I was given a lovely weaving book for my birthday, Designing woven fabrics by Janet Phillips and couldn't wait to get started. The designs in the book are based on 2/2 twill variations, of which there are many and are mostly to be woven on a four shaft loom. Happening to have such a thing about me, what better I thought than to start to plan to weave Janet's multi section sample blanket in which the 2/2 twill weave structure is developed and explored.
This is where the arithmetic comes in. You can't plan a woven item with artistic ability alone because no matter how artistic you are or how much colour sense you have, you can't do it without a lot of arithmetic and I mean A LOT of arithmetic!
Janet's instructions for planning the warp for her sample blanket are very detailed and show all the threading plans, the sett, the total number of threads and really she has done all the arithmetic. How simple it should have been. Just get the yarn, wind the warp and get it on the loom! Janet's done all the arithmetic, so I don't have to!
Well of course, like life, weaving isn't that simple! For a start, Janet's warp is 27 inches wide and my loom will only weave a width of 24 inches. Not to worry, I'll leave out one of the sections so my blanket will fit my loom. So now, the width is fine, but oh dear there are still 420 threads and I only have 400 heddles! Then, I can't find a yarn that is the right thickness and my yarn is a lot thinner than the one Janet uses, so I can't use her sett and will have to recalculate that as well!
So, I spent a merry (sic) afternoon with a pencil and a piece of paper designing my own sample blanket and doing my own arithmetic. My blanket has a sett of 32 ends per inch, has eight different threading patterns across the warp and still only uses 380 heddles! Feeling very proud of my efforts, I wound my warp carefully counting that I had the correct number of threads in each group. Double and triple checked them and got the warp ready to get onto the loom.
How is it then that threading my very last group through the heddles I find I'm four threads short! One sleepless night later, and deciding not to unwind the warp and add the additional threads in, I found another threading plan that used the number of threads available! Now to sley the reed, but again, getting 32 threads evenly through a 10 dent per inch reed defeated me as I got the division wrong. Now I have to sley the reed again!
Another book I was given for my birthday is called "Women's Work" by Elizabeth Wayland-Barber. This author is a very academic lady who has done a lot of research into the origins of textile crafts, particularly spinning and weaving and these are described in great detail. It's so humbling to think that even with all my modern equipment, I can't get my loom warped up in one go as so called "primitive" weavers could!
Anyway, I'ff off back to the loom to get the tying up done. Who knows what other mistakes will come to light! Exciting isn't it! Perhaps photos next post!
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