Pre wound weaving

Saori cloth in wool
Completed yardage

Somehow I’m not really a wool weaver. Never have been. I’ve always enjoyed cotton, silk and cellulose and bast fibres generally. Don’t get me wrong, I love wool and like to spin with it and am into the history of wool and its success in Australia. It’s just that I didn’t have early success with it in the beginning.

So I really need a BIG push to weave in wool, especially with a wool warp. What better push than an ignorant mistake on my part. I had two beautiful blue pre-wound warps from previous releases and I hurriedly started threading one on the loom in the dim light of my lounge room one night. “This yarn is a fuzzy, funny type of cotton” I thought to myself. Some cottons are a bit fuzzy so I just continued threading away until realising, in the light of day,  that I now had a lovely six metres of woollen warp on the loom – just in time for the hot summer!

Woven circles
Weaving circles in progress

Weaving in wool was a bit difficult in the heat but the gods had declared I must. As the blue warp was an indigo shade I knew I had to pop with hot pink, then bright mustard yellow.  I used inlay to weave in circles in silk and they worked out beautifully. The main reason to weave with wool, and especially a wool warp, is the felty magic that happens to the cloth on finishing. So snuggly and warp – now just in time for winter. So maybe weaving wool in summer does make some sense after all.

Saori woven coat
Saori woven coat

The main advantage of using pre-wound warps for me, aside from hurried unplanned mistakes, is the physiological effect it has on my perception of time.  With some experience a 200 thread pre-wound takes about one hour tops to thread and start weaving.  Winding a warp myself doesn’t take too much longer but it feels like it does. A pre-wound warp doesn’t limit creativity because every person weaves them differently and the cloths are different looking. There is something empowering about having a couple of pre-wounds in the wings waiting for the moment to be woven. When we just want to thread and go.

Fuku clothing book
Design 28

I stitched up the fabric into a coat from the Fuku no Katachi ni Suru clothing book. Design number 28. The great thing about these types of simple clothing patterns is they are all so different depending on the cloth created. To modify for size, measure your back between your where you would like your armholes to be cut. To make this larger than the given size make sure the central panel for the back is wide enough and if not you can always slice some fabric lengthwise to add another panel to make it right for you. You may need to add a corresponding panel for the front and back wrap too. If you wear the coat upside down, as I have here,  it looks more like a coat/tunic.  Either way it’s great to wear! I love the cloth so much that I might even purposely thread a wool warp onto the loom next summer. I especially like how you can leave chopped fringing here and there with wool because the light felting/finishing process locks it in and it looks good.

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