My final day of class, and I’m hooked.  I will definitely sign up for the four-harness class, and even have purchased my first instructional book:  Learning to Weave, by Deborah Chandler.  It only just arrived today, so I don’t have an update, but I’m excited to feel like a ‘real’ student.

So, on to the last day of my first set of class:
These images show the fabric all the way up to near completion; I also have some images of the fabric off the loom but I’ll save those for another post.

This shows the rest of the greens and the aquas that I used.  At this point, I’m starting to actually run out of warp, which I didn’t think would happen.  I’m disappointed to not have more to test the colors on, actually.

Here is a close-up of the light green.  The little string sticking up is actually woven into the fabric at the sides when you change colors, then clipped at the end of the process.  I started clipping once they wove in, so I didn’t have as much to do when I pulled the fabric off the loom, which is something I’ll continue to do.

Here is the finished product, with the exception of actually coming off the loom.  It shows all the way through the indigo; I didn’t have enough room to work through the purple/violet tones of the spectrum.  You can see how different each of the stripes looks as it progresses through the spectrum on the warp; this is a good exercise in seeing how colors interact in fabric.  They do so quite differently than when knitting.

Here is another view of the same segment of fabric.  In this view, it seems much more plaid-like.  There are some interactions that I didn’t expect to like but really do, including the red and green and the center sections.

You can see a couple things in this image.  One is how many threads there are when you don’t clip as you go – which is why I decided to do so.  The other is how really bright that one band of orange is.  Part of that is because the acrylic fiber is much brighter in tone than the wool, and the strand was a lot looser so when I packed it, it packed very tightly and ended up letting the weft dominate in that segment.

This is the final piece, all wound back on, ready to go back to class to take the fabric off the loom.  I ended with a clear royal blue, since I couldn’t get all the way into the violets.  Not a bad day’s work – well, really, four days’ work!

As I’ve discussed in prior posts on weaving, I’ve been working on learning the Cricket loom, a rigid heddle loom.  I have successfully taken the fabric off the loom and it is now a table runner in my dining room!  It’s exciting.  It turns out that weaving is only part of the tale…
Once one is finished weaving, the finishing process is critical to the success of the fabric.  My instructor says that an unfinished weaving is like an unbaked cake.  You can finish by pressing or washing (or both); we finished mine by steaming it with an iron but not pressing it flat (in order to not crush the weave).

This is a picture of the front of the loom, with the breast beam.  The threads are tied on now, and are prepared for weaving the ‘header.’  This is a part of the weaving that will not be used in the final fabric, and will pull the warp threads into alignment.

The flat plastic grid that the threads are pulled through is called the heddle.  In this loom, which is a rigid heddle loom, the heddle is moved by hand up and down.  In a four-harness loom, the heddles are controlled by levers and springs (which will make more sense when I get some pictures up on that topic, later).

This view shows the header, which is woven in white, and the beginning of the weaving.  If you recall, I wove a color ‘gamp,’ which is a sampler piece that shows the properties of the weaving.  A color gamp is to show how the colors interact; a texture gamp shows the various types of stitches.  I decided to do this one in the colors of the spectrum (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet), as well as brown, black and white.  This would let me see how each of those colors interact with each other.

My instructor suggested I use shades of each of those tones, which is what I did.  It made an interesting effect in the weave.

Here is a top view of the warp with the threads coming through the heddle.  You can see that there is a hole in the center of the heddle, as well as gaps in between, and one thread comes through each.

These are the red tones as they’re woven on.  I like the plaid effect as they get woven.

This shows the cones of yarn waiting to be used.  My gamp is made with wool that’s spun especially for weaving.  The weight is a good deal lighter than knitting yarn (about a lace weight), and a lot stronger to withstand the repeated beatings it takes when in the warp.

Another view of the red tones, with the warp extending off to the upper left of the photograph.

Closeup of starting the orange segment.  This is what’s called a ‘plain weave,’ which is where every other thread of the warp is lifted and the weft is passed through.  Other patterns can be made by moving the warp differently, but those patterns are easier on a harness loom because the heddles can be controlled more precisely.

This is another view of the weaving, where the heddle is brought toward the weaver to ‘beat’ the threads into the warp.  It’s a meditative, repetitive action:  pass, beat, pass, beat.  Depending on how hard the weaver beats the fabric, it will change the density of the weaving (which we’ll see later on when I switched to a different fiber and  ended up with a weft-dominated band).

A close-up of the selvege.  The goal in weaving is to get a very neat edge, which I found is a lot harder than it sounds.  It’s composed of how you beat the fibers in, which can vary based on the mood of the weaver (and it’s interesting to see the differences from class session to session).

As you can see from the very bright orange band, above, the switch in fiber meant that when I beat it into the weaving, it REALLY packed down.  That stripe is VERY orange. 

Now we are moving into the yellows.  I like the rust tones in this section.

Interesting how the whole tone of the piece is changed in just a few stripes.  This section is much cooler and softer, because of the change in the color.  Again, you can see how much closer the current segment beats into the fabric, resulting in a more weft-dominated band.

As some of you know, I’ve recently purchased a Cricket Rigid Heddle Loom. I didn’t post an update on it when I bought it, but I’ve been collecting weaving books (there aren’t a huge number for the rigid heddle loom, but there are a few).

Last night, I took my first class at the Chicago Weaving School! It was great fun. Natalie Boyett is a great instructor. If you are ever in the Chicago area and have thought of weaving, this is the place for you. She has actual dressed looms that you can use without having to work through the setup process, and thus can see if it’s even something you’d like to try or not. But believe me, it’s fun!

I’ve taken a couple pictures of dressing the loom, and wanted to share my experiences.

First, one has to put the loom together. I didn’t think to take before pix, but it was a challenge for me since I don’t translate 2-D to 3-D very well. But if you don’t have that problem, it’s easy, and even if you DO have that problem, I was able to follow the instructions and get things going.

Once the loom is put together, the next step is to dress it, or “warp” it. The warp are the long continuous threads in the fabric, the weft are the crossways ones. The Cricket comes with two skeins of Lion Brand Wool Ease, which would work, but Natalie suggested I try some weaving yarns and do a color sampler. Color interacts much differently with weaving than knitting, so I followed her advice.

My loom is ten inches wide on the warp surface, with eight pins to the inch – think of that as the gauge. The eight pins are one inch wide, so there are ten sets of eight across width – giving me ten colors, each one inch wide, to work with.

We went left to right, the colors of the spectrum (remember Roy G. Biv from art class? if not, read on and I’ll explain it) as well as black, brown and ivory. Roy G. Biv is a mnemonic to remember the colors of the visible spectrum, or, in layman’s language, the colors of the rainbow. They are Red, Orange, Yellow (Roy), Green (G.), Blue, Indigo and Violet (Biv).

Here’s what the loom looks like half dressed, with the warp threads still wound around the warping peg:

A view from the top, looking at the back of the loom, is here:

This particular warp will be the length of the table (and as I’m typing, I realize that I neglected to measure that, but I’d guess around five feet or 60 inches). If I wanted something longer, I would use a warping board.

We did finish dressing the loom last night, but it was very late so I didn’t take pictures. I will post another update once I get some more pictures to share.