[00:00:00.000] – Tien
Can we go ahead and get started?
[00:00:01.350] – Dawn
Yeah.
[00:00:02.850] – Janet
Since people have been waiting patiently, watching us twiddle our thumbs now for 15 minutes.
[00:00:08.420] – Tien
Okay. So I was thinking we could start with Cotton, and then I could fill in the additional time.
[00:00:14.690] – Janet
Would you? Well, okay, then.
[00:00:17.970] – Tien
Or I could start, and then you could do Cotton.
[00:00:19.950] – Janet
How about that?
[00:00:21.160] – Tien
OK.
[00:00:22.360]
[laughter]
[00:00:24.130] – Dawn
I’m going to go into moderator space and help you out later.
[00:00:27.997] – Tien
Alright.
[00:00:29.050] – Janet
Thanks, Dawn. Bye-bye.
[00:00:29.710] – Tien
So I’m going to share my screen. Screen one. All right, let’s get started. So what I’m discussing today is the Design Process class. We’ve actually got two classes, Design Process and Cotton. But let’s start with Slideshow. Here we go. Buttons. Buttons are good. Okay, so let’s just dive in.
[00:01:00.130] – Tien
The first thing about this class is that everybody uses a different design process. And so the intent of this particular class is to offer you tools so that you can use whatever parts work for you. So it might be some of the methods. It might be some of the checklists that we’re providing, and it might be understanding some of the pitfalls. But bottom line, if it’s not working for you, don’t use it. That’s our general philosophy.
[00:01:27.850] – Tien
The first thing to keep in mind is that design is not a linear process. When we envision it, we kind of think of it this way, going straight down the road, Wylie Coyote with a rocket attached to your car. In practice, what it actually looks like is this over on the right, where you have twists and turns and a much more interesting and scenic route, shall we say.
[00:01:51.890] – Tien
So, for example, here’s a coat that I was designing, which took a tour through–this is actually the second iteration. The first iteration was a completely different thing. But this was my original sketch. It had a huge collar because I wanted to try designing an asymmetric collar. It had a point here, and then it had the colors on either side. And then it had leaves scattered all over the place.
[00:02:16.010] – Tien
And then I started making muslins. I made a total of 11 muslins. These are some of the in-between stages. I decided I didn’t like the point, so I got rid of the point. And then I was doing different variations of curves. And then finally I realized that that collar was just not working, and so I got rid of it entirely.
[00:02:36.750] – Tien
And so this is the finished piece. What it has in common with this previous version, which also had mutton sleeves for reasons that are not clear to me, you can see that there’s almost nothing that is in common with them except for the colors of the garment. The cut of the garment has also changed. And so that’s an example of the windy road that you can take. There were actually some more twists and turns, but let’s not go into those right now.
[00:03:07.450] – Tien
So getting started. So there’s a lot of different ways that you can get started, a lot of starting points. You can start with a photo that’s inspirational. You can start with a collection of yarns out of your stash. You can start with a draft. You can start with an event, like, oh, we’ve got a baby. Time to make a baby blanket. Or you can start with just, I want to make something. Maybe I want to make little lavender sachets. Or maybe I want to make a towel or something like that. And then the last thing I could think of was just a general theme. I want to make something that expresses an idea. Here you have summer joy.
[00:03:47.830] – Tien
There are a lot of other places where you can start. You can start, actually, pretty much anywhere. I just wanted to point out that because the class starts–it goes in a particular order does not mean that you can’t start outside of that particular order.
[00:04:04.350] – Tien
So here’s an example of a project that I’m working on. So the original thought was that it was a reversible cape with monarch butterfly wings on one surface and then a green chrysalis on the other. So if you look at the monarch here, you have the monarch butterfly, and that would be the outside of the cape. And then you would have the green chrysalis, and that would be the inside of the cape.
[00:04:31.670] – Tien
And so I gathered a bunch of inspiration sources. I’m very visual, so I tend to collect photos when I design. But you might collect drafts. You might collect yarns. You might collect colors. It’s really a matter of how you choose to design. This was the warp that I was putting on the loom. And so the idea was that it would use some of the warp, at least. And so that was where the monarch butterfly came from.
[00:04:59.230] – Tien
And then I started thinking about different themes. So the chrysalis and the butterfly are kind of transformations of each other. So then I thought that night and day would be interesting as well. So you have a butterfly, and then you have a moth. And somewhere in there, the moth sitting on the poppy made me think of California poppies, which are also orange. And so you can see how collecting inspiration can take you in all sorts of different directions. And it’s not a linear process. It’s more of a hop from idea to idea sort of process.
[00:05:36.330] – Tien
And again, it doesn’t have to be pictures. It could be yarns. It could be drafts. It could be tools that you want to play with or structures you want to play with, that kind of thing.
[00:05:48.430] – Tien
And then the next thing to do before you start looking for designs is to think about some constraints on the piece. It’s kind of like the bones for your creative muscles. If you don’t have any constraints, it’s easy to kind of flop around, like the Boneless Chicken Ranch. I like Gary Larson.
[00:06:03.970] – Tien
And so, generally speaking, you’ll know some of the answers here already. And so if you keep those in mind when you’re brainstorming designs, then that will help you figure out what you want to do. Because if you start with “I can do anything,” it’s really hard to figure out what “anything” means. But if you start out saying, well, I want to make a tea towel that’s bright and cheerful and is done in a twill, then it’s a lot easier to design because at least you know something about what you’re creating.
[00:06:40.030] – Tien
So some common questions are, what is it? What is inspiring you to make it? So, for example, if a baby has arrived, you might want to think about blankets or clothing or things like that.
[00:06:54.690] – Tien
How should people react to it? This is kind of the mood, and I’ll talk about that later. But basically, do you want people to feel like it’s bright and cheery? Do you want people to feel like it’s subdued? Do you want to make people think of something in particular?
[00:07:11.690] – Tien
And then what color, structure, and pattern are you using? And then what yarns? Now, you probably won’t know all of these things when you start out looking for designs to create, but it gives you something to start with.
[00:07:27.710] – Tien
So here are the constraints that I came up with for Chrysalis. We have the theme of transformation, death and rebirth, and seasons. So the idea is that with the butterfly and the chrysalis is that you have transformation. And also in some sense, you have something that dies and is reborn. The colors orange and black and other colors, these are the colors in my warp. They’re put on for doubleweave. And so one strand of orange alternates with one strand of black. And since I’ve got something like 14 or 15 yards on the loom, this is what I’m working with for a while.
[00:08:08.030] – Tien
And then I can use any weft colors that I want. In terms of–I wasn’t sure, maybe it’s shaded satins, but that was still kind of TBD. And then I want the viewer to think about the theme of life and death and transformation. And then the yarns were basically 20/2 black cotton and just various handpainted yarns of about the same size.
[00:08:38.050] – Tien
So then I started brainstorming. And the idea of brainstorming is to get a lot of ideas and a lot of variety in your ideas. And in the process of producing a lot of ideas quickly, you also produce some spectacularly bad ideas. And that is just fine. The whole idea is that it’s kind of like mining for diamonds. You have to sift through a lot of gravel in order to find the diamond, and so it behooves you to make a lot of gravel. So making 15 images or, you know, making 15 ideas is great. The more you have, the better, the more you have to pick from. And it’s okay if ten of them are bad ideas because you wind up with five that are good ideas. Anyway.
[00:09:22.290] – Tien
So your brainstorm could be words or it could be images. Here I’m describing the cloak with a Luna moth on one side and a monarch on the other side. And the tails of the Luna moth could be made up out of ribbons, which would be cool. And I have included a picture of Luna moth just so I remember what it looks like. But oftentimes I’ll simply specify what it is in words because I’m not that great with art or as a fine artist, I’m not that great. And so it’s often easier for me to describe it in words than to sketch it out.
