Weaving eTextiles or at least the design of them has grabbed hold of me.

After reading Lynne Bruning’s article in WeaveZine, I couldn’t resist buying some components from SparkFun Electronics to have a go.

Most references in eTextile electronics mention the memories of ‘6th grade electronic projects’. This must be a distinctly American concept as I have never heard of electronics education in primary or high schools here in Australia and I was never exposed to it in any way. Thus, as school can tend to immunise you against some activities, I was just totally enthralled having had no exposure at all.

When the componets arrived in their neat little box I just looked at them wondering how I would proceed. A bit scared of tiny little, harmless looking dynamos. Then I bought Switch Craft and Fashion Geek, while searching the net for tutorials. (Threadbanger has loads.) …just to give me the confidence to go.  As I was weaving conductive threads to Lynne’s suggestion using the clasped weft technique, my husband suggested that I test the circuits by just tying the thread to the power source. In this case I used a coin cell battery holder which is sewable without taking bits off it. Guess what – it worked! the little LED lit up brightly and happily adding new dimensions to my usual textile weave.

But I was still worried about the battery holder. Yes, I can sew it on here and there etc. etc. But wouldn’t it be better if the weaver in me could contribute more. Double weave, of course. Weavers are made to do double weave. So I experimented with a hand manipulated double weave pocket situated in the middle of the fabric. The pocket had to be accessible to take the battery in and out and change it. So I wove a slit on the front top only. Then the battery holder and battery could be inserted and connected, hidden from view and incorporated into the textile design itself. You can see the emergence of this in the photo. It has far more applications when I get onto a 24 shaft loom to further control the double weave with shafts. Another new adventure…

Beautifully dyed and luscious and very harmless looking. This is the photo of my latest warp.

Fifteen metres of changing colours and moods looking ripe for warping and weaving. I don’t usually put on 15 metres and now I know why. As I nearly always hand paint my warps, this wider width combined with the long warp length has lead to a disasterous warp. I got greedy wanting to weave more than a couple of scarves on one run but the time spent in winding the warp is days.

What happened? It became knotted. Horribly knotted. Depressingly knotted…Maybe I should….give up. The dyeing process on long warps affects and disturbs the order of the warping process making the warp more uneven and unpredictable. It also doesn’t help that I’m warping two different types of yarns for the double weave. I may have to cut off each scarf as they are completed. More waste of the yarn I was trying to save.

What I should of done is wound a different warp for each of the two yarns which would have helped. This at least would absolutely ensure that each type of thread would be tensioned correctly throughout the weaving.

This next photo shows the state of the warp at the moment. Not a pretty sight. I’m combing and beaming, combing and beaming, but with great difficulty. I shouldn’t get myself into these situations but they just seem to arise despite my experience and knowledge. Sometimes a burning desire to create something overrides all sense. Patience, patience is that what this warp is teaching me.

Sometimes bad warps become good textiles and I’m hopeful that this will be the case here.

I am revisiting this post on Celtic Knot Textiles because of my participation in the Inkle Weaving Workshop I’ve been doing with Steve Kennett at the Online Guild. Also see Sara Lamb’s Celtic Knotwork.

I’ve always found pick up labourious. Even though the results are worth it. It seemed that the arrangement of Steve’s working patterns made the pick up easier and quicker. But why?  I looked at how I structure my working pattern notes in comparison to Steve’s method and found some fundamental clues to good instructional design. It’s the human mind at work. It’s also the availability of computer programs to more of us. Allowing us to present information in a more highly visual way.

This is the warping diagram for this Celtic Knot pattern. The P’s represent a thicker warp for the pattern followed each time by two thinner threads on the open and heddles. Steve also had a better visual and symbolic style of writing warping patterns but I haven’t included it here.

The first pattern diagram is the type I usually use and is a common convention. It provides a reasonable visual of how the pattern will look (axonometric graph paper is even better for this), which is valuable. The diagram only focuses on the pattern threads as the others take care of themselves with the shedding device on the inkle loom. Starting at the bottom, with the UP shed, you can see 12 pattern threads at our disposal for manipulation into a design. But that is where the working diagram ends. It’s up to the weaver to figure out on each row which pattern threads should be picked up or dropped down. So every row I have to refocus attention. I usually convert this pattern gird to written notation like 2,1,5,1,2,1, for each row so my fingers can work quickly through the threads but if we see things in a direct visual way it saves the struggle. This type of diagram is effective for showing a representation of how the weave will look and contains the information for weaving it but doesn’t really assist us greatly in actually weaving each row….the working diagram.

In contrast Steve’s diagrams actually inform you about the process. Only the affected pattern threads on each row are marked and the notation tells you whether the pattern thread is picked up or dropped down. Steve has also used colour to further alert us to the rhythm of the pattern. This type of notation is a true working pattern diagram but doesn’t display the ‘look’ of the completed weave very well. It’s a great format to work directly onto the loom.