I have learned so much today. I don't know where to start. This cotton is from partial cones that I bought from a sale years ago. Only one was labeled at 8/2. I assumed all the cones were the same, and looking in the Weavers Companion, I saw that 8/2 cotton was sett at 16-20 for plain weave and 24-30 for straight twill. I sett this warp at 24. However, the weaving went at 18 picks per inch so the Ms and Os pattern is pretty lost.
Since this is all practice, I decided to use a contrast color for the first towel and no contrast for the second - just curious. In the Weavers Companion, two pages before the "Setts for some common yarn styles" is the "Using inch wraps to determine sett." I didn't bother to check, since I had the yarn size on the inside of the cone. However, when I did do the wraps, it came out to 28 wraps per inch. Twill is calculated at 2/3 the wraps per inch, and doing the math, I came up with 18. Since I was beating at 18 picks per inch, I've decided to put another warp on the loom at that sett and see if I can't produce a square beat. Ugh~
I put on floating selvedges and to weight them, used empty jelly jars. I was in the middle of the first towel, and was wondering if I really needed them when the right one broke so I was left with just the left one. I had thought the jars might be too heavy, but what a great way to find out if the floaing selvedges were of any benefit. My selvedges were consistently awful. Selvedges? Fuhgetabout.
We're babysitting tonight so my new loom has already gone into its first time out. My friend Linda has the same loom and I need to see how the braking system is assembled before I put on a warp. I'm confused. It's been a day of confusion.
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3 comments:
I think your towel looks wonderful and I don't see any problem with your selvedges either. I believe you just need to back away for the evening and look at it in the morning with fresh eyes.
Ah! The M's and O's will pop out with wet finishing! Did you do better with a square beat on the second warp? Mine didn't cooperate either as I recall.
Learning curves can be tough.
I learned something neat about handling floating selvedges at CNCH this year. Go to your local hardware store and buy a couple of clamps with the orange handles. The ones I have are labeled Pony 3201. Wrap your floating selvedge yarn in a figure 8 around the upper part of the handle and then clip it off with the clamp. Hang the clamp over the back beam and thread your selvedge into the reed as usual. When you need more thread, unclamp and unwind what you need and reclamp. The weight of the clamp is just about right.
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