Weaverly

Alice Schlein

recent posts

  • More Brocading Trials

    In my experiments with drafts for brocading, I wanted to explore new possibilities for combinations of ground and brocade. In the following picture, I have tried to force the twill lines to run in opposition to each other. In the lower blue lozenge, I used a single end of blue 8/2 cotton as the brocading weft on a ground of 8/2 cotton weft used singly. I felt there wasn’t enough contrast between brocade and ground, so I doubled the brocading weft in the upper lozenge.

    I like that effect better, and the opposing twills are more evident here.

    The next step was to improve the color choices. Although the natural ground weft in the above photo highlights the structure, I thought the color effect was too washed out; I redid the sample with an orange weft, which I think is more pleasing, even though structure takes a back seat here.

    The brocading weft is two strands of 8/2 cotton. I am happy with the colors, and I think the opposing twill lines show up really well here. For the curious, here is a screen shot of the draft I am using.

    Department of Books: I have just finished reading Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshanantan. Recommended.

  • A Fiberfull Weekend

    Anyone who loves cloth will be stirred by the following:

    She is Dar Młodzieży, the first Polish-built, ocean-going sailing vessel to circumnavigate the globe (1987–88). All those billowing yards of cloth in various pale neutrals. Yes, that’s how I spent most of my Fourth, in front of the TV, watching the Tall Ships in NY Harbor.

    Of course I did a lot of this too: a scarf in progress on my rigid heddle loom. All handpun wool and silk combinations, warp and weft.

    Department of Books. I just finished reading Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer (recommended) and A Big Storm Knocked It Over by Laurie Colwin.

  • On the Fly, Ad Hoc, Impromptu

    It’s not my usual way of working. I’m accustomed to days of planning before starting a project, sometimes too much planning. This time I’m just diving in, letting the warp tell me where to go as it unwinds.

    After a section is woven and wrapped on the cloth beam, it’s out of my line of sight and I have to rely on memory for placement of the next brocaded element.

    Which way to meander? What color to pick? Spur of the moment decisions. Left? Right?

    Or both.

    Spots, perhaps.

    The end of the warp is in sight.

    The pieces have now been cut off, machine washed, and laid out to dry. They look so different when viewed from other angles. A 90° or 180° turn makes an entirely different statement. It’s a fun surprise.

    In the Department of Books: I have just finished reading John of John by Douglas Stuart.

  • Change of Direction

    On the new red warp, a continued exploration of diagonal brocading.

    But boredom set in and I needed to do rectangles for a change. I worked out a draft with a plain weave ground and ties that will allow rectangular brocading shapes.

    Here are the first samples. As usual, I’m expecting everything to tighten up after wet finishing.

    Department of Books: Have finished reading A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh and The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman. Publication dates 1934 and 2022 respectively, 88 years apart. .

    That might be enough murder for a while. I would call it my beach reading, except I haven’t been near the beach in a good while…

  • Brocading Samples

    Here are the latest samples, cut off the loom and wet finished. They’ve tightened up, and the ground cloth which looked somewhat sleazy on the loom is now closer to what I was looking for.

    From right to left in the above picture, I tried plain weave grounds in fine silk, then several in cotton, with various brocading wefts, and finally my favorite, shown below, with an 8/2 cotton weft in twill ground with doubled 8/2 cotton as the brocading weft.

    I am happy to see the diagonals of ground and brocade slanting in opposite directions. So happy, in fact, that I’ve put on another warp, this time with a mixture of 8/2 cotton and tencel in random order, and will repeat this structure, this time trying more color combinations (draft for this in previous post, if you’re interested.)

  • An Original (?) Brocading Setup

    I’ve never seen this particular arrangement for brocading, so I think it’s original, but in weaving you never know…

    Straight threading on 8 shafts. In the weft, the brocade picks are shown in yellow and the plain weave ground picks in black. One complete weft repeat is 16 picks.

    Above: Screenshot of draft in TempoWeave Studio

    Following are some photos of today’s brocading samples, with doubled strands of 8/2cotton as the brocading wefts and 10/2 cotton as the plain weave ground.

    And here’s the best friend that keeps the 16-pick sequence organized for me, my TempoTreadle from LoftyFiber.

  • Small Brocading Samples

    On my interim warp I’ve taken some time to give my head a rest and weave samples of inlay. This patterning technique is hand-manipulated and slow. Inlay is sometimes referred to as brocading. I use the terms interchangeably here.

    Small areas of supplementary weft that do not extend to the selvedges are woven on a ground of selvedge-to-selvedge cloth, in this instance plain weave.

    These first few pictures show a red 60/2 silk as the ground weft and a heavy silk noil as the brocade weft. The warp is a mixture of yarns at 16 epi.

