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The Great Vest Challenge

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We all have to do things to encourage other fibreaholics to get in there and have a go so I proposed the Great Vest Challenge amongst our local Handweavers and Spinners Guild. But to do this, of course, I needed to make a vest. The rules for the Vest Challenge are it must be made somehow from fibre. Commercial yarn is allowed but the only commercial fabric allowed is in the lining if required. The vest can be felted, knitted, crochet, woven, spranged, laced, anything.

Amongst the delights of draw loom fiddling I wove my vest. I had bought some lovely space/variegated dyed boucle pure wool from Rainbow yarns (Carol Olde, mother of Melanie Olde in my links section, check them both out) I also had a hankering to use a beautiful synthetic thread that glitters and reflects light. The plan changed around a bit but the end result was using the boucle as the warp and the reflective yarn as the weft.

Warp on the loom

 I also wanted to finish the fringe off with some bobbin lace work using the warp so sufficient length needed to be left throughout the warp as well.  I was concerned about getting my pieces the same length with hem stitching in the right spot so I decided to weave the back panel first, then split it for the front panel, leave a section unwoven for the lace later then finish on the two under arm panels woven side by side but with some warp threads dropped to reduce their width.

Weaving the two under arm panels

Although this was slower than just throwing the shuttle I do feel it was worth it because I am sure I wouldn’t have got my sides the same size any other way. Once the piece came off the loom I found something that I hadn’t taken into consideration-the stretch of the boucle under tension. The pieces were the same but not as long as I had planned. Fortunately, they were long enough. I decided it would be best to sew the vest together, make the lace edging and then wash it.

the fabric off the loom before doing the fringe

It did work pretty well putting it together this way. Some of the fringe for the lace was shortish so I had to sticky tape the ends to the bobbins to have them hold on to work with but apart from that I wasn’t put off enough to put the whole thing in the too hard basket. For me, that is the crux of the matter. So now I do have a workable and very different vest that I am quite please with and am doing my best to use to encourage others of our Guild to get back into their craft.

Making the lace edging

By the way, I entered it into a local show competition and it came first, too.

the completed vest from the front

 

 

 

Completed vest from the back

 

Draw Loom Adventure Part 3

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Lingoes ready to go

Suddenly I had the urge to get this loom underway. Actually, it was because I had to be out in the workshop to help my husband put a pergola up and I had time in-between holding things for drilling and measuring. I started drilling the holes according to the method Ian McKinnon recommended that he uses when drilling the steel in his Macro gauzes. Slow speed and a little machine oil to keep the drill bit cool. Hey, it worked! I merrily thumped steel ends flat then drilled them until after two sessions they were all done.

 Further thought and study of books made me decide to split the lamms. I shortened the downward moving lamms to just wider than the treadle spread then matched up screw in eyelets on the bottom timber piece of the shaft and the tops of the shortened lamms. Here we go again, retie the treadles and the lamms after the new downward lamms are hung as close as possible to the shaft with short lengths of texsolv cord. Another possible problem I could see was that the cloth beam was rather close to the lamms and would not necessarily allow for much fabric to be wound on without more loom arguments. So while I was down there I shifted the beam forward but not too far for it to get in the way of my knees when weaving. Just to make this fun, this loom is rather short from cloth beam to shafts. Then again, if it was any bigger I wouldn’t be able to fit it in the loom room. I have to disassemble it to get it out the door as it is!

 

I made a raddle with timber and nails at half inch increments and also made a top for it so no threads could escape. Time to make the warp…no more delaying excuses allowed. I warped up about nine inches width of linen that had a wrap of 40. At this stage I don’t know the linen’s count, I haven’t got around to comparing it with other known counts. I chose thirty ends per inch as I have a fifteen dent reed and two per reed won’t send me silly. I worked on the theory of an unbalanced twill for the damask weave so I divided the wrap by three quarters to arrive at the thirty epi.

 

Next step was to use the lovely new raddle that actually locked onto the loom between the upright posts. The warp was looped over the rear apron rod, spread out in the raddle then I would it on with cardboard between the layers. The next delight was crawling into the loom to thread the pattern heddles. I had them in groups of six with one lingo hanging off the group and they were all hanging off one pattern shaft.

