[00:00:00.300] – Janet
Let’s get this party started. This is the July–oh, my goodness, it is July. And it’s hot like July, I have to say–edition of the monthly Q&A for Premium Members. We have Tien and me and Carly all here because we all had classes that came out in the last month. We have Dawn to keep us organized and focused. We have you to ask us questions. Hooray.
[00:00:29.750] – Janet
Priority, at least for the first bit, will be given to questions related to new course content, which would be Cookies and Clocks, Double Density Threading on the Rigid Heddle, and Hue and Saturation. [inaudible 00:00:45]. Okay. But any and all questions within our wheelhouse are fair game.
[00:00:51.780] – Janet
We have a short slide show that we’ll run through first, the questions that were sent in in advance, and then we’ll go through the Q&A questions. So if you have a question for one of us to answer, use the Q&A interface. You’ll find the button at the bottom of the screen. If you’re just socializing, that goes in the Chat, which is great fun. So here’s Chat running away over there on the right side. We also have transcription and captioning turned on. So if you would like to see captions in real time or read the transcript as the webinar is ongoing, you can turn either of those on on your screen individually. All righty, that’s the spiel. That’s the signal that Dawn is going to moderator space. Bye, Dawn.
[00:01:39.540] – Janet
We will begin with what? Oh, the slideshow. Right. Like I just said. Somebody say something exciting and interesting while I turn on the–
[00:01:51.160] – Tien
Exciting and interesting.
[00:01:52.750] – Janet
More than that.
[00:01:53.606]
[laughter]
[00:01:53.750] – Tien
It was worth a try, right?
[00:01:57.440] – Janet
More words. Yes.
[00:02:00.310] – Carly
Something exciting and interesting. Wow. Is it really winter in Australia? That is amazing.
[00:02:14.600] – Tien
Well, that’s the Southern Hemisphere versus the Northern Hemisphere, right?
[00:02:18.820] – Carly
It’s still so hard to picture. I know how it works.
[00:02:25.480] – Tien
I thought it was hilarious when I was living in L.A. and we had the concrete snowman for the holidays because there’s never been a real snowman in L.A., I’m pretty sure.
[00:02:39.980] – Carly
Oh, yeah, I’m sure.
[00:02:42.490] – Janet
Do you guys get the inflatable ones?
[00:02:47.120] – Tien
I think I have one neighbor that does them.
[00:02:51.120] – Janet
People here will have four inflatables in their yard at a time. And sometimes they’re snowmen. They’re all kinds of different things. Ah-ah, that is the problem. It needs to be publish. I do you a publish, quickly.
[00:03:07.070] – Tien
[inaudible 00:03:07], folks.
[00:03:10.730] – Janet
Yeah. Okay. One more minute, please. One moment. One moment, please. Copy link. Go to there. Oh, it’s that link, that same link. But now I can see it.
[00:03:28.320] – Tien
Dayamitra, your comment about not getting snow where you are and needing to go to the mountains. I have a friend who is here in the Bay Area who basically says, if I want snow, I’ll go to the mountains. That’s his excuse for living in Northern California.
[00:03:44.720] – Janet
Okay, I’m ready now. Thank you, everybody, for being interesting without me. Sharing the screen. Okay.
[00:03:55.410] – Janet
Our first question came from Maryann Drake, who wants to follow up on the conversation that started in Design Sessions with Tien and then continued in another webinar. And now she’s wondering about weaving rep and number of ends per dent, what sett, that sort of thing.
[00:04:22.780] – Janet
Generally, the sett for rep weave is going to be the maximum sett. If you use Ashenhurst’s calculator and you plug in the information for your yarn, then if you go with 100%, that’s going to give you total warp coverage. You can play with that a little bit if you want to see the weft coming through. Or if it says to do 50 EPI, but you happen to have a 12-dent reed, so it’s easy to do 48 EPI by pulling four threads through, then you could try 48 and see if that’s going to give you the coverage. So something in the ballpark of the 100% for whatever your particular yarn is. Without knowing what yarn you’re thinking of, I can’t give you anything more specific than that.
[00:05:09.870] – Janet
The farther away from 100% you go, the more weft you’ll see. And seeing the weft is not the classic traditional way of doing warp rep, but there’s also nothing wrong with it. It can look really cool. So that is another design option that you have.
[00:05:30.570] – Janet
Tips for–oh, number of ends per dent and heddles. Put one end per heddle, and then however many per dent you need to get the sett that you want. Usually, I would say you’re going to want several ends in a dent, rather than trying to use a very fine reed that would let you put just one or two ends per dent in there because, generally speaking, the threads will be too thick to fit through the space for 100% coverage because the metal in the reed takes up some of the space too. So if the dents are bigger, then you can put more threads in there and they have more room to move around.
[00:06:21.100] – Janet
You would thread the–well, I think there are different options. I think some people do double the ends and therefore have, say, two heddles on Shaft 1 next to each other and two heddles on shaft whatever the next one is next to each other. But you don’t need to do that. You can do them individually. There isn’t a one way to do that.
[00:06:47.070] – Janet
Tips for warping many alternative color warp ends. For rep, you do want two colors at a time when you’re threading. You want the color that’s going to be on the top layer of the block and the color that’s going to be on the bottom layer of the block.
[00:07:06.460] – Janet
Now, it’s possible that those two colors are the same color sometimes. But generally speaking, you’ve got two different things going on. So I would certainly wind two ends at a time or four ends at a time or some multiple of two ends that you’re comfortable winding at a time. Then you just change the one end whenever the block on that side of the cloth is changing.
[00:07:36.470] – Janet
Th sort ofe specifics are going to depend on your threading and your block design and all. But I think that’s the best I can do in the general sense.
[00:07:49.630] – Tien
When you’re talking about warping with alternating color threads, you’re talking about winding two at a time with one of each color, correct?
