Pumpkin medallions

Happy pumpkin season!

Danish medallion worked on a crammed-and-spaced warp.

Wall of Shuttles

Finally got my shuttle wall put back up, having moved the studio nearly a year ago now.  Well, half of it is up anyway.  This is one of those overcoming-inertia things.  Hopefully the other half won't be too long to follow.  It feels pretty good to have the shuttles have a home.

Summer is Winding Down

I haven't posted in a while; been in a slump during August.  All my focus and anticipation seemed to be directed at the trip to Convergence in Milwaukee (I had a great time!), and I guess it kind of sapped my energy once it was over.  Now that the sun is dropping in the sky and the evening light is coming sooner and sooner, I'm a little sad that the summer has flown by.  I always have such high hopes for productivity for the summer.  I did have fun going through sample after sample adapted from Recueil d'Armures Fantaisies by J. Moiret.  Here's a scan of one of the more intricate weaves.

New (to me) leno weave variations

I've been working through weaving some leno structures from a book published in 1908.  The book is in French, and doesn't have much explanation for the diagrams, so this is my interpretation of the weaves.  The ones pictured here all have two ground (stationary) warp ends for every doup warp end (the end that crosses under the grounds and back).  They are 10/2 cotton set at 18 epi.  Some extraordinary variety is possible on just one or two threadings!

Doup leno sheds - AVL

Continuing the experiment, here are the sheds I can get on the AVL, which has a smaller shed than the Macomber.  Using top doups, crossed shed.

Top doups, uncrossing shed.

The normal shed opening for this loom with the top doups installed.

Using bottom doups, crossed shed.

Bottom doups, uncrossing shed.

The normal shed opening for this loom with the bottom doups installed.

Top vs. Bottom Doups

The first in a series of experiments comparing top-mounted doup heddles to bottom-mounted.  This experiment is on my Macomber loom.  The first photo is using the top-mounted doups, the shed where the doup warp end is crossed under the ground (stationary) end.  You can just barely see the crossing going on in the shadows behind the reed.  The lower warp ends have lifted well off the shuttle race and the shed is small compared to what the loom usually produces.

The second photo is still the top-mounted, with the shed open where the doup warp is raised on the usual side of the ground, uncrossing the warps.  The shed is larger and the lower warp ends are still on the shuttle race.  But it's not as large as the normal shed on this loom, because the doups are deflecting the upper warp ends a little.  Again looking in the shadows reveals this deflection.

In the third photo, I rethreaded the loom using bottom-mounted doups instead.  The crossing shed is much larger than the one using top-mounted, but the lower warps are still lifted off the shuttle race.  I've found that on this loom I can alleviate this by not pushing the treadle all the way down to the floor.

The fourth photo is bottom-mounted doups, uncrossing shed.  This shed is the same nice large shed that the loom produces in normal weaving without doup heddles, because the bottom-mounted doups don't interfere at all with this shed.

Leno Iridescence - result

One of the scarves I wove in this series - they're all iridescing (is that a word?), but this photo shows it up the most.