Tip of the Month - April

 When I'm teaching new weaver to warp their looms, whether multi-shaft or rigid heddle, I often find that they shred their warps when threading the heddles.  The reason it happens is that the warp is held taught behind the heddle/slot/hole, allowing the threading hook to run down warp, catching in the ply.   This month I'll show you how to stop this happening.

The images are showing me warping my latest project on an 8 harness mechanical dobby, but the principles apply to any loom.

Grasp your warp yarn about 6" or 15cm in front of the heddle/slot/hole you're going to thread.

 Insert your threading hook in the heddle/slot/hole and move the hand holding the warp to the back of the heddle without moving your hand up the yarn.

You will now have a loop of yarn behind your heddle which can be placed over the threading hook.

Pull the loop through the heddle/slot/hole, letting go of the warp with the other hand.


I hope you all find this tip useful.  Please let me know if you have any other problems that need solving.  If I can help, I'll post them here!

Best wishes and happy weaving, spinning and dyeing.

Sett - Part 2

At the beginning of last month I posted about Sett.  It's something that's really important to grasp as a new weaver and getting it right comes with practice.  At a workshop with a group of newish weavers we had a really good look at Sett and here are the results:

With a 12" rigid heddle loom (Ashford Knitters Loom) we warped with 32 ends (threads) of J. C. Rennie's lovely Supersoft Lambswool (2/6's).  Each of us had a different rigid heddle; 5 dent per inch (dpi), 7.5 dpi, 10 dpi and 12 dpi; so each warp was a different width, as you can see below:

In the 5 dpi reed, the 32 end warp was 6" wide and ensuring a balance weave - equal numbers of warp ends to weft picks - 32 picks (threads in the weft) were woven to 6" in length.  This was made fairly easy by using a colour and weave pattern in the warp and weft.

On the right the woven swatch has been "finished", that is, crabbed (using a dry cloth with steam iron or a damp cloth with a dry iron) then given a hand hot wash and hand hot rinse and allowed to dry naturally.

The very open weave swatch lost more than 1" all  round after finishing!  We could have finished more and still maintained the soft handle.

The swatch on the right, here, was woven on the 7.5dpi reed and the 32 ends were 4" wide. After finishing, as above, the resulting balance weave swatch was 3 1/2" wide, with a slightly firmer handle, suited to a masculine scarf.

The small swatch on the left was woven on the 10 dpi reed and the 32 ends were 3" wide.  After finishing, as above, the swatch was 2 3/4" all round, with a firm handle, suitable for a blanket.

The 32 ends of this little swatch, were 2.5" in the warp and after finishing like all the previous swatches was 2 3/8" all round.  To obtain the balance weave it had to be beaten very firmly and the resulting swatch would be suitable for upholstery fabric.

One outcome of this exercise was that we found it more difficult to maintain a balanced sett with the widely spaced warp than the close sett warp.  However, once crabbed and washed the resulting swatch looked fine!

I do hope this was useful, please let me know if you have had similar results.