[00:08:01.810] – Janet
Right. Yes. So if you’ve got red on top and green on the bottom, you’d wind a red and a green together. Or you could wind two reds and two greens together, if you’re comfortable winding four at a time. But yes, every block in rep is made up of, in air quotes, a “top color” and a “bottom color” or two different colors. So you want one or two or however many of each of those colors while you’re winding. I think I might have just made that even less clear, the more words I threw at it. The thing that Tien said.
[00:08:42.980] – Dawn
Maryann says, thanks. That helps. So you were clear enough.
[00:08:48.550] – Janet
Okey-dokey. Sheila has asked about my overshot classes. She has a friend who wants to learn more about overshot, and she’s mentioned the classes that I’ve taught online in the past. She says she got more than she wanted out of the class.
[00:09:05.940]
[laughter]
[00:09:08.630] – Janet
That made me chuckle. I apologize for the overage. Unfortunately, there is no way for your friend to sign up for either of those currently. Those were both offered as live courses, and I have not gotten around to switching them into a sort of–I’m not supposed to call them zombie courses. Instead of live course, we call them, I guess, evergreen, the ones that are always available. But I haven’t done that yet, so they’re not currently available. I don’t know when I will have the time to do that, but it is on my list. It’s a very long list.
[00:09:51.320] – Tien
[inaudible 00:09:52].In our copious free time. Ha-ha.
[00:09:54.570] – Janet
Right. Remember those pictures of that one little backhoe trying to dig out the evergreen at the Panama Canal?
[00:10:01.569]
[laughter]
[00:10:02.100] – Janet
That’s how I always feel with my to do list. Just put the evergreen at the top of it. I’ve got one little backhoe.
[00:10:10.520] – Janet
Okay, the last question that was sent in in advance is from Mary Dianne. She had asked a question during office hours, and I floundered around trying to understand it well enough to answer her and was not able to do it at the time, so she sent me more information about it. She wants to know more about reading the instructions for what to do with your weft, whether you have a table loom or a shaft loom or a rigid heddle. Mary Dianne has a four-shaft table loom, and she’s also familiar with a rigid heddle.
[00:10:51.870] – Janet
Mary Dianne, your best bet is to go to the class The Secrets of Liftplans, Tie-ups, and Treadlings. Let’s see if I can–I’m going to have to go to the dashboard. Dashboard is right there. One moment, please. If you go to Courses and you look through these–now, you can just look through the course catalog. They are listed from the most recent at the front to the first course that came out at the back. And here is The Secrets of Liftplans, etc.
[00:11:38.620] – Janet
But you can also always search here in this Search Courses field. You can reorder the courses so they’re alphabetical, or you can have them be ordered by how much of the course you have done. You can say you only want to see courses in specific categories or by a specific instructor. But you can also just put right up in here, let’s say, liftplan and see what–oh, hit Return–see what we get. Okay, so these four courses talk about liftplans. That’s a way that you can find a course related to the topic you’re interested in more quickly, whatever that topic happens to be.
[00:12:22.450] – Janet
This course, The Secrets of Liftplans, Treadlings, and Tie-ups, that’s where you want to go to get the information that explains how you read this thing over here. If I’m understanding correctly, you’re okay when there’s four shafts and four columns in the thing down the side that’s telling you how to make the shed, but you’re not sure what to do when there’s more.
[00:12:50.090] – Janet
When there’s more, that means–there’s a tie-up up there that has different combinations of shafts that should go up. That is a draft that is not written for the kind of loom that you have.
[00:13:03.710] – Janet
For a table loom, you want a liftplan. So if you come down here, I would come here to maybe Looms without lamms or tie-up. You could read that. It’ll just explain a little bit about table looms and other looms that don’t have tie-ups.
[00:13:20.220] – Janet
But Liftplan basics is going to explain step by step where the liftplan is and what each thing is telling you to do. So on this first pick, the one and the two, they’re telling you to move the levers that are connected to Shaft 1 and Shaft 2. And when they’re both moved so that those two shafts move up, lift. That’s why liftplan. Then you throw your shuttle through, and you beat your weft into place. And then you put those shafts down, and you pick up the next set of shafts. So you flip the levers for the next set of shafts. This is the format of a draft that is written for the kind of loom that you have.
[00:14:06.410] – Janet
You can convert a draft that is written for a loom that has lots of treadles and different shafts–combinations of shafts tied to them into this kind of notation so that you can follow it for your loom. So I would read all of this very carefully. And then–I think there may be a–sorry, don’t mean to make you guys sea sick by scrolling up and down–for Converting a treadling and tie-up to a liftplan. Here are the instructions for how to do that process, so take a draft that has six columns or eight columns or however many columns and figure out how to use them on your loom.
[00:14:57.560] – Janet
I would go to the Weavers Toolbox and, say, watch the one on How do I convert a floor loom treadling and tie-up to a liftplan for a table loom. That’s what you need. There’s a video explaining–demonstrating step by step, and there’s written instructions for step by step that will take you through the process. I think that’s going to be what you need, so have a go at those. Then if you run into trouble, then your fastest road to answers will be posting in the Weaving Help forum.
[00:15:35.790] – Janet
And that, I do believe, is the end of our slide show. So I’m going to stop sharing and let moderator Dawn take over.
[00:15:44.550] – Dawn
Well, we have one question so far, folks. Bring out your questions, like Tien said. Amber P. says, do you have any advice for preventing draw-in when working with a stretchy weft, like T-shirt yarn or knitting wool? I have a temple, but I suspect it will just draw in as soon as I remove it.
[00:16:08.670] – Janet
Carly or Tien, do you want to field that one, or shall I?
[00:16:12.470] – Tien
I’ll let you field it.
[00:16:14.730] – Janet
Well, I can speak to shaft looms and then, Carly, if you have anything to add for rigid heddles.
[00:16:19.940] – Carly
Okay.
[00:16:21.550] – Janet
Yes, when you take the temple off, it will spring back some. That’s just the nature of having a stretchy weft. If you don’t want it to spring back, the first thing that occurs to me is possibly alternating it with a weft that is not as likely to do that. That might keep things spread out some. But you’d have to make sure that the structure and everything else, that that made sense.