[00:09:56.110] – Tien
So then I started brainstorming. So idea number one was this monarch cape with green chrysalis patterning on the inside and maybe with a vest attached, like in this photo. So the green chrysalis might be the vest, or it might be the inside of the cape, but I’m not sure.
[00:10:11.970] – Tien
If you’re wondering how I made this, I made this using DALL-E, which is an AI image generator. I’ve been playing with AI image generators. And while I found that they aren’t really good for producing finished pieces, if you’re just looking for a rendition of an idea, it’s not actually that bad. I got this one in by putting in, I think, a cloak that is a monarch butterfly. But it’s good for capturing ideas.
[00:10:44.590] – Tien
So then I brainstormed another design. And this was the idea of seasons and cyclical and rebirth. And so you have four panels. You have drought, fire, flood, and then rebirth in the spring. And this is kind of life in California. It’s a wonderful place to live when it’s not burning. So the idea of this is that it’s still got that theme of transformation, but it’s also got a theme of disaster, disaster, disaster, and then the resurgence of life in the spring.
[00:11:22.810] – Tien
So this was the Luna moth cloak that I was talking about. And so the idea would be–it’s like the monarch butterfly idea, but it’s with a Luna moth. It looks very different.
[00:11:36.350] – Tien
Design number four–and I was just coming up with these off the top of my head. I don’t think I spent more than five minutes on any one of them. And that’s exactly how you want to brainstorm, because the idea is to produce a lot of ideas fast and not get hung up on each individual one.
[00:11:51.650] – Tien
So this was an interesting one. The idea would be that you would start–so this is–well, actually, let’s start with the Escher print. This print starts with fish on the bottom, and then gradually it transforms into geese on the top. And this idea, which I thought would be really interesting to do if you started with a caterpillar on the bottom, transform to a chrysalis and then transform to butterflies on top. I thought that was intriguing. I thought it could make a good panel in a jacket. Or it could make a good wall hanging. I should add that here I’m designing for a Jacquard loom, which is able to weave pictures.
[00:12:38.850] – Tien
Design number five was kind of the idea of a reversible cocoon jacket. So instead of a cloak, you do the jacket. And then I liked the play of words on cocoon, so making a chrysalis out of cocoon just struck me as kind of interesting. And I like the cut of the cocoon jacket.
[00:13:01.670] – Tien
So there are some things to notice about this brainstorming session. One is that there was a big range of things from the same starting point. So I had a wall hanging, a decorative panel, which could be a wall hanging or a coat. I had two cloaks and a cocoon jacket.
[00:13:17.310] – Tien
And it’s not that you always have to brainstorm all sorts of different things. But if you know that you’re making a kitchen towel, think about many different palettes that you can use. Think about many different structures you could use. Within the limits of the constraints, there’s a lot of different things you can do. And so the idea of brainstorming is just to explore those different kinds of things.
[00:13:40.310] – Tien
The second thing to notice is that not all of these ideas are great ideas and not all of them are original ideas and not all of them are even practical to make. That’s just fine. The idea when your brainstorming is just to let the ideas come out and not judge them as you’re doing it. Because what happens is there is half of your brain that edits and then there’s half of your brain that creates. And the editing part of the brain can shut down the creative part of the brain more or less instantly by saying, no, no, no. That’s a bad idea. Let’s not do that. And so you want to turn off the editing part of your brain when you’re brainstorming.
[00:14:19.090] – Tien
Now, the variation can be in a lot of different things. It could be in weave structure or color or the type of object, the yarn, and so on. In this particular case, I don’t know what I’m making. I just have a theme. And so everything is kind of all over the place.
[00:14:35.670] – Tien
The last thing is designs don’t have to be 100% related to the criteria. So one of the themes in my original criteria was that it used that orange and black warp. But I think idea number three or four was the Luna moth cloak, which is entirely these ghostly shades of green and pale green. And that’s fine too. You don’t want to get hung up on it. You can always change some of the ideas.
[00:15:02.030] – Tien
So then the next step is to select a design to work with. And I happen to like three of the designs. And if you are stuck deciding, there’s a couple of different things you can do.
[00:15:13.300] – Tien
One is to write down the pros and cons of each design. What’s strong about it? What’s weak about it? Will it be fun to make? And then figure out what you’ll learn by doing, and anything else you want to say about it in terms of pros and cons. And I’ll demonstrate that in a minute.
[00:15:31.810] – Tien
Another option is just to walk away for a day or two and just kind of let the idea compost and see what you like best. And then, of course, you can ask your friends for their thoughts, not so much because you want to know what their favorite is, but because you want to know why it’s their favorite, because that feeds back into your pros and cons of each desire. The final decision, of course, is yours.
[00:15:55.410] – Tien
And then the last thing to keep in mind is that if you really can’t decide between three ideas, pretty much all of them are likely going to work and will produce good pieces. So the key is to pick one and keep going.
[00:16:08.470] – Tien
Spending a lot of time going between different designs is a little bit like–have you ever stood in front of the battery display at the supermarket? So then you have the batteries that are specialized for long life. You have the rechargeable batteries. You have the batteries that are–let’s say they’re specialized for electronics. And it’s easy to spend ten minutes in front of the battery display just trying to figure out which battery is best. This is silly. Buy a set of batteries because the differences between them are really not that profound as much as the branding would like you think it is.
[00:16:40.050] – Tien
And similarly, if you are really battling to decide between pieces, just pick one of them, and you can always come back to the other ideas.
[00:16:52.850] – Tien
So here are my evaluations of the three that I really liked. So with the monarch and chrysalis cloak, I really like the drama of being able to extend your arms and suddenly have a monarch butterfly. And I love the symbolism of the chrysalis, the different–the idea that you just flip the cloak around and you are suddenly in a cocoon and not a butterfly yet. And then you can flip it around again, and all of a sudden you become a butterfly. I just thought that was cool.
[00:17:26.270] – Tien
The cons–if you are making a cape, if you’ve ever made a cloak, you know, that it involves a ton of fabric. And then trying to get fabric to coordinate so that the wings look like wings and stuff like that just sounds like a real pain in the butt.
[00:17:43.730] – Tien
And then after all of that work, if the arms aren’t extended, it’s probably going to look like this, which looks a little like a wilted butterfly. And that raises the question of, would you actually wear this thing anywhere? I tend to produce art wear, which is designed for viewing at shows, but it’s kind of nice to get something that is not embarrassing to wear elsewhere or that won’t cause you to attract more attention than you want.
[00:18:12.350] – Tien
Seasons of California was the next one. I love the theme, the idea of drought, fire, flood, and then rebirth. And one of the nicest things about being in California is just being able to see all the flowers coming out in the spring after the rains, and especially after this collection of disasters we’ve had over the past year.
[00:18:33.170] – Tien
I also thought this was interesting because you don’t have to do it on a Jacquard loom. And, in fact, it’s something that might be better done on a shaft loom if you don’t want to be literal about it and weave pictures, which I didn’t. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to explore things like deflected doubleweave or something that would allow me to create three-dimensional cracks in my drought section, that would allow me to produce billowing flames, rushing water, and then, of course, the poppy.
[00:19:05.630] – Tien
So this sounded really interesting. I could do a lot of different structures with it. I could explore a lot of different techniques with it. And it’s just a wonderful technical challenge.
