It has been a busy couple of months. When last I posted I had just about completed my first warp – a black and white cottolin. The last foot of string became signs for the weaving studios at Callanwolde where I teach intermediate 8 shaft floor loom.
My first warp was 1200 threads. My 2nd warp, wound by Cathryn Amidei during my training, was the full 1980 threads in 16/2 mercerized cotton. So I got to practice threading :). It took a while to get it threaded. I was getting close to 200 threads an hour but ended up missing 2 threads somewhere in the middle. I was able to find them, I threaded 2 threads at a time twice, and hang a couple off the back and get the reed sleyed, warp tied on and ready to weave.
Mischief managed.
It was a pretty big mind shift to go from double weave everything to single layer, surprisingly enough.
My brother and I hooked up code to convert WIF files to images inside AdaCAD (using Claude) so I used that to collect a bunch of old 32 shaft Summer and Winter patterns into a single sample blanket. I lined up the tie down pics so that pattern and tie down were consistent across all of the patterns and wove a couple of yards down memory lane. Here’s a pic of the magic.
Each of these patterns were originally woven with different warps and wefts so the aspect ratio isn’t right but it was so fun to see these – many of which have been given away. The tie down was 16/2 mercerized cotton (like the warp) and the pattern weft was 8/2 cottolin.
Next I worked on a satin image of a painting I made of my niece eating a snowball. I was traveling to visit and wanted to take her a little weaving of her.
It’s fun to play with the interplay between the painting, the image and the weave structure. Earlier versions were a little flat so I brought snowflake images into the image using Photoshop.
Back from my trip, time to focus on my class samples. We are studying texture – primarily using waffle/honeycomb. I learned how to make 2 warp threads act as one, easily, in AdaCAD so I wove several class samples using 16/2 (doubled) in the warp and 8/2 as weft.
The green and blue samples at the bottom of the image are double waffle – 20 shafts (simulated) in the first 4 and 8 shafts (simulated) on the last 4. The class was interested in double waffle from some work I did in 2022 but they’ve all chosen single layer waffle designs this time.
I have to say that I just love how easy it is to produce samples for class without having to rethread and tie up my other looms!
With the little remaining of the 16/2 warp I wove an image of some knitted cables with a 10/2 weft. This fabric has a really nice hand.
Next up, winding a warp and tying on.