[00:16:57.320] – Janet
If it’s a twill, you could try adding a tabby to it and have a tabby ground that is going to be exerting its own influence on what the fabric is doing, and that might restrict the draw-in some. But if you have a stretchy material, it’s going to bounce. That’s what it does.
[00:17:24.740] – Carly
For the weft, though, you don’t have it under a lot of tension. Am I on? Yeah. The warp, you put the tension on the warp and it stretches and it’s going to spring back. But your weft, you could actually probably add enough of a bubble and sort of push it in. I feel like the temple would make that bounce happen even more because you’re holding it out. So it’s giving the stretchy a resistance to stretch against. But if there’s no stretch, then if you just leave a bubble and if it’s already relaxed, and then beat it in, I don’t see how it’s going to stretch back.
[00:18:03.150] – Janet
Well, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:18:07.960] – Carly
Did I word right?
[00:18:11.140] – Janet
So you do that on an open–you’d beat on an open shed probably to let as much of the weft pull in as needed. You could even, it seems like, if you had the temple in there, you still could bubble it so that when you beat it in, it’s got enough length to cover well and deflect over that wide width. And then, yeah, it might be even less inclined to pull back in because it’s just got too much stuff there. That’s probably what they do in rugs.
[00:18:50.365]
[laughter]
[00:18:51.490] – Carly
I feel like it wouldn’t–I think the warp would be harder. I think the weft, it’s just–and you might even want it to bounce in a little bit. I don’t know. Just to sort of tighten up the whole thing when it’s off, but I don’t think it’s going to really stretch, like a [inaudible 00:19:04] heard of it being a huge issue.
[00:19:08.260] – Janet
It depends on your material, of course. If you’ve got an elastic, especially one that’s activated when it gets wet, well, then yes. But if you’ve got–was it T-shirt yarn that you specifically mentioned, Amber? She’s saying in the Chat there that the tabby ground idea is a good one and leaving a lot of slack should help. A nice big angle or an arc, or if it’s a very wide width–I can’t put my hands far enough apart so you can see them–then you might even want a couple of bumps.
[00:19:43.560] – Janet
I’m trying that. I’ve never had a whole lot of success, personally, with arcs and bumps and things. I always find that wherever the sort of point is gets wodgy. But I’m having to do it with my [inaudible 00:20:02] rod. And I decided that what is working well for me is to have it go to sort of a point, and then I bend it around my finger and then back down to the other selvedge so that there’s maybe, I don’t know, 6 inches or something, maybe more like 5, from my fell to the peak. Then I close the shed and beat it in. And that, for my current combination of warp, weft, sett, structure, blah, blah, blah, that seems to be working pretty well. So I think just fiddle around with all the different possibilities and see what happens to work in that situation. You agree, Carly?
[00:20:44.320] – Carly
Yes, I do. I agree.
[00:20:48.730] – Dawn
And we’re out of questions.
[00:20:51.790] – Janet
Can’t be out of questions.
[00:20:53.340] – Dawn
Come on, folks. Somebody’s got a question.
[00:20:58.780] – Tien
[inaudible 00:20:59] been doing a lot of questioning, but they’re not of the weaving kind.
[00:21:04.620] – Janet
Celia has asked in the Chat what your spindle and fiber are there, Carly.
[00:21:11.200] – Carly
Oh. I’m doing the little tiny–
[00:21:15.243] – Janet
[inaudible 00:21:15] spindle.
[00:21:16.080] – Carly
And I am spinning a cotton and silk thread. I think I did a little sample of it. It’s like, I don’t even know how many yards per pound. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it, but it’s fine. Oh, no. Sorry, my dog is barking, so I’m going to mute myself.
[00:21:41.580] – Janet
Hi, poopers.
[00:21:43.130] – Dawn
Celia says that’s her kind of her spinning.
[00:21:46.340] – Janet
Now I want to get out my spindle.
[00:21:48.180] – Dawn
Me, too.
[00:21:49.560] – Janet
Not within reach. I have a voodoo doll within reach.
[00:21:57.220] – Tien
Question.
[00:21:58.160] – Dawn
We have a question.
[00:22:00.200] – Janet
[inaudible 00:22:01] question.
[00:22:02.430] – Dawn
We have two, three. Holy moly. Okay, we’ll start with Barb Thoreson, who says, I threaded pattern 79235 from Handweaving.net on my eight-shaft loom. Then I realized it’s an overshot pattern, but I didn’t have enough shafts to thread for tabby. So I raised Shafts 1, 3, 5, 7 for a “tabby” pick, then 2, 4, 6, 8 for the other “tabby”. Is this still considered overshot?
[00:22:35.800] – Janet
Let me get that draft up and have a look and see what we’re talking about. 79235. I’m going to share, and you can tell me, you can tell us, is this the one you’re talking about? Because this is not overshot. This is an undulating twill with a steep twill point in the middle. It could be woven with a tabby and make it twill and tabby, but it’s not overshot. If we’ve got the wrong draft number, then let me know. Otherwise, I’m going to–let’s see.
[00:23:27.830] – Dawn
Barb says, that’s it. She’s not sure why she thought it was overshot.
[00:23:35.450] – Janet
Yeah. So let’s pretend for a moment that it was overshot. Didn’t have enough shafts to thread for tabby. You don’t need more shafts to add tabby. You do need more treadles to add for tabby. Most non-Scandinavian looms that I’m familiar with anyway that have eight shafts have 10 treadles. This draft only requires eight, which means you would be able to have two more shafts there on which you could tie up a tabby, if tabby was possible.
[00:24:12.500] – Janet
And for many twill-based life forms, draft forms, 1, 3, 5, 7, 2, 4, 6, 8, the odds versus evens does make a tabby, but not for all of them. For this one in particular, it wouldn’t because–let’s see. I’m going to–let’s see. Let me pull this into the Draft Editor so I can zoom in and show you bits. Nope, that is not zooming in. That is zooming out. To the right, to the right, and move. Okay. On the chance that our pictures are on top of the tie-up in the recording, I’m going to make this window narrower and move my picture out of the way and then try to get down, scrolling down all the way to the bottom scroll bar. Up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up.