[00:19:16.050] – Tien
Now, the cons of it are, if I’m planning on weaving this on a Jacquard loom, where do I find the images to weave? And then if I’m doing it on a shaft loom, the odds are that I’m going to have to do a bunch of different warps for it. And I tend to like very long warps since I’m not that fond of warping.
[00:19:38.890] – Tien
And then the last one I really liked was the Escher. And I just love the concept. I love the metaphor of change. I like the way that things morph from one area to another. The only problem is I’m not very good at drawing. So how would you actually make this thing? So that would be a practical concern.
[00:20:01.470] – Tien
So after thinking all of that, I decided to do Scenes of California and to do it on a shaft loom. And I was really interested in learning about three-dimensional weaving. I haven’t done much work with collapse weaves. And I love technical challenges. And then doing four small panels struck me as much more interesting and full of variety than weaving 16 yards of cape fabric.
[00:20:29.850] – Tien
So some things to notice about what I wound up with. Originally I was thinking about this butterfly cloak. And now I have this completely different concept. It’s not a cloak. It’s a wall hanging. It’s not about butterflies and rebirth. It’s about natural disasters followed by rebirth. And the fact that it’s completely morphed is actually not a bad thing because a lot of times your first idea is not the best idea. In this particular case, I think that the bottom one is likely to be a much more successful piece in terms of expressing what I want to express and also in terms of looking good than the sort of melted butterfly.
[00:21:10.150] – Tien
The second thing to notice is that I was torn between three options. And frankly, all of them would work. It’s just that I’ve selected this one to work with. And I might decide to come back later and work out some of the others.
[00:21:24.250] – Tien
The last thing to notice is that there’s still not much detail about this. These are ideas, and these are things that I’ve taken to capture those ideas, but really still not an idea of how would I actually implement this. How would I create the idea of drought? How would I create the idea of fire? So these are more conceptual things than practical things. And that’s very true for brainstormed things. They’re basically ideas, but they’re not fully conceived designs, and that’s perfectly fine.
[00:21:57.190] – Tien
So then after you have the basic idea of what you’re doing, then you want to develop your design. And this is not in the class, but I threw it in because I wanted to put it into the class and just didn’t have time. But when you develop a design, it’s not a straight line process, as I mentioned in the first slide.
[00:22:18.790] – Tien
It’s actually a cyclical process. And so what you do is design in small steps. So you come up with a design idea. You sketch it out or weave a sample or do whatever you’re going to do. Then you look at what you’ve done and evaluate what is good about it, what can you build on, and then what would you like to fix. And then once you decide that, you decide how you’re going to change your design. And then you go back and do another round.
[00:22:49.190] – Tien
The idea of doing it this way is that to do it in small steps, because the smaller the step you make, the less you can go off course before discovering that you’re off course. So if you do all the design upfront and then try to weave it without testing out any parts of your design, you may very well find out that you’ve made a big mistake and now you’ve lost a lot of yarn and a lot of time in your project.
[00:23:17.470] – Tien
But if you design it and then look–for example, if you’re designing colors, you pick out some colors. You look at them in the Color Editor or other weaving software and evaluate it. Then you’re not finding out about the color issues on the loom after you’ve already warped it and bought the yarn and all of that. So the smaller the step you do, the cheaper the mistakes are.
[00:23:44.230] – Tien
One thing that’s essential, in my opinion, is to sample designs early and often. So here we have testing out different drafts, testing out different ideas for the leaves. I decided that I want to test the arrangements of the leaves, and so I cut some out of fabric and threw them down on a strip. And then this is a muslin of the finished garment.
[00:24:14.610] – Tien
And then here is an attempt at doing devore, which of course was not super successful because the fabric is incredibly unstable. You can see that while it looks like plain weave in some places, it’s sort of partially disintegrated wherever it’s been touched. So as a garment, this would absolutely not work. But it’s good that I found that out before I sort of wove enough to do an actual coat out of it.
[00:24:46.250] – Tien
And so these are all different ways of sampling. I think of samplings as a way of testing a design concept. So on the left, I’m testing whether I like oak leaves or maple leaves better in this design. And I’m doing it the cheapest way possible, which is just by doing a draft and then experimenting with a draft. I’m not trying to weave fabric or anything. I’m taking the quickest way to getting my design.
[00:25:13.250] – Tien
And in this one, I’ve done a Photoshop simulation of the cloth. I took the background, and I added some color to it and I put in patterning in the leaves just to see how that would work. And again, this is not something I spent a lot of time on. I did not weave the fabric and then try to do the leaves. I picked the cheapest way of answering my design question.
[00:25:41.630] – Tien
The only woven sample in all of this is this one here. And that was because I had an answer–I wanted an answer that I could not get any other way, which is, what will it look like? And will the fabric be stable? And so that was what I was talking about now in this slide.
[00:26:00.690] – Tien
Then the next step is to flesh out your design. And, again, when you flesh out your design, you want to define what you want, the design part. You want to create it and sketch it out in more detail–words, pictures, sketches, whatever works for you. I happen to draw a little bit like a six year old, and so I tend to use photos as shorthand for what I’m doing, or a color palette, and then I’ll write the rest out in words. But, again, depending on how you think, you might choose a totally different way of doing it.
[00:26:38.670] – Tien
And then you evaluate. What do you like? What is not working? And then what do you not know yet and need to do an experiment to find out? And then you decide what you’re going to do in the next step. And then, of course, you go back and design. You go through the cycle again.
[00:26:56.870] – Tien
So in terms of practical things, if you look at this particular design, the brainstorm design was pretty vague. And so now you add definition. Why are you doing the project? What is it? What’s its function? What kind of feelings should the viewer have about it? What kind of pattern should it be? And what do you want to learn? Once you know what those are, then you can actually design in more detail.
[00:27:24.590] – Tien
So now I’m thinking about the drought part. And I could have gone through all four of them, but since they’re effectively four different projects, I just decided to follow this one. And I wanted to reproduce the idea of cracked mud because I thought that was a really good metaphor for drought.
[00:27:39.420] – Tien
And so I went looking through a whole bunch of different resources, and I finally found the Handwoven Deflected Doubleweave book, and I pulled some ideas out of there. You can see a little something that looks a little like cracks in mud in this piece over on the right by Madelyn van der Hoogt. And then the idea of the three-dimensional cracks in the mud came from Karen Donde’s piece.
[00:28:09.230] – Tien
So this is sort of my idea in more detail. And I’m talking about using black and light brown colors. And then with this, it’s created, I think, by using one shrinking yarn and one non-shrinking yarn. And so that’s my design concept going forward.
[00:28:29.410] – Tien
Now let’s look at what’s working and what’s not with this design. I love the concept, and I can use yarns that I already have in my stash, which is important because I have, like, 400 pounds of yarn. Don’t tell anyone. But what’s not working yet is that–or rather what’s unknown is that I’ve never worked with deflected doubleweave. And so I have absolutely no idea if this will work.
[00:28:55.130] – Tien
So next steps? Well, I need to figure out deflected doubleweave to see if it will actually work and do a draft test piece. And because ]deflected doubleweave is a collapse weave, you can’t just look at it on a screen and have any idea what it’s going to look like. So I need to weave some samples.
[00:29:17.010] – Tien
So anyway, there’s many ways of getting started. You can plan around something you need. Do you want tea towels? Do you want a garment? Do you want to make pillows? Or do you want to make a baby blanket? You can start around a draft or a weave structure. One thing I’ll do is say, I want to explore tied weaves today, and then I’ll put it on a long warp and start weaving things. And it doesn’t matter to me exactly what I’m weaving because the purpose is exploration. Or it could just be a nice-looking draft that I pulled off Handweaving.net and want to play around with. It doesn’t have to be a whole series of samples.
