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Tying On: I Need to Tie One On
I saw a video of a guy in Scotland effortlessly tying a replacement warp on an older ancient Scottish pattern. Lickity split! “Well!” I thought. “Once I get a warp on that has all errors fixed due to my ADD which I call Attention Distraction Disorder, I will JUST DO THIS!”
I like to think that the reason I exist is my ancestors were distracted enough to see that very yellow tiger out of the corner of their eyes. And that penicillin was discovered because the scientist might have had ADD and left the bread out accidently, which got mouldy…that neurodivergence is a good thing.
But not for warping. So I started tying something I had previously cut off , back to the same warp from which it sprang. OMG. Had it morphed ? Why weren’t the colored threads lining up? This is NOT lickity split! And my distracted brain had to stop and look up tying and tieing in the dictionary to see which use was accurate. ( both)
So I have a new attitude. A warp might be, in and of itself, a thing of beauty. Splendidly draped on the back beam rod like a gorgeous movie star, beautifully lined up through heddles like a well trained marching band, and worthy of admiration. Not just a stop on the way towards the real project.
Yes it will involve corrections. For me, there may be no short cut to perfection. And I will still watch out for yellow tigers, actually little grand baby heading in dangerous directions. I will still get distracted but will count that as part of a worthy process. Next warp, here I come.
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10 Replies
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Pictures please. LOL you so much fun.
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I will do this. I had to cut off my first 2 placemats to rebeam the errant original warp. Now I want to tie on the second placemat to finish 2 inches plus the fringe. So for 4 days I am tying on to finish 2 inches. What love makes one do! I am giving a set of 12 to my daughter.
I allow myself spiked eggnog throughout December. I might have to amend that rule…
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Have you lost the cross on the old warp? I can see it is rep weave, I think, and it must be really difficult to tie on. I put my system below with a photo, but not sure it will help you much in this situation. Soldier on and good luck!
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I have never tried to tie a new warp onto an old one. I imagine if I did, I’d end up with a huge mess! Good luck and let us know when you are successful (as I know you will be).
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Remember that children’s song “Inch by inch, Row by row, Gonna let my garden grow…”. That is what it is like. But I refuse to lose a placemat.
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I tie a warp on now and then. I have timed myself, and with practice, it does get faster, but for me, it takes almost exactly the same time as threading and sleying. So there is no time saving there, for me.
The benefit for me is that I know (well, hope, really) that I have already corrected any errors in threading and sleying, so once I tie the warps together, beam, tie on to the front rod, and tension the warp, I SHOULD be able to start weaving right away, without worrying about errors in the warp.
I don’t do it often, but it is a technique that I enjoy having in my “toolbox”.
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I have tied on many warps and will post a photo to show how I do it. It works for me, especially when I have stripes and the next warp follows the same stripe order and width.
On the old warp, I weave 1-2 inches of tabby and insert a very narrow dowel, or a shish kabob skewer, to keep the warp stable when I tie on. Then I weave another 1-2 inches of tabby. This keeps the warps all in the right order. I cut off the warp leaving the weaving and dowel in front of the reed and plenty of warp in front of the reed to make knotting easy. Now I place my new warp with leash sticks (mine are grey PVC pipes) in front of the old warp. I place another dowel (wooden in the photo) to hold all the new warps up so they don’t fall down and disappear.
Now I unravel the first couple threads at the selvedge and tie them on in order to the new warp threads. I work my way across the warps and unravel a few threads at a time and tie the new threads on. When it is a new striped warp that coincides with the old striped warp, I know immediately if I have dropped a thread somewhere when I change stripe colors. I usually cut the woven tabby warp as I move along to loosen those threads before tying them onto the new warp. I move the skewer over as I progress across the warp to give space to tie. Push the tied on warps over to the side. Once all is tied on, I gently move the knots through the reed and heddles.
If a new warp has a different threading pattern, I may wind it on after tying on, move the cross to the back of the heddles and rethread the heddles and reed. This is not so efficient, obviously.
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Courtney! I loved your description and then remembered I had done this before myself! Tying a new warp to an old warp with everything stable. Just as you described. My problem was I ran out of usable warp due to a poorly beamed warp, cut off the placemat, rebeamed to solve the tension issues and then tried to put the placemat back on the warp. No go, of course. So I aborted the effort and just carried on weaving more placemats. But so glad you reminded me of the correct process . I may do that again.
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I think Courtney is tying on in front of the heddles and warping front to back, so I thought I’d show how I tie on warping back to front. I do that quite a bit since that’s how you typically put a warp onto a jacquard loom.
I generally leave my lease sticks in when weaving. If you don’t, you can start by treadling plain weave (or as close to it as you can get) and putting a pair of lease sticks in at the back of the loom.
I move my lease sticks to a spot where I can tie on comfortably. Then I cut off, leaving at least 6-8 inches behind the lease sticks to make tying easy. I hang the lease sticks at a height that makes tying on comfortable.
Beam the new warp and suspend the lease sticks a couple inches behind the old lease sticks. Then start tying on, using both crosses to keep track of what thread goes where.
Here’s a pic of my latest warp being tied on. Here I have three sets of lease sticks because I’m doing double weave and wound the two layers separately. I just picked orange and black threads alternately when tying onto the leftover warp, which is on the set of lease sticks furthest from the camera.
If you do not have color stripes in the warp, then if you occasionally miss a thread but find it within about an inch, you’re probably okay – you’ll just have one thread crossing the others when you start weaving, but for short deflections it generally isn’t a problem.
If you find that overhand knots hurt your thumbs, the weaver’s knot, while it takes quite a while to learn to tie quickly, is a lot easier on the thumbs. Most YouTube videos teach a very slow way to tie the knot. This YouTube video is made by a guy who actually works in a textile mill, and shows a very fast and easy way to tie the knot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySpWWUa7NLA
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Yes, my tying on was done at the front of the loom. I think I understand your method at the back.
The video of the weavers knot is brilliant!!! I will try it again next time with the video next to me. The one time I used it I found it very slow as I had to think through the technique each time for much of the width so it took me twice as long as the overhand knots. Thanks. I hope this goes into the tool box if it is not there already.
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