[00:25:11.410] – Janet
Okay. So look right here. This piece of the threading goes to 1, 3, 5, 7, 5, 3, 1. If you stepped on a treadle that was tied to all the odd ones, 1, 3, 5, 7, all seven of those threads would go up together. So that would not give you tabby there. It would give you a seven-end float there.
[00:25:47.020] – Janet
Also, any place where there’s two heddles in a row in the threading on the same shaft is going to immediately say no tabby. Unless there are two threads in a row on the shafts everywhere, then you could still get what would weave like a tabby or more like a basket weave, really. So odds versus evens is not going to give you a tabby in this particular situation. I’m not sure that there’s anything that would be tabby-like that you could use alternating with the twill treadles as tied up as shown.
[00:26:34.180] – Tien
But you could turn it, couldn’t you? And then you would get a tabby.
[00:26:37.150] – Janet
Yes. Yes, you could. The tabby would be if–yes, it would go horizontal once turned, which means it would be vertical here.
[00:26:51.910] – Dawn
Barb says, so I guess I’m just adding extra picks.
[00:26:58.230] – Janet
Why do you need to add extra picks? You can’t get tabby with this threading. You can’t. If this is what’s on your loom, there is no tabby. FYI, if we go to–no, stop annotating. That’s what I need to do. Zoom, stop. There we go.
[00:27:19.530] – Janet
If we go to the Weaver’s Toolbox again. No, is that the one? Yes. There is a Toolbox for How can I weave tabby on this threading? Can I weave tabby on this threading? That will take you through the process. Well, it’s going to be somewhere. Is plain weave possible on this threading? Okay.
[00:27:47.560] – Janet
But if you can’t find it, like, it’s hard to find in these lists because these lists get long, you can also search the Toolbox right here. Say How to weave tabby. Is plain weave possible on this threading? There you go. This takes you through the steps for any threading through examples of how to see whether you can create any tabby at all.
[00:28:20.020] – Dawn
Barb has just asked again, she does have 10 treadles. So how would I get tabby with this threading? I think maybe if you could demonstrate one more time that she can’t get the tabby, that might be helpful.
[00:28:34.750] – Janet
Okay. If we go back here–well, right away you can’t get a tabby because there’s two picks in a row on here–let’s see, I’ll go back to annotating. Right here, anytime you lift Shaft 3 or lower Shaft 3, you’re going to have a float of two in the weft. Same here for 4, same here for 5, same here for 6. What would give you a tabby in this section, what would lift every other thread in this section would be to lift up, say, Shaft 1 and Shaft 5, but someplace else that’s going to not give you tabby. So there is no plain weave possible on this threading.
[00:29:29.920] – Janet
Okay. Stop sharing. Okay. What’s next? We got more questions. Did we lose Dawn? Dawn, you’re muted.
[00:29:54.210] – Dawn
I’m just muted. I’m just muted. I’m was talking away here.
[00:29:59.930] – Tien
We would be lost without you, Dawn.
[00:30:02.580] – Dawn
Oh, please. Kathy Miner is wondering how to finish a tencel scarf.
[00:30:08.600] – Janet
Carly, you weave with tencel a lot. Carly is on mute.
[00:30:13.510] – Carly
Sorry, I had a child.
[00:30:15.610] – Janet
I could tell you had just one nearby.
[00:30:21.830] – Carly
I’ve woven with tencel? I have woven with tencel. Well, I–
[00:30:26.460] – Janet
So how do you wet finish?
[00:30:29.130] – Carly
My philosophy is I just wet finish everything how I expect to treat the garment. So I give it a nice hand wash and then dry it and then press it.
[00:30:42.190] – Janet
Dry it in the dryer?
[00:30:43.990] – Carly
I hang dry mine.
[00:30:46.150] – Janet
Okay. I put tencel in the dryer, so you can if you expect to launder the item that way in the future. When you press it, what temperature do you use, Carly?
[00:30:59.250] – Carly
Oh, my iron actually doesn’t have a temperature. But I think–I mean, it can take a pretty high temperature. I would probably keep it on the medium setting. Do you think it depends on the effect you want? If you want to hard press it, I would probably put pressure and lots of heat, but usually I just want to press it down.
[00:31:20.020] – Carly
The thing with tencel is that when you get done weaving it, it’s going to feel awful. You want it to be all silky, and it comes off the loom, and it’s going to feel stiff and kind of crinkly and not totally lovely. It’s scary. But then you wash it. And when you pull out the wash, it’s going to continue to feel, like, oh, gosh, this is going to be terrible. And then you let it dry, and it just magically becomes this fluid, gorgeous, wonderful fiber. But I think–I’m not the wet-finishing expert. I think that that’s Laura Fry, I think.
[00:32:00.927] – Janet
Of course.
[00:32:00.990] – Carly
But in general, I wash, air dry, do a little pressing if I want it to–if I like the fiber as is, then I don’t press it. I just keep it. But it will wrinkle pretty easily, too. That’s the other fun part about tencel. But it also [inaudible 00:32:19] wrinkles. It’s like linen. It has that quality to it.
[00:32:25.400] – Janet
Tencel is a rayon. So whatever care instructions you got on your radar for rayon will work. I think it’s pretty common to put tencel in the dryer, maybe not until bone dry, and then to hard press it if you want a nice sheen and that waterfall kind of pooling fabric thing.
[00:32:54.770] – Carly
Yeah, I smack it against things.
[00:32:57.950] – Janet
I do that was my handspun. Thwacking.
[00:33:01.120] – Carly
So if it’s still feeling a little stiff, you could thwack it. There’s something else I was going to say, too. The properties of tencel is that when it’s wet, it’s weaker. So when you get it wet, it’s in its weakest state at that point. So don’t be too hard on it, just a really gentle wash. That’s why I think a lot of rayons ask–they’re, like, dry clean or hand wash only is because the washing machine can be a little rough on them. But once it’s dry, then it’s actually a very strong fiber, but just not when it’s wet.