Just a bit tight!

Just a bit squeezy in the loom but I managed to get it done in two goes. I shifted the pattern groups to their correct pattern shaft in a straight “vee” formation with two pattern groups on each end on the unmoving selvage shaft and two floating selvage threads sitting with them. Next stop, ground heddles. I was doing a straight threading through one to six which at least was easy. Before I started I suddenly thought I should check the position of the beater. Well, whaddaya know, way out! My beater must also have a kink in it as the holes in the legs are not the same. This is one thing I won’t change. I drilled the holes higher up the legs to bring the bottom of the shuttle race in correct line with the thread stretched from the front beam to and through the ground and pattern heddles. I did not make them even in the legs. A test after the drilling had the beater moving evenly and hopefully now at the right height. I took the cloth beam off the loom and the beater out again to thread the ground heddles otherwise there was no way I could fit in to thread the heddles! The linen is lovely to work with and hasn’t broken with all the pushing and pulling I have been doing which is a big relief. Now it is on to the sleying.

So far so good

 

Sleying wasn’t much of an issue and the tying on was easy. But when I started to weave in scrap yarn I found the center tied on groups were loose and the shed was really poor with threads catching up from the lower layer into the upper layer and also the shaft timber bending.

The bending wooden upper shaft stick

 Argh! Time to experiment. I fitted steel rods to the top of the shafts after I found that steel rods by themselves still bent. I then had to tighten up the elastic on the matches to encourage them to stay level. End result? Very hard to treadle with no major improvement to shed. Right! This means war! The steel rods went, the shock cord bands from the marches went and I let the marches settle at an angle they liked. I shifted the pattern shafts up and the beater up and down……..and still got nowhere. I resleyed the warp to 45 threads per inch as I felt the spread of warp was too sparse when I wove the scrap yarn. At least that was better. Unfortunately, when I tried to weave again and actually pulled a pattern shaft the tension was too tight and eventually a warp thread broke as I was trying to separate the threads to create a shed. Believe it or not, I do feel I am slowly getting somewhere and I have ideas to try and a plan of attack to get this thing going. Obviously, I haven’t got the position of the warp correct so when a shed is created it is still not balanced. I WILL succeed! Just don’t hold your breath for the next installment as I think it could be a while before I get to write about it.

Draw Loom adventure Part 2

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Finally, the 54 cm pattern heddles arrived as well as more long eyed ground heddles. I’d hate to be short when warping up as I can’t really just get them from the corner shop! So now I had to get down to the nitty gritty of balancing the height of the ground heddles with the pattern heddles and sort out the lamms and try and create a big enough shed. No small task, I felt. After putting the extra hundred long eyed heddles per ground shaft on, I then tied the lamms to the treadles in the five shaft satin damask tie up with one shed going up and one shed going down per treadle. First disaster.

The Lamms ready to be tied up - twelve in a row!

All the lamms started to have arguments with each other as I only had six holes drilled in the treadles and there were twelve lamms. I had hoped that as only two lamms were tied to each treadle it might work with the small number of holes. Off came the treadles and another six holes per treadle were drilled. I had separated the lamms with Teflon bushes to make their action easier but this did also spread them further apart and I did have the whole twelve lamms on the same plane. Fortunately, the extra drilled holes along with using little pieces of steel rod to hold the texsolv cord in line with the lamm did allow the lamms to slide well past each other. A little adjustment was needed to stop the treadle from hitting a lamm with one particular movement but that bit was easy.

The lamms with their elastic keepers to help return them to the same level and the little bits of steel to allow them to slide past each other

 Next step was to hook up the pattern heddles and string some lines through the ground and the pattern heddles and check out the shed.

Me tying the string onto the warp beam

 I tied on to the front and back beam with some spare strong thread and threaded the heddles in between. I had made a guesstimate of where the pattern shaft hangers should go and this was not too far off so the next thing was fiddle, fiddle, fiddle, to get the pattern sheds at the right height according to the opphamta and damask book.

The path of the threads compared to the direct line from cloth beam to warp beam. Threads sitting in the bottom of the long eyed heddles in the ground and approximately the middle of the small eyed pattern heddles.