    The brocading picks alternate with the ground picks.

    For the next few samples I worked on a ground weft of 10/2 black cotton, with 2 strands of 8/2 cotton as the brocading weft.

    Did I say this is very slow?

    The brocading picks are laid in an 8-end sequence based on a satin weave, alternating with the plain weave ground. This brings the total weft sequence to 16 picks in my liftplan.

    I’m having an awful lot of fun with this.

    Department of Books. I’ve just read A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh. Pub. 1934. English Country House Murder, the first in a very long series by this author. Elaborately plotted, a fun read if you can temporarily ignore the racism, antisemitism, and other tropes of the time.

  • An Interim Warp

    There’s some studio reorganization going on around here, and I had to pause the basket/plainweave experiments.

    In the interim, I made three small “garbage warps” of mixed odds and ends, as a sort of palette cleanser. This was a good opportunity to polish up my warping skills, which have gotten a bit sloppy lately.

    First picture is the back of the loom after beaming and threading…

    …and a bit closer if you like…

    …and now the first few inches of plain old plainweave, just to see what would happen. This is a mixture of cottons of various sizes, tencel, cottolin, and a few mystery fibers.

    Well, that was fun, and a real stash-buster besides. Now back to work.

    Department of Books: I have just finished reading True Color by Kory Stamper and In the Woods by Tana French.

  • In the Pink

    First of all, don’t let the different pinks confuse you. The problem is that all the snapshots were taken under different lighting conditions. For the record, the warp yarn is Lofty Fiber’s 8/2 cotton, Desert Sand, and the weft 8/2 cotton, Soft Pink. The most accurate color is probably the second photo.

    Here’s the final bit, just before the cutting off. I did the hemstitching in the weft color.

    After a vigorous handwashing in hot water, a run through the spin cycle in the washer, and hanging to dry overnight in the bathroom, the result is shown in the following image. There was considerable shrinkage, which I expected: 7% weft, 9% warp.

    I was quite happy with the way the selvedges turned out. The floating selvedges did their job. And with consistent shuttle throwing and beating, and not too much fussing at the edges, I really got away with murder. As I mentioned in a previous post, the ideal situation would be to have a small plain weave block at the edge, but with only 8 shafts, I had to forego that luxury.

    I no longer have the dexterity to twist or braid fringes (even with a mechanical twister), so it was a nice surprise to see that the 8/2 cotton, after washing, did its own twisting thing!

    Just to have it all in one place, here’s the draft:

    My goal in this particular shawl was to highlight the fabric structure and shrinkage differences in the plain and basketweave blocks. So I intentionally kept the tonal values of warp and weft very similar. But in the next version I want to add color, and I will make a slight alteration in the draft by adding a couple of separator threads between each block, as follows:

    In the Department of Books, I have just finished reading Rick Atkinson’s The Fate of the Day, the second volume of his trilogy on the American Revolution. Highly recommended.

  • Lessons Learned

    After a couple of weeks of weaving, roughly half an hour each day, the 9×9 basket weave project is finally finished. Here it is, still on the loom:

    And after being cut off, still unwashed:

    Now here it is after a vigorous machine washing & drying. The blocks scrunched up nicely, just what I was hoping for.

    But unfortunately the selvedges had a mind of their own. I had naively hoped that the floating selvedges would make up for a lack of additional shafts for a plain weave selvedge block, but such was not the case.

    Some of the blocks (but not all of them, just a random few) corkscrewed into these unsightly pigtails at the edges which I was not able to correct.

    I am still trying to get over the disappointment. I was hoping I could pull a rabbit out of the hat this time, but so far no solution has presented itself.

    Lesson #1: Sample first.

    Lesson #2: Sometimes eight isn’t enough.

    I am so eager have a try at 3×3 basket & plain, which I outlined in a previous post. Something tells me it will be better than 9×9, but the other side of my brain says slow it down, girl, and go for a walk.

  • A-Tisket, A-Tasket

    As promised in the previous post, here is some 9×9 basketweave combined with plain weave blocks. Warp 8/2 cotton, natural, and weft 8/2 cotton, pale gray, sett 16 epi and ppi.

    I’m weaving this on an 8 shaft loom. Ideally I could use another 2 shafts for a band of plain weave at the selvedges, but I am making do with floating selvedges. I will cross my fingers and hope that the edges will neaten up after washing.

    Below you can see that the floating selvedge is doing its job.

    And the draft, if you’re curious.

    Also looking ahead to some basketweave in 3×3 groups. Here’s one of my thoughts. I’m trying to maintain sharp corners, hence the odd transition from one block to another in threading and treadling.