[00:29:56.270] – Tien
You could start with a color palette. There are color palette generators. I think Design Seeds is a good one. And then you can do a collection of stash yarns, so if you want to use up yarns that are already in your stash. And so on.
[00:30:13.270] – Tien
This affects your starting point and some of your constraints, but it doesn’t affect the overall process. So you could brainstorm from a starting point of, what can I do with the stash yarns? You can brainstorm from the part of I want to use this network drafted draft. You can start with, I need a baby blanket. What kinds of different baby blankets that I need?
[00:30:40.910] – Tien
And so the basic process is that you collect your ideas. You brainstorm your design. You evaluate your design and select one. And then you flesh out your chosen design. And that’s the beginning of the process.
[00:30:54.450] – Tien
Then you get into the details. So you choose the major components of the cloth. You pick your yarns. You pick your draft. You pick your colors.
[00:31:03.350] – Tien
And so for the drought tile, I was thinking something like the “River Stones Runner” by Connie Westbrook, which is in the “Deflected Doubleweave” booklet from Handwoven. And then this would be my palette using Brassard 16/2 cotton, which is not shrinking, and a black 30/2 wool, 32 Nm, which is different from other wool counts. That’s about 7,500 yards per pound. And so that’s what I’m thinking off the top of my head.
[00:31:41.410] – Tien
And then you want to evaluate whether your choices work together. So in the Design Workbook there are all sorts of handy checklists. Let me grab that one. So if you look in here, you can find that when you’re picking yarns, there’s a checklist in here of things you should consider. Does it look right? Is it itchy? Is it warm? And then the weaving considerations. Is it strong enough? Is it abrasion resistant? What kind of drape will it produce? Thickness, shrinkage, compatibility, and so on and so forth.
[00:32:20.750] – Tien
And then when you’re selecting your draft, there’s another checklist here about what kinds of drape and density your draft will give the finished piece. Are there long floats? Is it a collapse weave? What will the selvedges look like?
[00:32:35.970] – Tien
And then there’s a whole bunch of visual considerations that are also in the checklist. So I really recommend looking at the Design Workbook because there’s a lot of valuable information in there. And then if you pick your colors, again there’s more things to consider with your color palette.
[00:32:56.730] – Tien
So the basic things that you want to figure out are the aesthetics, so things like visual appearance, texture, drape, and how soft it is, and things like that. Suitability–whether it meets the functional requirements. So if it’s supposed to be a warm scarf, is it a warm fiber? Is it thick enough? Is it durable, washable, storable, all the things that you might need?
[00:33:24.530] – Tien
And then the last thing is, can you actually weave it? So are the yarns compatible in weaving? Weaving linen with wool stripes is going to give you tension problems unless you find ways of dealing with those. How available are your yarns in the colors? How much is it going to cost? How hard is it going to be to design and weave?
[00:33:48.630] – Tien
And then the last thing to think about is, are you going to enjoy making it? Because if you don’t like weaving long projects, you probably shouldn’t embark on something that involves 16 yards of fabric. So that’s something to think about, as well.
[00:34:06.170] – Tien
Then you get to the technical design of the piece, so things like the project dimensions, the number of pieces you’re weaving on that warp, and so on, the sett, picks per inch, draw-in, and all that.
[00:34:20.770] – Tien
And we have a handy project calculator right here. This was just added to the toolboxes. And so if you put in the length per item, the dimensional loss, number of items to be woven, and so on, it will calculate your warp length and your unwoven warp length, if you enter a few more things. And then from there, you get the total warp length, the width, total ends, the amount of yards of yarn that you need. So this pretty much does all your physical calculations for you, which is awesome.
[00:35:06.130] – Tien
And then you want to create your design, so design your colors, and then test whether the colors will work. And you can do that in the Color Editor. You can do computer simulations. I use Photoshop a lot. You can do physical sketches, too. One thing you can do is print out your draft in black and white, if you’re planning on using a black warp, and just shade it in with crayons or markers or something like that.
[00:35:30.810] – Tien
In general, when sampling, again, use the cheapest possible method. Playing around in the Color Editor is pretty quick. This is an actual woven sample, and those take a lot longer and are a much bigger commitment. So I only do a woven sample either when I can’t get the answer any other way or when I’m ready to weave the thing, and I just want to do a last sanity check.
[00:36:00.620] – Tien
So when you’re evaluating your design, you want to start with what’s working and not just what is working, but why is it working. So in this piece, I happen to like this piece. What do I like about it? Well, I like the gradual color gradients. I like the feeling of calm in the center, interrupted by just a streak of drama. And then you want to look and make sure that the physical design is sound, as well. And so I’ve woven a sample, and I knew that would work.
[00:36:37.000] – Tien
But the important thing is to figure out why you like what you like. Because, well, I just like it is not very helpful, but saying, huh, I like the big contrast between this yellow stripe and this green area, this blue-green area, will tell you a lot more information because then you can dig deep and say, well, I like the contrast between those, and how can I add more contrast? Or how can I add the motion that I want?
[00:37:07.120] – Tien
And it’s important to start with what’s working and build on that rather than say, I hate this. Let’s get rid of this. I don’t like that. Let’s fix that. Because you get better work by building on the things that are working than by sort of copyediting all the things that are not working. So the metaphor I used in this class is that if you’re writing a book, you don’t get a brilliant book by just sitting down and copyediting all the grammar mistakes. You get a brilliant book by taking the parts that are working, making them better, and then doing your copyediting.
[00:37:44.480] – Tien
So how do you improve the better parts? This particular design, I looked at it and I thought, love the motion here that’s being created by these bright yellow lines. But it might be interesting to run them along the side, along the length of the shawl, because right now all the motion is taking place side to side. We’ve got all these stripes that are side to side. And so I decided to do that. And I thought that was stronger because it would bring the eye back and forth a lot more.
[00:38:16.680] – Tien
And so the idea is to strengthen the things that are already working. Notice that strengthening the things that are already working isn’t a matter of adding more stripes, but maybe changing the way that the stripes were. So more of what’s working doesn’t necessarily mean add more yellow because you like yellow. It could. But it might also mean take this design aspect, this dramatic line, and do something with it that increases the drama, or that decreases the drama if we thought it was too dramatic.
[00:38:56.260] – Tien
And then just continue iterating until you’re happy. So this was my second or third attempt, and I felt that I had now gone a little too far on the lines and that it was too busy. And I really wanted to lean into that sense of calm that had been in the center of the previous one. So I changed this from blue to entirely blue-greens in the background because I liked that calm I got in the center more than I liked the stuff that was on the sides, where it felt a little more fiery. And I added this big thing in the center because I was worried that the middle was going to be too boring.
[00:39:43.220] – Tien
So then I looked at this and I said, maybe there’s too much focus in the center anyway, and probably no one’s going to see it the way that you wear a shawl. And so then I came up with this, which is the final design for the piece.
[00:39:58.760] – Tien
And so you can see how there’s different iterations. There’s different levels of thought. There’s analysis in what is drawing the eye, what mood am I creating, that kind of thing. And so that’s how the design process works.
[00:40:15.200] – Tien
Now, the thing is that your design process is continuous. So until your project is done, done, continue designing, creating, evaluating, and changing anything that doesn’t work. And the bottom line is, do more of what you like and fix what you don’t like. And that’s true even when you’re actually weaving the project.
[00:40:36.660] – Tien
So once you’re done, there’s three parts to evaluating your finished project. I talked about this in the blog post, but I’m going to reiterate it because it’s important. There is learning. How did you grow as a weaver? There’s process. Did you enjoy it? Were there any parts in the process that you want to fix? So if you make a lot of threading errors, how do you make fewer threading errors? And then there’s the finished product, which is how well does it work? Are you happy with how it looks? And is it well woven?