[00:33:34.440] – Janet
Well, and there are different types, too. There are different ways of manufacturing tencel, and they have different tencel strength and different resilience and stuff. So depending on what manufacturer it comes from, you might see some different–
[00:33:53.533]
[crosstalk 00:33:54]
[00:33:54.370] – Carly
Tencel, I think it’s a brand name, right?
[00:33:59.760] – Janet
Yes.
[00:34:00.078]
[crosstalk 00:34:00]
[00:34:00.690] – Carly
All the rayons are very different. The tencel should be more–you should know more of what you’re getting, but that depends on where it goes in the supply chain.
[00:34:15.370] – Tien
Tencel or lyocell is significantly stronger than the original rayons. It’s actually stronger than cotton, and it’s even slightly stronger than cotton when wet. It is weaker when wet, but I wouldn’t spend too much time worrying about its delicacy the way I would with rayon. Which reminds me, I’ve got, like, 12 pounds of white 10/2 tencel that I should probably do something with.
[00:34:48.560] – Dawn
All righty then. Next, Sheila Roberts wonders if you have any tips for weaving with handspun yarn. How do you get the sett?
[00:35:02.830] – Janet
Carly or Tien.
[00:35:07.440] – Tien
Tien has never woven with handspun.
[00:35:09.270] – Janet
I have only succeeded by blind luck when weaving with my handspun. So yeah.
[00:35:16.050] – Dawn
It’s a guess. I have woven with handspun. Compare it to whatever yarn you might have around that you know more about and see what thickness it is. Wraps per inch isn’t the best, perfect-est measure, but it is a way to get an idea.
[00:35:37.060] – Tien
And with handspun yarn, the yards per pound can vary quite a bit depending on how densely you spun on it, from what I recall. So I might go with wraps per inch. The other thing to keep in mind is that if you are weaving with singles and the singles is not tightly twisted, you either want to use it for weft or you want to size it before you start warping.
[00:36:00.030] – Dawn
You probably don’t want to put softly twisted singles in a warp anyway. But sizing’s not going to help if it’s going to break apart.
[00:36:10.921] – Tien
No.
[00:36:11.740] – Janet
I have gotten away with a Lopi, Álafosslopi, which is really thick and barely twisted for warp for a great big blanket, but I sized it. Anytime I’ve woven with my handspun, it’s been on my rigid heddle because I have less tension on my warp on a rigid heddle than I do on a floor loom.
[00:36:33.580] – Janet
Also because with my handspun, I’ve already spent a lot of time. I have an emotional investment in that skein of the yarn. I spent a lot of time handling the yarn, and so I have more of a connection to it than a cone of weaving cotton. When you’re weaving on a floor loom, you hardly ever touch the yarn. You’re touching the wooden shuttle and the beater and the loom, but you’re not touching the yarn that much. That’s another reason why I like to use my handspun on my rigid heddle because then it’s just more of an intimate experience.
[00:37:14.740] – Tien
Amber is suggesting to use a yarn balance to get the grist and try pieces from different places to average it. That works, too. I would wonder about the density difference.
[00:37:23.980] – Janet
Yeah. It depends on how consistent your spinning is. My spinning is incredibly inconsistent. I would have to measure the length of the entire skein and the weight of the entire skein.
[00:37:40.250] – Tien
Mine is much more consistent, but the amount of time it would take me to weave something, let’s just say there’s a reason I’ve never woven with my handspun.
[00:37:51.990] – Dawn
While we’re on this topic, Courtney wonders what sizing you used with your Lopi, Janet?
[00:37:59.680] – Janet
Gelatin, like you get for, I guess, for canning or, no, for like Jell-O?
[00:38:08.890] – Dawn
Jell-O.
[00:38:09.660] – Janet
Yeah, not wax. Don’t use wax. Wax would be bad, probably. Yes, gelatin like for Jell-O. Not sugary stuff. It was one of the very first things I ever wove. So it would have been back in 1994. And I do not have very clear memories of it, but I do remember having big, squishy warp skeins and squashing them down into water in my sink that was sticky. Then the thing that came out was crunchy, well, after it dried, but the blanket was not. Until it got sucked up by the vacuum.
[00:38:47.340] – Tien
Janet doesn’t remember because, as she’s reliably informed us, she’s only 20 or 23, and therefore she was minus 10 or minus 13 when she–or something like that.
[00:38:58.610] – Janet
My mother is such an an excellent weaver that I was weaving in utero.
[00:39:02.970] – Dawn
In the womb? There you go.
[00:39:06.100] – Janet
Had a little tiny–I guess it wouldn’t be a floor loom. I had a little tiny–never mind.
[00:39:11.680] – Tien
[inaudible 00:39:12]
[00:39:14.030] – Dawn
Sheila Roberts, who asked the original question, I believe, says her spinning is very inconsistent.
[00:39:18.970] – Janet
Weft.
[00:39:20.770] – Dawn
There you go.
[00:39:24.150] – Tien
Weft.
[00:39:24.150] – Carly
If you think of it like a slub yarn, I think your weaving could be inconsistent. I think just like we did with the math problem of averaging out skinny and thick yarns, I think bringing it into the Ashenhurst and doing the lofty setting will give you a good general sense of where you were if you’ve measured your yarn with a niddy noddy as you–I love the word niddy noddy–as you made it, then you weighed it, you kind of got your yards per pound. I think that’s a good place to start.
[00:39:54.410] – Carly
Liz of Yarnworker also makes these great [inaudible 00:39:58]–they’re only in rigid heddle setts, so there’s 8, 10, and 12 EPI, but they’re basically like little rulers with notches in them. I keep one near my spinning wheel, and I just wrap what I’m spinning as I’m spinning. And I can kind of see, oh, okay, this is going to work really good at 10 EPI. But I’ve never gone higher than, I think, 10. 10 was my highest project I did. And it worked great. It was good.
[00:40:28.680] – Janet
I usually spin something around a heavy worsted or somewhere around worsted, a little heavier, a little lighter. I almost always just went for the 7 and 1/2 or the 8.
