I’m still enthralled with the little inkle workshop and now I’ve done a pattern that has pickup and drop down on it. I think I can weave one a night.

Some of you (thank you Peg) may have noticed an inability to comment on my previous post. Well I’ve looked into it and I’m none the wiser. The post took over 1.5 hours to write and kept doing strange things. Then in the end it refused to save my last parting and eloquent lines, which you will never see. So I went with the flow and decided they weren’t important after all.  So the computer says “no comments on that previous post.” However, I’m not really keen to assign wisdom to computers like we have to the god ECONOMY. I’m just not worrying concerned about it’s inability to deliver. I hope you will all understand.

Alison has just included me in a Bella Award. Thank you Alison. Now I’m parting with eloquence and …… I just can’t think of anything more.

I’ve had a stressful week this week for no particular reason much, except for life and the demands and losses it imposes on us!

So it was such a welcome reprieve to warp up my little inkle loom and weave a pick up pattern to Steve Kennett’s instructions at the Online Guild May workshop on Inkle weaving.

The instructions were beautifully elegant and motivating with succinct pattern drafts very clearly illustrated. The weave progressed so f a s t!  Using a warp of 4 ply soft knitting cotton, with the 11 pattern warps doubled.

I’ve done alot of inkle weaving over the years so I find the loom dependable and easy to use. So much so that I’ve decided to do day workshops for the local Adult Education College latter in the year. This little loom offers a realistic entry to weave design and handweaving in general. So many patterns and ideas can be tried on it and it costs very little to set it up. I’ve got 10 little looms for workshops, which I’ve also used at schools.

My current double weave sampling is going well but I’m discovering some very curious and unexpected things.

The concepts for this type of weave were triggered by an article in Weavers 11 (1990) by Alice Schlein and (blog). Even if you think you will never understand or have the equipment to weave as Alice writes, I would still recommend keeping either copies or references on her teaching as it is always compelling and innovative to read…and who knows it may lead to more one day.

This is a double weave (Alice called it Pizza Cloth) using a networked threading and two differing layers of cloth. One consisting of a fine yarn and the other a thicker one. This means that more ends of the fine yarn are in the fine layer and less ends in the thicker layer. The ratio of ends is 2:1.

The threading is based on a network using the smallest unit of description of the weave.

Shafts 1 and 3 carry the thick thread and shafts 2 and 4 carry the thin thread. This is the simplest description of the weave and how it can be woven with 4 shafts in principal. This will produce horizontal stripes of the thick on top, then thin on top on four shafts. However to get circle or other more juicy designs happening more shafts are needed. The design line is plotted on the network which, in this case, was 24 shafts high. Here is a copy of the network grid I made based on Alice’s notes for 16 shafts. This helped me to design a threading line based on the threading requirements for the weave.

The two photos show a few of the samples that I’ll probably take further. They are both made of the same yarns –  silk, tencel, wool/lycra and fine bamboo but with different setts.

If you look at the bottom sample in the top photo you can see lacy fluted edges – what a nice surprise! The cloth is in two layers at the edges where the oval design was part way through its shape. The textile is very pliable and organic looking.  The top samples were sett at 72 epi.

The next samples were sett at only 60 epi. But what a change. The cloth is actually heavier because it allowed more picks in the beat and has a more distinctive cell vs bobble rocky appearance.

Well onto the big warping now.

Also my Etsy shop has reopened and more weaves will be uploaded as my production increases. All weaves are woven with great passion and curiousity for the craft of handweaving.

I originally intended this post to be about Industrial weaving  vs handweaving! About what differences there are and how handweavers have unique design and practical tools that allow them to do all sorts of things.

But I’m now waylaid. I saw the most depressingly beautiful industrially woven scarf this weekend. In a very expensive shop a scarf for only $99.00 which I could never compete with at cost. Jacquard woven in wool and lycra in a two layer double weave and large coloured circles on it, with a lovely handle. As I was weaving double weave circles at the time I was particularly struck by it.

I’m sad at the parted ways of handweavers and industrial weavers. Handweavers generally have to teach themselves and reinvent the wheel with every woven textile. We often seem to be more aligned to the past than creating textiles for our contemporary changing world. I love learning about hand textiles and techniques of the past. I’m in awe of the textiles still made by hand in other cultures which promote their incredible skills and labour… but I still want to know what industry is doing and how new ideas and fibres are being used. Having said this handweavers have the perfect looms for experimentation and small runs. We can develop and perfect ideas before they can be run in very large lengths in industry. We can serve as a lab for industry.  

In this light I experimented with selvedges in the deflected double weave scarves.  I added a selvedge extension warp and wove it to the main textile at designated spots. When felted this produced a scaffolding which is nice to wrap the scarf through when you wear it.

On another scarf I cut the scaffolding to the the woven tags which added a nice further dimension to the edges, fluttering as you walk.

These are modest experiments but I enjoyed doing them and now have more ideas for other selvedge treatments. The selvedge is a special area of design potential for handweavers. Remember we’re the lab. The  new word for exuberant samplers!