[00:41:07.700] – Tien
And people tend to focus on the finished product when, in fact, the learning and the process, to me, are just as important or more important, because if you produce a finished piece that could win a show but you didn’t enjoy it at all, that might be a successful project. If you do a project that you enjoy a lot, but which has some flaws in it, you know, that’s just fine. You do it because you love it. And maybe if you learn something while you’re doing it, you can consider that project a success, even if the end result looks kind of disastrous. As Laura Fry likes to say, you’re not just making a project when you start weaving, you’re making a weaver. So that’s important to remember, too.
[00:42:00.400] – Tien
And that’s it. Do we want to do questions now, or do we want to do your Cotton [inaudible 00:42:08]?
[00:42:08.200] – Janet
I’d say questions now while they are timely and on topic.
[00:42:11.880] – Dawn
Let’s see what I’ve got. I don’t think I have questions, guys.
[00:42:17.380] – Janet
Well, if you have questions about anything that Tien just said, the design process, the class or the lecture, now is the time. And then I’ll talk a bit about cotton, if time allows. And if you have questions about cotton, you can throw them out now. There’s not a whole lot to say in a lecture about cotton. I’m just going to summarize the class and maybe show you some pictures. But I think time would be better spent if people had questions about it. So now is the time if you have questions for either Design Process or Cotton. We can just give that a couple of seconds.
[00:43:01.540] – Janet
We were paying attention, I promise. But we were also chatting in the Chat. There were a few people who had trouble connecting to a previous webinar. If you are one of those people, and I have Bobby, Lissa, and Sarah, I’ve already noted you guys, but if another one of you had problems connecting to the previous seminar, could you send an email to Support@? And then I will confer with all of you guys. Probably not until I get back to the Great White North South, but follow up shortly.
[00:43:32.040] – Janet
Okay? We have a question, I see.
[00:43:35.570] – Dawn
We do. Oh, my goodness. Tien’s last few sentences about making a weaver and successful projects are brilliant. We should all print them out and put them on our bulletin boards to remind us.
[00:43:51.620] – Tien
I wish I could claim credit for that. That’s actually Laura Fry’s favorite thing.
[00:43:58.740] – Dawn
Excellent. Tien, did you actually weave this project yet?
[00:44:05.320] – Tien
The Gradient project has been woven, but the Drought project just came out of my head, like, two days ago. So I’m actually starting to embark on the project and will probably do it over the next couple of weeks. But what I can do is show you the Design Workbook for this particular project. We can just put a link to it on the Project page, and you can follow along.
[00:44:34.710] – Dawn
On this new one?
[00:44:37.140] – Tien
On this new one.
[00:44:38.420] – Dawn
Excellent.
[00:44:39.020] – Tien
The California new one.
[00:44:40.470] – Dawn
Okay.
[00:44:41.270] – Tien
It’s going to take me a couple of months to do, though. I’ll just log in.
[00:44:44.280] – Dawn
Really?
[00:44:46.100] – Tien
Yeah.
[00:44:48.020] – Dawn
Cass Markovich says, do either of you use variegated yarns, and how do you use them? Weft? Warp stripes? Tien used painted warps. I am thinking about commercial variegated.
[00:45:03.880] – Tien
The challenge with variegated yarns is that it is hard to get your pattern to show. If you are planning on doing it–well, there’s actually two problems. One is that, depending on what yarns you’ve chosen, the colors may blend into much duller colors. So if your yarn is orange and green and purple, that looks wonderful when knitted. But when you weave it together, you tend to wind up with mud because the orange and purple and green all wind up next to each other. And then they wind up blending because of optical mixing. And then you run into problems.
[00:45:41.320] – Tien
Now, if it’s designed as a weaving yarn, you’re probably fine because things that are designed for weaving yarns usually keep this in mind, so they tend to have much more subtle variegation. However, if you’re going to use it, I would use it in stripes with something solid just to give the place an eye to rest. And I would use something that has colors that blend nicely together. And I would use a simple structure like plain weave or a twill, rather than trying to make the pattern show with a much more complex draft.
[00:46:21.690] – Tien
The general rule is that a more complex draft combined with a more complex color pattern will generally give sort of mottled results. And variegated yarns produce a very complex color pattern.
[00:46:37.560] – Dawn
Thank you.
[00:46:41.320] – Janet
And maybe you said this, Tien. I was conferring with somebody else that had had an issue. But a key part of it is how much value contrast there is in the variegation.
[00:46:53.659] – Tien
Right.
[00:46:53.830] – Janet
If the variegation–if all of the colors in the variegation set are about the same value, then you have a lot more flexibility, and it will work in a lot more places. So I use variegated–I prefer it in the warp rather than the weft because I tend to weave finished items rather than cloth that will become something. And generally in a finished item that’s often a scarf, I want my eye to be drawn along the length of it rather than back and forth across the narrow width of it. And the variegation in the warp will do that.
[00:47:32.040] – Janet
And sometimes I cross it with itself, and then that makes kind of a plaid. And that’s interesting. If there’s no structural stuff going on. I use it a lot on my rigid heddle. I use variegated knitting yarns on my rigid heddle a lot, sometimes with solid stripes.
[00:47:50.390] – Janet
I have also used it, sort of in a complete contradiction of what we’ve already said, I’ve used it as the tabby weft in overshot coverlets. There’s a lot of pattern stuff going on there. But then the variegation is either very narrow value range, so it’s not detracting from what you want the eye to see, which is the overshot design.
[00:48:17.290] – Tien
The two key things to keep in mind really are that the values are similar if you want to see the pattern, or if you want to see a woven pattern, and that your colors either don’t mix into duller colors or you don’t care.
[00:48:35.100] – Janet
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
[00:48:39.820] – Dawn
All right. Oop, there goes my background. I have another question. Joy says–Joy Lee Pate, one of our Joys–says, when designing, when does one go from copying, for example, a project in “Handwoven”, to making it one’s own?
[00:48:59.000] – Tien
That is a very good question. It’s a continuum rather than a sort of you get a point in, ping, it’s all yours. I tend to think of it a–Picasso once said that good artists borrow and great artists steal.
[00:49:19.820] – Tien
And my thought is that if it’s something which is substantially the same or similar in concept, like if you took a gradient design and you just changed the colors, you didn’t change the gradient or anything like that, then that still remains a derivative design. And that’s where I would feel compelled to maybe not contact the creator and say, I want to use this design, which I would do if it were an exact duplicate design. But I would feel compelled to say this gradient pattern design was inspired by this piece by the other person.
[00:50:00.360] – Tien
If you have stolen it, then you’ve taken the idea and mixed it with a whole bunch of other ideas, and it’s no longer returnable, if that makes sense. It’s kind of like if you took four ingredients in a recipe and you combine them all together, then what you have is chili. It’s no longer tomatoes and so on. And that’s the point at which you can really call it your own.
[00:50:28.320] – Janet
Yeah. It’s a thorny kind of gray area. And to me, another part of it is whether if somebody else looks at your fabric, your project and says, oh, that’s da, da, da, da, da, da, da. So, for instance, in the Towelpalooza class that we just did, one of the towels was those dots. And everybody looked at them and said, oh, those are those dots from “Handwoven”. Even though there’s different colors, there’s different fibers, probably different weights, it’s still recognizable as that project.
[00:51:05.040] – Janet
So when I wanted to weave something that was more uniquely mine, I changed the dots and treadled them completely differently, changed the tie up a little bit. And I think now if somebody looks at this, they’re not necessarily going to say, oh, those are the dots. They’re going to say, oh, that’s Janet’s COVID test.
