warp to rest.

The cotton I'm using seems a little thick for this ground.  I'm wondering if that's why I'm having problems with my weft not beating down to a balanced weave no matter how hard I beat.  I'm only getting about 24 weft shots or picks per inch (ppi), whereas the warp is sett at 30 ends per inch (epi).  Consequently, my hearts are coming out tall and skinny.  They still look like hearts, but I'd like them to be plumper (is that a word?), and the plain weave fabric to not be so sleazy.


So I'm taking advantage of the fact that I beamed
this separately, and I'm swapping in a red 10/2 cotton for the second towel.  This time I'm beaming the warp, though, on my second warp beam, because I was having trouble with the supplementary warp bubbling up when I beat (probably because I was beating so hard).

Instead of attaching the warp to the fabric like you do when putting in a repair warp, I'm weighting the other end of the supplementary section off the front beam while I start the weaving.

Changing to a thinner supplementary warp helped, a little.  I'm now getting about 27 ppi.

Weave along and get a chance to win the Towel of the Month!  You do not have to weave every month, just the towels that interest you.  If you are weaving along, please leave a comment to let us all know.  Put a link or url in the comment to a photo (on your Flickr, Picasaweb, Photobucket, your blog etc.) of your work in progress. Deadline to post you r comment is midnight GMT Feb 28, 2014.

Take-up differential in combined sprang-and-weaving

When I got to the end of the warp for my curved lines fabric, I was curious to know the difference in the take-up between my sprang warp (which was weighted in sections) and the warp that was beamed.

The answer was, not a lot considering this was after 4-plus yards of woven goods.  Off the loom, the portion of the fabric that has sprang measures 4 yards.  There was also some regular doublecloth at the two ends.

The difference between my "full" layer (the warp that always weaves balanced plain weave) and my "half" layer (which alternates weaving balanced plain weave with a loose, unbalanced plain weave when its other "half" does sprang) was 3 inches.  That is, the "full" layer had 3 inches more take-up.  The full and half layers are the knots on the left of the picture, lined up neatly in two rows since they are attached to the two beams.

The weighted sprang layer varied fairly wildly.  These are the knots to the right of the neat knot rows.  The difference was between 4" and 9.5" more take-up than my "half" layer (average about 5.5 inches).  It tells me my technique is not consistent; I must pull up more some times than others while working the sprang. 

An interesting data point from this experiment!

Warp weighting for weaving with sprang

Remember my initial tensioning system for weaving with sprang, using soup cans?  Since then I have acquired quite a little collection of fishing weights.  And last Christmas, my Secret Santa added some more to that collection.  Plus he introduced me to something really cool called Tool Dip.  I guess it's for coating your hand tools with a rubberized coating.  But it works great at coating lead fishing weights, too.  You can get it in clear or colors, but I found a kit with the clear stuff and additives so you can mix your own colors.  My weights are all different shapes and sizes, so I color-coded them according to weight.

When I am weaving with weighted sections of warp, I will experiment to find the "right" weight to tension a section to weave well, and adjust the tension on my beamed warp with the warp beam and brake system.  Then I will use a weight proportional to the width of each section I am weighting.  For example, if I had sprang sections with 24, 36 and 48 threads in them, I might use 8 oz, 12 oz and 1 lb weights on them respectively.

You will often use weights to tension supplementary warp as well, especially if whatever you are doing with the supplementary warp causes it to "take up" at different rates.  The same approach would work for that type of application.

The taming of a warp

Isn't it funny how contrary we can be.  In the last post I just complained that I found the hemp warp springy and stiff and hard to control.  So what do I put on the loom next, but something springy and stiff?

When I made the exciting "discovery" of the three-dimensional potential of the structure I'm exploring, I then thought that a similar piece in all natural-colored linen would be just the thing to try next.  This piece would be all about the structure (and I wouldn't have to fret over color choices).

Here's the linen warp all sorted out and ready to weave.  You may be able to notice that the yarns are not all parallel; this is because the layer that will be worked in sprang is not beamed but instead is kept gathered in its section and weighted.

Because the linen is so twisty and live, this part of the loom looked a total mess until I got it through the reed and tensioned.  There's something quite satisfying about taming a warp: getting each end in its proper sequence and path through the heddles and reed, working together with the loom to create order from the seeming chaos.  I didn't realize until I had it to this point that I had been figuratively holding my breath until now.

A Weighty Issue?

My semi-failure of a Spranged Windows experiment was my first attempt at weighting sections of my warp instead of beaming them.  I had a collection of small fishing weights, but my sections were fairly large due to my memory lapse during measuring of the warp (described in the experiment post), so I didn't think the fishing weights would provide enough tension.  Instead I raided my pantry as you can see in the photo.

This comical setup got me thinking that some larger weights might be a good addition to my collection.  I thought it would be cool to have a weight from each of my brothers and mom and pop, so I put one-pound fishing weights on my Christmas list.

One brother responded (I guess I asked too late as everyone else had different gift plans), but he did give me eight of them.  No more ugly soup cans slipping out of their knots and clunking to the floor. Thanks, Jon!