[00:40:43.750] – Carly
It’s interesting how you just end up spinning in a size. Mine’s just naturally just around a little above sock weight.
[00:40:51.290] – Janet
I did once. I had this really big, thick, squishy 3-ply and a really sort of spindly, skinny-looking single that was out of the same stuff because inconsistent. I wound up using the skinny thing at 8 still, so the fringes looked very sad, but with the great big squashy weft, it all looked just fine.
[00:41:20.150] – Tien
Celia Quinn has some excellent advice in the Q&A.
[00:41:26.030] – Janet
In the Chat, Amber says, I would caution against using a very geometric design with your handspun. If it goes thick and thin, it’s difficult to beat consistently and to get the design square. She just finished a herringbone project where this was an issue. Sage advice.
[00:41:43.260] – Dawn
We have helpful advice on sizing. Dayamitra says flax seeds. Eda Lee says, what about potato starch?
[00:41:53.140] – Dawn
And Celia says, Paula Simmons says she used hide glue to size very soft, bulky yarns and could use them for warp. Not me. I like to use singles for warp that look like a firm 2-ply when doubled back when spinning. I measure the whole skein for yards per pound to average out unevenness, then compare it to the Master Yarn Chart or do the thing of wraps and half the number of wraps for plain and three-quarters for twill. Too long ago to remember well.
[00:42:26.920] – Dawn
She also says she just used that kind of method for making a silk blouse at an average of 50 threads per inch for the 2-ply, maybe 40 for plain weave, 60 for twill.
[00:42:39.920] – Tien
Celia, you are amazing. I decided I’m getting married again. Will you spin all the silk for my wedding dress?
[00:42:45.840] – Carly
That’s amazing.
[00:42:50.040] – Janet
I’m never getting married again if we have to spin and weave our own dresses.
[00:42:53.390] – Dawn
Oh, goodness.
[00:42:54.400] – Tien
Well, I figured by the time she’s done, it’ll be time either to renew the vows or get rid of each other.
[00:43:06.280] – Carly
I want to see this 50 threads per inch.
[00:43:11.060] – Dawn
Did you hear that, Celia? We want to see it.
[00:43:13.200] – Janet
Out of 2-ply.
[00:43:14.730] – Carly
Amazing.
[00:43:15.640] – Janet
It’s very skinny.
[00:43:17.520] – Carly
It’s very skinny.
[00:43:18.720]
[crosstalk 00:43:19]
[00:43:22.830] – Dawn
Celia is back to the draft that we were working with and wants to know, turning it to get plain weave. How do you do that?
[00:43:38.340] – Janet
All righty. Here’s the right button. So Handweaving.net has this nifty little doodle where you can turn your draft. When you turn your draft, you rotate the whole thing 90 degrees. Let me zoom out so you can kind of see what I’m talking about. If this were a piece of paper and I turned it 90 degrees so that the treadling, instead of going down the side, went across the top, and then the tie-up would be at the top left and the threading now would be down the side, that’s not really any different than a draft that has the treadling down the right side. It would just be down the left side.
[00:44:18.000] – Janet
So what you would do is thread the treadling. Tie up your treadles just as if it were rotated 90 degrees. And then you would treadle your threading. You can do that with a little button here on Handweaving.net. Here we go. That is very small because there were a lot of threads.
[00:44:46.840] – Janet
When you do it, the design also rotates 90 degrees. So now all the undulations, all the waves, instead of going in vertical waves, they’re going in horizontal waves. Now you’ll notice it would not be a very easy treadling to keep track of, but it’s possible.
[00:45:04.690] – Janet
And this is a way you can sometimes do something that–if something has, say, eight shafts but only four treadles, which is unusual, but in theory, you could turn it and you might be able to do it on your loom that you couldn’t have done otherwise.
[00:45:20.970] – Janet
So here now, with this being the–okay, zoom in, make things visible. There we go. With this being the threading, this threading does alternate odd, even, odd, even, odd, even. So if you tied up treadles that also had–well, if they were all odd and all even–let’s see, Threads, Tie-ups, Add Treadles. Let’s add two treadles right here.
[00:45:53.120] – Janet
I want to caution you, before I even do this, this draft has a tabby–this threading has a tabby that is odds versus evens. But odd versus even is not always tabby. There are other–other threadings will have a tabby that have other tie-ups. So don’t fall into the trap of thinking odd versus even equals tabby. It doesn’t do that.
[00:46:19.780] – Janet
But in this particular case, if I tied a treadle to all of the odds and I tied another treadle to all of the evens, and then I added some threads, so I could–come on. It’s kind of slow when there’s a lot of threads at play, and lines might slow it down some too, so I’ll turn those off. Now if I just alternate those two, you’ll see the checker board that you should recognize as plain weave in the drawdown.
[00:46:59.920] – Janet
But if we turn it back again, now to have this, we need 10 shafts, not eight shafts. There isn’t a way to–let’s see, if I take these shafts back out and I add treadles this way, and I–oops, it’s more than I needed–do the odd-even thing again, which on twill-based things is often–if it’s a twill that doesn’t have any gaps, any repeated spots or any gaps in the threading, meaning that if every thread in the twill is one shaft up or one shaft down from the one before, as is very often the case with twill, if that’s that’s the case, then it has by definition, by default, by inspection, whatever math term you want to use, it has a threading that alternates odd and even. And therefore tying up a tabby on odds and evens will work.
[00:48:17.390] – Janet
Now if I add threads here–and I’m going to put this in Structure mode, so we’re not getting distracted by floats and things–and then I alternate these, you see there’s not a tabby. There’s that seven-end float I was talking about before. And here’s the doubles. There isn’t a way to–if I wanted to make a tabby here, I could do–if I did 1 and 5 versus 2 and 6 and I alternated these two, now I’m getting a tabby–where are my zoom controls? I don’t know where zoom controls are, so–oh, there they are. Now I’m getting tabby in this little section underneath this point, but as soon as I try to fill in anything that will make interlacement over here, that won’t be tabby anymore. So they’re not going to be able to get a tabby on it until it’s turned.