  • Cutting Off Ceremony

    First, let me tell you about my Christmas cactus, which for the first few years never bloomed at all. I think maybe I was overwatering it. Then, for the past two years it has been blooming madly in March and April. I don’t know what’s going on. I just enjoy it. This might be a good way to introduce today’s theme of magentas and oranges.

    The striped warp I showed you in my last post has come to an end. Snip snip. Drinks all around.

    A trip through the washer & dryer and the basketweave blocks drew up somewhat, but not as much as I’d hoped for. I think this needs a more open sett.

    I did get a better idea of what happens at the selvedges of the basketweave blocks with a floating selvedge. If I had more shafts, a plain weave border would have been nice, but this is what I’ve got. I think it’s OK. At the appropriate viewing distance my luncheon companions will not care one bit.

    A quick selfie in other lighting conditions:

    I’m going to try this again with (1) a more open sett, (2) a larger basketweave, maybe 9×9 basket instead of the current 4×4, and (3) a monochromatic color scheme to emphasize structure. Stay tuned.

  • Exploring Basket and Plain Weave

    Once upon a time I wove this black & white shawl in cotton and rayon, blocks of alternated basket weave and plain weave. Although the basic plan requires only 8 shafts, I wove it on a 16 shaft loom, so that I had the luxury of extra shafts for plain weave bands at the selvedges.

    The shawl drapes well and is a pleasure to wear (as long as I am careful to keep the long floats of 16×16 basket from snagging on sharp objects). In this closeup you can see the plain weave edges ( in the left side of the photo) in beige.

    I’ve always wanted to weave this structure again, and last week I put a sample warp on my 8-shaft loom. For this sample I used 8×8 basket weave alternating with plain weave. Warp is 8/2 cotton from LoftyFiber and weft is 10/2 cotton from my stash. The sample has been washed. I couldn’t get a balanced plain weave at the original sett of 24 epi. I also decided to rethread the 8/8 basket sections to 4×4. So-o-o, I cut off and rethreaded, and also resleyed the reed to 20 epi.

    Still with me? On the original warp, now 20 epi, with weft in two colors of 8/2 cotton, I am alternating blocks of 4×4 basket with plain weave blocks. Without a plain weave border, it is necessary to use a floating selvedge. So far I am liking this. We’ll see how it washes up.

    Meanwhile, I am thinking that the next time I try this I will reduce the color rotation in the warp to 4 and 4, to conform to the threading units.

    And then I was thinking of blocks of 3×3 basket, which led me down a whole ‘nother rabbit hole:

    Which led me to the following: same threading & treadling, but with a twill tieup. And a max float length of only 4. The interesting thing about this version is that by wrapping the tieup, you get 8 different versions. Fascinating.

  • Carding and Spinning Time

    Recently I had the good fortune to attend a gathering of fiber enthusiasts to test various carding machines. We had great fun blending wool, silk and other animal fibers, cellulosic fibers such as linen, tencel and bamboo, and also some sparkly synthetic glitz.

    After I brought home my booty, I sorted the various batts into two roughly equal piles, the darks and the lights, tore them down into fat strips, and Stretched them a little.

    I then spun up the carded fluff into singles yarn on my Hansencrafts miniSpinner. That took several days.

    I plied the darks and lights together into lively barberpole yarn, which was then skeined and washed.

    So here’s my month’s output. I’d originally planned to weave a blanket with it, but now I’m not sure. I’ll have to let it sit around for a while and let it make up its mind.

    Department of Books: I have finished reading The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai. Recommended.

  • Jin Time

    The current warp: a two-block pattern in jin weave (aka turned taqueté, aka warp-faced compound tabby). I always enjoy weaving this structure, for many reasons. Warping is quick and easy. Two contrasting yarns are alternated in the warp (contrasting colors, or matte vs. shiny, or smooth vs. textured, or thick/vs. thin, or?? And perhaps the biggest factor in its favor is that jin is a one-shuttle weave.

    Traditionally warp is densely sett, almost completely hiding the weft, but a more open sett is sometimes preferred, letting the weft show itself and become part of the design.

    Following is a simple draft for a two-block design in jin for 8 shafts. Resize as needed.

    For my project I have chosen a natural silk noil knitting yarn from my stash, paired with green 8/2 bamboo, alternated in the warp at 16 epi, and a fine (fingering weight) lopi I purchased years ago in Iceland as weft. The relatively open spacing of the warp allows the weft to peek through and become part of the design.

    In fact, the lopi yarn is so airy and lofty that it seems to fill the space. I’m sure that washing the finished fabric will intensify this effect. Here is a closeup of the yarn on the shuttle. This gives you some idea of the air trapped inside this yarn!

    For good measure, last night’s sunset.

    In the Department of Books, I have just finished reading What an Owl Knows by Jennifer Ackerman.