[00:51:28.260] – Tien
Right. One thing I’m very careful about when I go looking for inspiration is always just to clip the name of the person who created the inspiration. Partly that’s because it’s respectful to the person, and partly that’s so that if I need to cite my sources later, I can go back and do that. It’s really hard to do that when you’re saying, well, this is the thing that I found on the Internet.
[00:51:57.920] – Janet
Did you not see the picture of the design of the cloth?
[00:52:01.960] – Tien
I didn’t see it.
[00:52:03.920] – Janet
It said it was sharing. Let me try it again. Now it tells me I’m sharing. It says, Stop Sharing. Your Screen Share is loading.
[00:52:17.140] – Tien
There it is.
[00:52:17.500] – Dawn
Not yet.
[00:52:18.500] – Janet
There it is. Sorry, it took longer than I expected. So I think, assume if somebody looks at that, they are not immediately going to go, oh, yeah, those dots. There are little bits up here. Those are by cutting lines because they have to cut this apart for samples. I feel like I’ve adapted that far enough that it’s mine. Even though it’s on the same threading and it’s the same structure.
[00:52:48.480] – Dawn
It does look like a COVID test. So Dayamitra is asking, do you have any suggestions on when to add a shinier yarn as a feature? For example, when would you add a mercerized cotton or silk or tencel to unmercerized cotton in a project?
[00:53:12.300] – Tien
So, visually speaking, I’d do it if I wanted people to look at the shinier yarn. Because, in general, people will look at lustrous things before they look at non-lustrous things. Now, that can be a problem if you’re doing it in one stripe and the mercerized cotton or the silk shrinks differently than the unmercerized cotton. So that’s something to think about.
[00:53:32.900] – Janet
What I would do in that case, if you want to just add a glint, rather than add a stripe would be to add an end. And if you want it to have a little more visual weight, you could add one end and then maybe a few ends away add one more end. So it appears as a stripe, but it’s still only got isolated ends of the thing that’s going to behave differently. Because usually it’s when a whole crowd of threads that are going to behave differently get together and then they behave differently, then it becomes a problem. If there’s just one little weirdo in the cloth, then they get sort of subsumed into the mass normal.
[00:54:11.280] – Tien
I will often use a shiny yarn with a matte yarn when I want to put–like the matte yarn might be black, which I want to make less interesting than the brighter colors that I’m using in the lustrous yarn. So think of, for example, the unmercerized cotton, the matte yarn, as the background, and then use the shinier yarn for the accents, the design elements, the things you want people to look at.
[00:54:44.380] – Janet
Another very effective way of combining them is if you’re doing something where the interlacement is the focal point, not the color, so it’s all one color, to use–it’s usually in that case, then, the juxtaposition between the warp and the weft that’s the interesting feature. So you could use a shiny warp, for instance, and the same color, but in a matte yarn, for the weft or vice versa. That’s very effective in things like lace or turned twill or satins, where the warp floats and weft floats are what’s creating the visual interest. And they’ll show up really well, if they’re shiny against matte or matte against shiny.
[00:55:29.580] – Tien
Let me show an example of what I–so this is a silk and cashmere shawl that I wove, and the cashmere is the black and the silk is the colors. And you can see how the lustrousness of the silk really makes it stand up against the black cashmere. If I’d used something that was equally lustrous as the weft, then I wouldn’t have this beautiful sense that the silk is floating above that black. It wouldn’t emphasize the silk nearly as much. That was the last question. And we’re exactly 12:59.
[00:56:17.000] – Janet
So the Cotton class is there. Basically, it’s a rundown of all the stuff you need to know about the most common cotton weaving yarns–what the sizes mean, what the 8/4 versus 2/16, whatever what that means, why sometimes it’s 2/16 and sometimes it’s 16/2.
[00:56:35.440] – Janet
Tien mentioned briefly in her conversation that she had the 30/2 Nm wool. That Nm is an indicator of a particular yarn count. And so, along with the cotton class, a new section came out in the toolboxes explaining what yarn counts are, because those 16/2s and 20/2s, those are the cotton counts. And the Nm is covered in the Toolbox, not in the Cotton class, because usually we’re not talking Nm for cotton.
[00:57:10.540] – Janet
And then what kinds of projects cotton is appropriate for, what kinds of yarns you can substitute for cotton, or you can substitute cotton for, or what combinations of things, like what fibers you can combine with cotton successfully. So lots of good, almost sort of bullet pointy information about cotton, so you can just use that as a resource. When you’re going through the design process and you’re trying to decide what fibers to use, you can go to that and say, okay, well, cotton, if I use it, is going to have these properties. And if I’m going to use cotton, what else can I put with it or what might be a different, better choice?
[00:57:51.170] – Janet
And there’s one interesting, I think, particularly interesting part of the class is a discussion of a comparison of cottons that are apparently, on paper, the same thing, like 8/4 unmercerized versus cotton warp versus mercerized 8/4. They’re the same weight. They apparently have the same construction.
[00:58:15.920] – Janet
And then also a little segue or detour into a conversation about Brassard’s unmercerized cotton because they have just this past year changed how they manufacture their 8/4 cotton. So now it is different than it used to be. So that is a topic of interest that people who have used it in the past and who had a strong preference for the old version, or some people have a strong preference for the new version. So if you wander into the Cotton class conversation group, you’ll see people arguing in favor of old cotton or new cotton from Brassard.
[00:58:59.980] – Tien
So apparently this session was scheduled for an hour and a half. The live lecture is usually an hour long. If people have more questions, we’re happy to stay and answer them.
[00:59:10.950] – Janet
Yeah, for sure. Well, and I could show my pictures, my cotton pictures then, since I have more time.
[00:59:17.300] – Dawn
I have a question. You talked about twisting when you’re warping. I warp front to back on my Gilmore loom, because that is how it was designed, and almost exclusively cotton. And the cotton just twisted around itself.
[00:59:38.680] – Janet
Corkscrews.
[00:59:41.180] – Dawn
No matter what. I mean, I have cat hair to deal with, too, but it made corkscrews. And I try very hard to have a good set up with the path and all that stuff.
[00:59:53.740] – Janet
It doesn’t do it regardless of manufacturer. Does it do it regardless of color? Or is it–in my experience, it usually happens with naturals, and my experience is mostly related to Brassard’s cotton because it’s readily available, and I think it’s so much nicer than other choices. So that’s what I use the most.
[01:00:14.420] – Dawn
I think we’re going to have to go with a personal problem then.
[01:00:18.060] – Janet
Well, no. I mean, does it happen–
[01:00:20.830]
[crosstalk 01:00:21]
[01:00:22.920] – Dawn
I think I bought lots of Webs cotton, one-pound cones.
[01:00:27.160] – Janet
In lots of colors, not just natural?
[01:00:29.730] – Dawn
Yeah.
[01:00:30.640] – Janet
How wide are your warp chains?
[01:00:35.100] – Dawn
100 threads.
[01:00:37.820] – Janet
So that’s maybe five inches?
[01:00:40.300] – Dawn
Yeah.
[01:00:43.980] – Janet
Well–
[01:00:44.890] – Dawn
I think that I’m going to count it as cat hair.
[01:00:47.850] – Janet
Well, depending on–any yarn can have a little extra twist in it, depending on how it’s manufactured. And if you have a whole bunch of yarn in a chain that has a little more twist in it, then it can kind of–
[01:01:03.450] – Dawn
That’s what happened. That’s exactly what happened.
[01:01:06.210] – Janet
But here’s another thing. Do you chain your warp when you take it off the mill or the board?