[00:49:35.330] – Janet
But once it’s turned, you can do it by the odd and even one that I showed you a second ago. Turn this, turn that. Well, okay. It’s going from worse to worser here. So stop watching about three minutes ago.
[00:49:59.550] – Dawn
No. Okay. Let’s see. Maryann has added a plea for a class on Fiberworks. We’ve talked about the group or the discussion, right? Isn’t there a–
[00:50:12.070] – Janet
Yes, there is. I’ll find it while you go on. Actually, no, here, I’m going to share. Sorry. I’m going to do it on screen so you guys see how to do this. If you go to the Forums directory and you go to the Search forums and you type in here Fiberworks, spelled correctly, you’ll see here are Fiberworks questions. Look, here’s one from me saying Fiberworks Questions. You could click on that. Here’s a whole forum topic on Fiberworks questions. By all means, you can add questions in here.
[00:51:01.760] – Janet
I am shortly going to be working on a class for the Draft Editor. Kris has been adding some cool new bells and whistles and just refining the most recently added features, functionality so that we can use it for all the upcoming classes more effectively. There’s going to be a class coming out on doing a bunch of stuff in the Draft Editor. Fiberworks is down the line. But I’ll answer questions here as I have time. Stop share. There it is.
[00:51:40.250] – Dawn
Okay, here’s a question for Carly. Beth says, do you know where you can get pattern heddles for band weaving? They’re hard to find in the US. Plus, do you have any book recommendations for band weaving?
[00:51:55.550] – Carly
I am not an expert band weaver. I’ve only done a couple of them on my rigid heddle, but I haven’t done any of that pattern. I’ve done some tablet weaving, a little bit. I mostly just work with the rigid heddle loom and not with the traditional rigid heddles.
[00:52:14.480] – Carly
The only ones that I have found when I’ve looked for one, because I really want to try it, have been on Etsy. They’re usually made by somebody in Europe, typically Scandinavia. You could also look–I’m going to mispronounce this–but people that sell, like Sámi, they’re the Indigenous people–is it Finland or Norway? I think it’s Lapland, I’m so bad with geography. But they make a lot of–it’s a traditional weaving that they do. So they make a lot of those little heddles. And they’re decorative, and they’re really pretty. But I don’t know of anybody who’s producing them in the US. I’ll try to–oh, wait, you do.
[00:53:04.250] – Janet
I don’t know in the US, but I have a friend in Canada who makes some cool ones and some gorgeous spindles. Her name is Judy Kavanagh, and she has an Etsy shop.
[00:53:18.450] – Carly
Yeah, her stuff is so nice.
[00:53:19.990] – Dawn
Ooh.
[00:53:21.060] – Janet
Those are some of her spindles. I have one that looks like this. Love it. And look, here are her band heddles.
[00:53:27.910] – Dawn
Oh, look at those.
[00:53:28.920] – Janet
That’s a possibility. She’s in Ontario, and the URL looks like a hot mess right now, but I think it’s–it’s JudyKavanagh.etsy.com or something like that. I’ll find the link, and I’ll make sure it goes into the transcript bit.
[00:53:53.780] – Carly
There’s also a company in Germany, the [inaudible 00:53:59]–I cannot–I don’t know. Sorry about my pronunciation. But you could actually order custom heddles like that. You could say, I want it this size, and I want it–you have to go through the German Google translate, but I actually ordered rigid heddles for my rigid heddle loom that are 18 and 20 EPI from them, and they’re made out of wood, and they’re gorgeous.
[00:54:22.130] – Carly
I can vouch that they will actually make them and ship them to you if you can go through the whole process of–it’s basically a little dot form, and it’s funny to try to read what the Google translation is trying to do. But it wasn’t that hard. But you can order them in any EPI that you want, any width that you want, and with however–I think up to three holes per heddle, so you can have your slots and then three holes in each one. I will try to leave you–just leave that–where should I put that resource? Because I can’t find it right now when we’re on Zoom. It’ll take me a little bit.
[00:54:58.900] – Dawn
Send it to me, and I’ll put it in the transcript.
[00:55:01.190] – Carly
Okay, cool. I’ll do that.
[00:55:02.720] – Dawn
There’s a great little book called Applesies and Fox Noses. Is that what it is?
[00:55:09.730] – Janet
No, that one’s tablet weaving.
[00:55:11.420] – Dawn
That’s tablet weaving.
[00:55:12.080] – Janet
Applesies and Fox Noses. Those same authors have a new one out, too. And there’s a couple of really fabulous tablet weaving books. I carry Applesies and Fox Noses in the store. And it hasn’t been available for a long time, and I keep getting emails about it, but all of mine are in storage with everything else from my store.
[00:55:31.280] – Dawn
Eda Lee says that Vävstuga, which I probably said wrong, has lots of band weaving books.
[00:55:37.820] – Carly
Oh, yeah. That’s a great resource.
[00:55:39.340] – Dawn
And there’s a really common tablet weaving–I don’t have my library with me–a really common tablet weaving book that I just cannot think of.
[00:55:46.910] – Janet
There’s one by–
[00:55:47.800] – Dawn
I mean inkle band weaving book, not tablet, inkle.
[00:55:52.430] – Janet
Well, there’s one by, I think it’s Lavinia Bradley called Inkle Weaving. And there’s a few out there. And there’s some–if you’re looking for inkle bands, then I highly recommend anything that another friend, Annie MacHale–ASpinnerWeaver is her handle on Etsy. She’s put out In Celebration of Plain Weave, which is about inkle weaving. Her latest one is on pickup, Three, something, Pickup, something, something. [Three-Color Pickup for Inkle Weavers]
[00:56:29.400] – Dawn
All right. Well, there’s lots of good books. We’ll try and put a few in the transcript. How about that?
[00:56:41.750] – Carly
I feel like it’s–is it Vävstuga, the handweaving weaving school will probably have a lot. They’re a great resource for books on that kind of weaving, and they would probably be able to help find an American resource.