Once satisfied with the pattern heddle height and with the ground shed at it’s ( hopefully ) correct height I then pressed the sequence of treadles and “hey presto!” it worked. The threads were swapped at the appropriate moment for the tie down when I pulled a pattern cord to change the position and as much as I can tell without the reed in place, the shed did not look too bad. I do have a nice and thin damask shuttle at the ready.

Pattern threads and ground threads doing their thing!

Seeing those threads move in the way they should was a wonderful feeling – a very satisfying conclusion to a number of  afternoon’s work. Now I had to determine the next step. More lingoes. I was getting a sore hand from flattening the ends of my pieces of steel that are my version of lingoes and I was also sick of blunting drill bits trying to drill through them to attach them with large paper clips to my pattern heddle group so I out sourced the drilling option to my father. Now he is blunting the drill bits and I am taking a break to build up the courage to do the final preparation before warping this loom and really taking the plunge. I have noticed now that the treadles might get in the way of the lingoes on the front pattern shed if I use long ones so the treadles have to come off again and have their ends cut off. Part three is on it’s way!

Draw loom adventure Part 1

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I first heard about this loom when Marion Stewart from my local Spinners and Weavers Guild emailed me. She attached a photo and my first thought was, ” I don’t need another four shaft loom and no, not counter balanced!”

The draw loom in its previous home

My second thought was, ”what’s that thing at the top of it?”

Loom mechanism
I couldn’t believe it. Here I am in a country town of 6,200 people and 20 minutes drive away in an even smaller town was a ten pattern shaft, four ground shaft draw loom. It had been sitting in the hallway of this house for the last twenty years. The owner said it was a “pattern loom”. First step was to find a book on it to know what I was dealing with and to see if I was truly interested in it. amazon.com to the rescue and Alice Hindson’s book on Pattern looms was on it’s way. Meanwhile, I decided that it was worth a punt and for a very reasonable price (two donations to two worthy institutions) the loom became mine.

Loom at home at last

Considering the years of people and animals brushing past it daily, it was in pretty good condition but I still had to clean it up for my own satisfaction and to make it look like a loom should. Alice Hindson spoke mainly of creating patterns with the warp threads thus suggesting a second back beam as an essential component due to the different amounts of take up between the pattern warp and the ground warp.

The modifications of the loom began. A second back beam was put on and the loom cleaned up. Fortunately, as well as weaving I have an interest in wood work so I have a relatively comprehensive wood working workshop to clean up and modify/repair looms as required.

Meanwhile, I was reading another weaving book by Malin Selander and I noticed a book advertised in the back fly leaf that had the same loom as I have in the cover. I nearly fell over with excitement. Of course, it was Lillemor Johansenn’s ‘Damask and Opphamta’. Back to amazon.com and hey, presto! Book in mail. This book was totally devoured when it arrived and the modifications took on a different slant. Bye, bye counter balance, hello counter march. Hello to six ground shafts and lamms instead of four shafts and direct tie. I also lengthened the loom to allow room for more pattern shafts. Why limit myself to ten when I had space for at least twenty. Long term, I really like the idea of single pull as well but that will be after this one is up and running as it is.

The extended loom

 All this has happened over the space of over two years. I first got the loom before the loom room above was built and I would say before my second child arrived who recently turned two! Just recently the urge has come on me to continue so I started on the extra pattern shaft pull mechanism.

The pattern shaft pull frames in place

I had also discovered that the lamms were too close and tight so they needed to be separated. Due to the benefit of damask weaving with only one shaft going down and one up per treadling, I am hoping the lamms don’t have major arguments with each other. At this stage damask is the aim and then other weave types later on if I get bored with damask…if.

Back to the loom. Local woodworkers turned extra handles for me as I couldn’t find the right size at the hardware store and I didn’t have time to turn them myself. I made the frames and bolted them on then finally started to thread the pattern cords and handles together.

The half threaded pattern shaft pulls

 This has let me know where I need to separate the threads to prevent rubbing with a piece of smooth timber. I also need to make a raddle that can slot onto the the back beam for warping ease. I am half way through making the lingoes to hang off the pattern groups and I have ordered a stack of long eyed and pattern heddles so I will be set for most projects when the loom is finally warped up. To be continued……..