[01:01:11.790] – Dawn
Yes.
[01:01:12.920] – Janet
And when you chain it, you’re doing it like a crochet chain, if you crochet. Do you always reach through the loop with the same hand?
[01:01:20.960] – Dawn
No, because I read lots of weaving advice. And so I switch hands.
[01:01:26.620] – Janet
Alright. I got nothing.
[01:01:30.300] – Dawn
I got nothing either.
[01:01:31.910] – Janet
Try a different cotton.
[01:01:33.110] – Dawn
It’s cat hair. Cat hair.
[01:01:38.560] – Tien
I would try back to front in that case.
[01:01:40.870] – Dawn
Well, that is my next move. Thank you.
[01:01:43.780] – Janet
But, yeah, I mean, if the Gilmore, though, is really designed for front to back, that might not be–
[01:01:49.450]
[crosstalk 01:01:50]
[01:01:50.495] – Dawn
It is.
[01:01:50.900] – Tien
Someone was saying that my voice is muffled compared to Janet’s. Is that still the case?
[01:01:55.370] – Janet
Bop, bop, bop-a-da, bop.
[01:01:56.570]
[chime]
[01:02:00.920] – Tien
Maybe Janet just talks louder.
[01:02:02.960] – Janet
I talk so loud.
[01:02:04.798]
[crosstalk 01:02:05]
[01:02:06.040] – Janet
Completely off topic. I was weaving some–it’s a point twill. I decided I’m just going to call that kind of thing grackle or twackle. I was weaving it over there. And there are these little points. And so as I wove each one, I would say the shaft–or the treadle, rather, that my little repeat started on and go, like, four, bit, bop, bip. Four, bit, bop, bip. The bit, bops, very important. Five, bit, bop, bip. Five, bit, bop, bip. Three, bit, bop, bip. Three, bit, bop, bit.
[01:02:40.240] – Tien
Okay. Anything else?
[01:02:45.060] – Dawn
I don’t see anything. Do I?
[01:02:47.800] – Tien
I’ll work on the microphone issue for next time.
[01:02:49.640] – Janet
Well, let me show my cotton pictures then.
[01:02:51.790] – Tien
Okay.
[01:02:54.680] – Janet
I made the pictures. They’re not that great, but I’ll share them. I just got to find them. My Screen Share is loading. Zoom has changed recently. Zoom has updated a couple of times. And I’m wondering, those of you who have had some trouble connecting, if it’s maybe your Zoom needs to update, or if it just did update, or if it wants to update but your computer isn’t new enough to update. I wonder if that’s part of the equation. But it’s changed even on my end, so it’s slower to share and stuff.
[01:03:30.160] – Janet
Here is the page in the Toolbox that I was talking about before about yarn counts and the Nm system, the metric Nm system, there at the bottom. But this is what I wanted to show you.
[01:03:44.660] – Janet
If they’re not great pictures, I apologize. But on the left, can you tell–well, let’s see. On the right, can you tell that those four strands are themselves plied? They have little twisty bits to them. Whereas on the left, they are single strands. So the left is Brassard’s new 8/4, and on the right is Brassard’s old 8/4.
[01:04:11.980] – Janet
And the reason I like the old 8/4 better–one of the reasons is that when you divided it to join bobbin ends, for instance, when you divided it, the things you divided it into were still stable. And so it’s easier to connect the ends of that 8/4 without bunchy overlaps than on the left. Because when you start messing around with those individual plies, they just want to pull apart in your fingers.
[01:04:38.580] – Janet
And the other thing I was wanting to show you, and this does not–my camera and stuff did not cooperate very well. But on the left you should, I hope, be able to see the ply, the twist of two strands around each other, much more clearly than that thing on the right. And to the eye, not to the camera so much, but to the eye, the one on the left also has a lot more of these little hairy, sticky-out bits than the one on the right.
[01:05:12.510] – Janet
The one on the left is open spun, and the one on the right is ring spun. And so even though there really isn’t more ply twist in the one on the right, it’s a smoother, more uniform all the way up. You don’t see the individual plies with kind of that wholy bits in there, which means the one on the left is probably going to be more absorbent. There’s more room for air in that. But the one on the right is going to be softer and smoother, and the one on the right is going to be stronger.
[01:05:48.860] – Janet
So neither one is better than the other in general. But one might be better than the other for your particular purpose, which feeds back into what Tien was talking about with the design process. What is the function of the piece that you are making as well as what do you want it to look like?
[01:06:10.020] – Janet
I also have on my document camera, which does not seem to be very–not really showing very well. This is the old–
[01:06:19.450]
[crosstalk 01:06:20]
[01:06:22.900] – Janet
Yeah, but you can’t see the quality of the yarn very well. This is the old Brassard. So these are four strands of 16/2 all plied together. And if the camera were stronger, you could see that this part of the yarn is Z plied. And then this is the new Brassard, where these are all single bits, and this is S plied.
[01:06:54.400] – Janet
This is their mercerized. And my understanding from what they wrote back to me is that they are not planning at this point to change the production of their mercerized. So it’s still four strands of 16/2.
[01:07:08.500] – Janet
And then this is a carpet yarn, which you may be able to see the difference between these two. I don’t know how clearly you can tell the difference in quality. But it’s much coarser. It’s much stiffer. It’s rounder. And I don’t think I could break that one with my fingers, but I can easily break the 8/4 with my fingers. So just the difference in the manufacture has a difference in the quality of cloth that it produces and the function that it’s good for. So those are some of the topics that are covered in that Cotton class.
[01:07:48.580] – Tien
Quick question. Is my voice any better this time? People can just put that into the Chat.
[01:07:57.780] – Janet
You’re louder to me.
[01:07:59.530] – Dawn
Yep.
[01:08:01.060] – Tien
It helps if you actually use your microphone. If you’ve got a fancy microphone, it helps if you’ve actually got it turned on.
[01:08:09.560] – Janet
I’m just going to turn my volume down now because, wow.
[01:08:12.677]
[laughter]
[01:08:13.820] – Dawn
Yeah, there she is. So, Christine says, can you say more about plying bobbin ends? Okay.
[01:08:31.280] – Janet
Yes, yes, I can. Though not plying bobbin ends, joining bobbin ends, I assume that’s what you meant. So when you’re weaving along, let’s say that–wait now. It helps if you turn on the camera that you’re putting things under. Okay.
[01:08:49.700] – Tien
All these discoveries we’re making today.
[01:08:52.600] – Dawn
Gosh.
[01:08:53.880] – Janet
Let’s see. I’m going to pin–is there a way for me to pin me so that you see me even when–Spotlight. There we go. Now you’ll see me even if Tien talks.
[01:09:04.140] – Tien
Oh, there you are.
[01:09:05.600] – Janet
What I do when I’m weaving with 8/4 and I need to start a new bobbin is separate the plies into two. And I have one half come out at one point. Pretend this is–well, I guess if I [inaudible 01:09:23]. The orientation is very weird, but this is my weft going across. And then I have the other half come out at another point, like that. And we’ll do it with–actually, hang on. Scissors. I must have scissors somewhere handy. I don’t. One moment. See, I can break that with my fingers. Try that with carpet yarn.
[01:09:54.700] – Janet
Okay. So this is my old bobbin. And my new bobbin would do the same thing. Hang on. I have to put my glasses on.
[01:10:07.180] – Dawn
Oh, Janet.
[01:10:10.080] – Janet
My new bobbin would do the same thing. So half of its plies would come out over here, and half of its plies would come out over there. You see what I’m saying? So here I’ve got all four strands of the old stuff, and over here, I have all four strands of the new stuff.