[00:56:59.430] – Dawn
And Celia is full of resources. And she’s mentioning Norwegian Pick-up Bandweaving by Heather Torgenrud. A recent acquisition.
[00:57:14.150] – Dawn
All right. Should we throw in a couple more questions real quick? Eda Lee says, what about finishing tencel and Zephyr deflected double weave to get the proper deflection?
[00:57:28.950] – Janet
The deflection in deflected double weave comes from the structure and from whatever the fibers themselves do according to the wet finishing. So wet finish it as you would tencel or Zephyr and you’ll be fine.
[00:57:48.370] – Dawn
Okay. Dayamitra wonders if you have any advice for dyeing wool from a spool?
[00:57:56.560] – Tien
I don’t know if spool in this context means that it’s actually literally on a spool or if it’s just a package of yarn. In either case, my answer is basically the same, which is you take it off the spool. You skein it up. And then you dye it. And then you rewind it onto a cone or a spool or whatever you’re going to use to wind it from.
[00:58:20.650] – Tien
Having said that, if you have it wound into a cake, like a ball, you can get interesting effects by just dumping the entire ball into a dye bath. And what happens is it dyes darker on the outside and lighter on the inside. And so you get kind of a loosely graduated dye job with lots of speckles, which can be interesting.
[00:58:45.050] – Janet
I did that with–I actually shoved the cake down into, like, a 2-cup measure or something and filled that up with dye stock. And I think I even took a–
[00:59:00.620] – Dawn
Injector.
[00:59:03.220] – Janet
Sorry?
[00:59:04.130] – Dawn
A turkey baster?
[00:59:05.820] – Janet
Well, what we actually use are the dosing syringes from the animal tack store. But, yes, that and squashed it down the center of the cake. Cool gradient, speckily, completely not reproducible. You have to have just the right project to use a yarn created like that, or else it’ll look like a hot mess. But fun. And dead easy.
[00:59:33.760] – Dawn
Does your–
[00:59:34.770] – Tien
Yeah. Go ahead.
[00:59:36.000] – Dawn
She’s wondering if she needs–it’s commercial wool. Should she wash it first?
[00:59:41.140] – Tien
I would because often there are spinning oils left in the yarn, and that will affect your dye job. You don’t always have to, but it’s kind of a crap shoot.
[00:59:56.650] – Carly
[inaudible 00:59:57] said if it’s on a cone and you need to wash it, you probably need to skein it.
[01:00:01.818] – Janet
Yeah.
[01:00:01.980] – Tien
Yeah.
[01:00:03.060] – Janet
I don’t know. Have you ever tried or heard of people trying injecting into a cone?
[01:00:10.720] – Tien
Cones are too tightly packed, I think.
[01:00:12.690] – Janet
Yeah. I’ve only heard of that or tried that with a cake that I have wound from a cone or from a skein or whatever.
[01:00:21.400] – Tien
Industry will dye things on a hollow cone, but they also have high pressure or high temperature mumble, mumble, mumble stuff to do it with. Can’t do it at home.
[01:00:31.960] – Janet
And are they doing it with wool?
[01:00:34.800] – Tien
Probably not. I don’t know.
[01:00:37.450] – Dawn
We have a couple of injecting fans in the Question and Answers. Celia and Sandy both like injecting. Eda Lee wonders, did you have a different color in the turkey baster than in the measuring cup?
[01:00:50.080] – Janet
I did, Eda Lee, yeah. But you could do whatever you want. And I did it without anything in the center, so it just went from speckily to white. And there wasn’t really any of it that was solid, the color, except for maybe the very outer edge.
[01:01:09.790] – Carly
Well, you could dip it, let it soak in, pull it out, let it dry. Skein that much off. And with it still–just continue to do that, so you’re dipping it in these layers.
[01:01:22.460] – Janet
You can do all kinds of cool things.
[01:01:24.400] – Carly
Fun.
[01:01:25.880] – Janet
If only we had time and space. I need a TARDIS. I need a fiber TARDIS.
[01:01:33.350]
[laughter]
[01:01:34.900] – Dawn
Good luck with that, Janet.
[01:01:37.990] – Janet
It could happen yet.
[01:01:39.670] – Dawn
Beth says, thank you. I think this is to you, Carly. My granddaughter loves using these. She’s ready to move up to pattern heddles. She loves to weave bands while traveling in the back seat.
[01:01:49.140] – Dawn
Well done. She’s not watching a movie in the back seat? Bravo.
[01:01:54.650] – Carly
Or maybe she’s doing both. Either way.
[01:01:58.130] – Dawn
I know. That’s okay, too. But I didn’t have TVs. Here comes our signing off.
[01:02:09.860] – Janet
That was it for the questions. I believe our closing ceremonies are being acquired.
[01:02:16.920] – Dawn
Here come the closers.
[01:02:18.590] – Janet
Oh. Oh, [inaudible 01:02:19].
[01:02:20.870] – Dawn
It’s so much fun with–oh, hi.
[01:02:24.620] – Janet
Hello.
[01:02:25.880] – Tien
Here’s Fritz.
[01:02:27.030] – Dawn
And Fritz, hi.
[01:02:29.320] – Janet
Hi, guy.
[01:02:30.500] – Dawn
Aah.
[01:02:32.160] – Janet
I don’t have anybody close at hand. Oh, well.
[01:02:35.310] – Dawn
What an excellent way to finish.
[01:02:37.890] – Janet
Yeah. Black and white.
[01:02:40.910] – Dawn
All right.
[01:02:46.060] – Tien
Bye, everyone.
[01:02:47.420] – Janet
Bye, everybody. Thanks for coming. Next webinar is a lecture.
[01:02:53.252] – Tien
Lecture.
[01:02:53.810] – Janet
After the start of August.
[01:02:58.060] – Tien
On the 6th, I believe. We’ll see you then.
[01:03:02.530] – Janet
But there’s a design–Peer Support Design Help in between.
[01:03:07.320] – Dawn
Yeah, the 24th is Peer Support. 6th is Live Lecture. Good night, everybody.
[01:03:11.870] – Janet
Good night.