[01:10:31.850] – Janet
But in between here, I have two strands of the old stuff and two strands of the new stuff. So it’s the same thickness as everywhere here. And these little ends just stick out of the surface of the cloth. And once the cloth is wet finished and pressed, I would trim them off flush with the surface so there wouldn’t be any more tails.
[01:10:51.980] – Janet
And this maneuver is easy to do in the 8/4, the old 8/4, because these individual strands are stable by themselves. But with the new 8/4, these little darlings just can–if they lose any twist, they can just come apart, which is why I never bother to separate 8/2, because 8/2 does this, too.
[01:11:24.040] – Janet
It’s not that there’s no hope. You can still separate them as long as you stay away from the ends. It’s just going to be more fiddly and somewhat more problematic and more difficult for a new beginning aspiring weaver to manage. And we used the 8/4 in our beginning classes a lot, so that’s just one more consideration for me.
[01:11:54.710] – Tien
So Dayamitra is–oh, sorry. Celia had a question.
[01:12:02.340] – Dawn
Yep. Do you only do that with a thicker yarn, I assume? So a thin yarn you just overlap?
[01:12:12.920] – Janet
Yeah. And a thicker yarn that is easier to separate the plies in. If it’s not easy to separate the plies, then I don’t bother with it there either.
[01:12:21.880] – Dawn
What do you do then?
[01:12:23.720] – Janet
I just overlap. And it tends to have a little bit of a bulky bit, but I try to keep that to a minimum.
[01:12:30.320] – Dawn
Cool.
[01:12:32.220] – Tien
Dayamitra is asking about our opinion of end-feed bobbins and if they’re worth buying.
[01:12:37.510] – Janet
How many end-feed shuttles do you have, Tien?
[01:12:40.960] – Tien
I lost track. I lost track somewhere around 15. That’s because they’re Bluster Bay shuttles, and Bluster Bay shuttles are gorgeous as well as functional.
[01:12:51.700] – Janet
Yes, they are worth buying. They are great. But they are also not essential. So if you have extremely limited weaving dollars, then there are other things I would consider more essential. But if you’ve got some dollars to spend, then an end-feed is a lovely addition to your stable of tools.
[01:13:15.190] – Janet
And one of the classes–it’s going to be a Toolbox. There was one that was scheduled that was going to be winding bobbins, but somehow that mushroomed into let me show you every kind of shuttle that I have and how you put weft on them all. And then these shuttles all use quills and bobbins and pirns, and how do you put yarn on those? And when would you use? So that is all basically ready to roll. It just needs to be uploaded in the toolboxes.
[01:13:43.130] – Tien
I should add that the question was about bobbins. So I don’t know if you were talking about shuttles or pirns. I do not buy pirns because you can roll a cylinder out of paper. If you’re doing a Schacht shuttle or a Bluster Bay shuttle, you can roll just a paper cylinder around a 5/16-inch dowel, and the result is a pirm that you can use. You have to wind it a little more carefully.
[01:14:12.460] – Janet
But end-feeds don’t usually want a cylinder. They want a slightly tapered–
[01:14:18.480] – Tien
Yeah, but all you do, you just do a little bump at one end, and then you have that taper to build the rest of it on. I have a YouTube video on that somewhere.
[01:14:32.180] – Janet
Hey, you should put that in the toolboxes, because that just made me go, huh?
[01:14:37.860] – Tien
It’s a really nice way of paying $0.03 as opposed to $3.25 for a pirn.
[01:14:42.580] – Janet
I use quills, like, just a cylinder in regular shuttles and make those out of paper. Or because I’m lazy and don’t want to have to find the scissors and the tape, I use a pad. It’s 4-by-6 PostIt notes. And I just roll them around a pencil, and they stick to themselves. And it’s done, easy.
[01:15:08.400] – Janet
Another thing you can use is a paper straw. Just cut it to the right length for your shuttle. It never occurred to me that I could put those in a pirn–or in an end-feed shuttle because everything I have to go into an end-feed shuttle is somewhat tapered.
[01:15:27.780] – Tien
Let me show you that YouTube video. It’s very short. [inaudible 01:15:32]. I’m going to share my screen and show it to you. So this one, full screen it. It’s like a minute long.
[01:15:42.510] – Tien
But basically I stick the end of the thing in, and then get it going. I tension it with a piece of leather. And then all you do is you start by building up a little bump at the beginning, and then you gradually make the bump bigger and bigger and bigger as you wind. So now it’s taking on that conical shape that you associate with a pirn. And from there on out, it’s all gravy.
[01:16:15.060] – Janet
The yarn is making that shape, but the thing that fits over the spindle inside of the shuttle is not that shape. So how does it fit?
[01:16:24.590] – Tien
Actually, if you’re using a Schacht shuttle, the way it–hold on a minute. Let me just stop this. If you’re using a Schacht shuttle, it actually expects the interior to be–it works just fine with a cylinder.
[01:16:41.980] – Janet
Okay.
[01:16:43.980] – Tien
The interior of the pirn is generally not tapered. At least, I don’t think it is.
[01:16:51.620] – Janet
All the pirns I have are. And the little cardboard pirns that you get from Bluster Bay to put in there, their little [inaudible 01:16:57] ones, they’re tapered, too.
[01:16:58.890] – Tien
Yeah, but they work fine.
[01:17:00.950] – Janet
Cool.
[01:17:03.700] – Tien
And they’re quick and easy to do. And they make great cat toys. Tigress used to play fetch with them all the time.
[01:17:11.100] – Janet
With your wound pirns?
[01:17:13.880] – Tien
No, not with the wound ones.
[01:17:15.720] – Tien
With the empty ones. Thank goodness.
[01:17:16.787] – Tien
The empty ones.
[01:17:16.940] – Janet
I was going to say that doesn’t sound ideal. I think I would want to stop that.
[01:17:23.820] – Tien
Celia, that with a double-ended AVL electric bobbin winder.
[01:17:29.500] – Janet
In the video, in the class bobbin-winding one, you’ll see a Schacht double ended. And I think I showed the Leclerc/ homemade single-ended electric and just a drill and manuals of different sizes.
[01:17:52.900] – Tien
Janet, who is known for doing things half way.
[01:17:55.480]
[laughter]
[01:17:59.700] – Janet
Why not show you two different sizes of manuals?
[01:18:03.230] – Dawn
I only wind on drills.
[01:18:05.860] – Janet
Yeah. That’s all I used for years and years and years. But then I got the Schacht double ended and got spoiled.
[01:18:13.640] – Dawn
Yeah. Well, when I have some spare funds.
[01:18:17.740] – Janet
But in our classes, we have two drills set up.
[01:18:23.330]
[crosstalk 01:18:24]
[01:18:25.100] – Dawn
Excellent. With a pencil.
[01:18:28.580] – Janet
But they [inaudible 01:18:29].
[01:18:29.780]
[laughter]
[01:18:32.000] – Dawn
I recognize that. Okay, folks, questions. Come on.
[01:18:39.450] – Tien
I think we’re all done.
[01:18:44.180] – Dawn
Shall we say done?
[01:18:45.860] – Tien
I think we should say done.
[01:18:48.420] – Dawn
Somebody say done? I won’t do it.
[01:18:50.870] – Tien
All right. Bye, everyone. So long. Farewell.
[01:18:54.920] – Dawn
And bless you.
[01:18:56.600] – Janet
Thank you. I think I got muted in time. Oh. Bye, Tien. Oh. I have no cats. There are no cats here.
[01:19:08.570] – Dawn
I don’t have any cats either.
[01:19:10.630] – Janet
We need, like, a little paper phrase we can hold up.