As promised, here’s the picture of the rillyrillyrilly short sample warp Janet mentioned at one point. (This was the end of a warp after the project was done, but there was *just* enough left to rethread and tie back on.)
[00:00:00.080] – Janet
Okay.
[00:00:00.380] – Tien
Great. I wanted to talk a little bit more about what is a sample, in my view. Obviously, my view may not be the orthodox view, but I think it’s a very valuable view.
[00:00:13.920] – Tien
When you start developing a design, you make a series of design choices. I want this. I don’t want this. I’m going to use this yarn. Wait, no, that’s not a good idea. Change yarns. So it’s actually a cyclical process, which I outlined in my book about the creative process in craft. But basically, you design a little bit, you create a little bit of the design, and then you look at it and say, do I like it? If there’s something that I think could be better, then I decide that I’m going to change my design. And then I’d go back to the beginning.
[00:00:52.550] – Tien
An example of this might be, I think I’m going to use 10/2 cotton for this. Then I do something to test whether 10/2 cotton is the right thing. I could weave a sample. I could look at some other things that people have done. I could read up on cotton. Then I evaluate whether the 10/2 cotton decision is actually the right one. Then I think, well, no, maybe I don’t want 10/2 mercerized cotton because 10/2 mercerized cotton is often perle cotton, and it is frequently over twisted, and that won’t work for my dish towels. Anyway, you evaluate whether or not it’s going to work based on what you learned from the create stage.
[00:01:36.370] – Tien
Then you decide whether you want to stick with that design decision or whether you want to change it to something else. In this case, I might say, well, I don’t want 10/2 cotton, but 8/2 cotton would be better. Now you go back to design. You say, okay, now I’m designing using 8/2 cotton, and we go around the cycle again.
[00:01:59.830] – Tien
So it’s really a series of design decisions followed by testing that design decision, followed by deciding whether you want to proceed further with the design.
[00:02:08.930] – Tien
So I’ve used sampling as basically mini experiments that help you decide during the create phase whether your design decision was right and whether you’re going in the right direction. In the example of the 10/2 cotton versus the 8/2 cotton mercerized, the process of weaving a small cloth sample to see if the 10/2 cotton behaves the way you want might be sufficient. Or you could also test the 10/2 cotton for absorbancy or any of a number of other things. I would consider all of those some form of sampling because you’re trying to get an answer to your design question.
[00:02:53.720] – Tien
Design choices come with risks, and they come with consequences. Both of those go into what I call an expected loss, or you could talk about expected gains, but in this case, we’re talking about hedging against risk. For the statisticians, this is actually the expected value of making a wrong decision. If you’re not a statistician, ignore what I just said.
[00:03:17.240] – Tien
The two questions that are relevant when you’re thinking about whether a choice is the right one is, how likely is it that it’s the wrong choice? Wrong in the sense that you’re not going to like the results. How bad will it be if you go down this path and it turns out that that wasn’t the right decision?
[00:03:39.770] – Tien
If you look at this table, this kind of explains what I’m talking about. If the risk is low and the consequences of doing it are low–so, for example, if you are doing dish towels and it will dry the dishes no matter what, so you don’t really care what it looks like, then a mistake in your color choices might be–especially if you’re familiar with the colors, then your color choices might have a low risk because you pretty much know what you’re doing. And the consequences of being wrong are also low because it’ll dry the dishes and you’ll be happy.
[00:04:23.670] – Tien
If, on the other hand, you’re doing a very complicated project that you’re going to put hundreds of hours into and you’re looking at a risk of ruining it at the end, if that’s the consequence, and if you’re also doing something that you’ve never done before, so you’re not sure where you’re going, then the risk and the consequences are both very high.
[00:04:47.050] – Tien
So in this particular case–now, if the consequences are big but the risk is low, then it depends. How concerned you should be depends both on how unlikely it is and how big an issue it is. So, for example, if you are buying a house, you might want to get fire insurance because while it’s unlikely your house will burn down, the consequences of it burning down are pretty severe. Similarly, if you are unlikely to make a mistake, but that mistake will be disastrous, then you might want to think about sampling to test whether or not it is going to be a problem.
[00:05:37.120] – Tien
In the same way, if the consequences are low, but you’re very likely to make an error–so, for example, if you’re making a series of mug rugs, as we did in the Discover Color class, the risk of making a mistake in any one section, in any one mat is not huge because a mug rug is about 4 inches by 6 inches and weaves up pretty fast. It doesn’t take a lot of materials. So the consequences of making, say, a color mistake are fairly low. But if you don’t understand anything about color, the risk of it happening is pretty high.
[00:06:13.220] – Tien
Whether you want to sample based on that really depends on how likely the mistake is to happen. Generally speaking, if the consequences aren’t big, then it’s probably not worth expending a lot of effort in the sample unless you’re convinced it’s going to turn out wrong if you don’t.
[00:06:39.080] – Tien
So some examples. So the mug rug I was talking about. These are quick and easy, and this particular one is made out of 10/2 cotton. Because it’s made out of 10/2 cotton, some relatively inexpensive materials, doesn’t take much in the way of materials, these are quick and easy to experiment. They could practically be samples in themselves. There’s not much point in weaving a woven sample before making this mug rug because the mug rug is pretty much the size that you would need to get a sample for. So this would be a low risk.
[00:07:17.580] – Tien
And depending on how familiar I was with using colors in this particular shade of olive, it might be high risk if I don’t know anything about color, or it might be low risk if I’m familiar with colors and how they interact. But the consequences are going to be low.
[00:07:35.310] – Tien
With this piece, the consequences of making a design mistake that ruins the piece are much higher because it’s a complicated weave and then you have all the fringe twisting to do at the end. But the odds of making an error, again, depend on how familiar you are with the techniques. Again, if you’re talking about color–and I keep talking about color because that’s what I do. But it might also be your yarn choice. It might also be your choice of structure or any of a number of other things.
[00:08:20.160] – Tien
And so in this particular case, the consequences might be higher, but the risk, again, could be low, medium, or high, depending on how familiar you are with working with colors in a 3/1 twill.
[00:08:34.230] – Tien
When you decide whether to sample or not, you want to think about the cost of the sample and then the risk reduction that you’re getting for the sample. The cost of the sample is the time, energy, and frustration that you experience making the sample. If you are talking about woven samples and you hate doing woven samples, then it is perfectly reasonable to increase the cost of the woven sample because you’re also paying for it in aggravation.
[00:09:03.460] – Tien
Now, the quicker and less expensive a sample is, generally speaking, the less accurate it is. It depends. Because we don’t bother making samples that are expensive and not very helpful. When you’re looking at whether something is worth it, you want to ask yourself, how much is it reducing the risk that I’m going to make a mistake?
[00:09:30.650] – Tien
So in this particular case, the draft is inexpensive to make. You just throw together some things in your weaving software or the Color Editor. And it’s quick, and it gives you a fairly good idea of what it’s going to look like.
[00:09:44.530] – Tien
Then the woven sample–sorry. Then the card wrap here is a little more expensive. It takes a little longer to make. But it’s still relatively cheap, and it lets you see what things will look like in the actual colors. You can see that the colors in this design are slightly off from the colors that are in this card wrap.
[00:10:06.680] – Tien
Then the last thing you could do is actually weave a sample of the cloth in the design that you’re thinking about. This is the most accurate, obviously, because it shows you exactly what it’s going to look like. However, it’s also much more expensive, both in terms of time and materials because now you have to warp up the loom.
[00:10:29.330] – Tien
When you’re deciding whether or not you want to do a particular sample, you want to look at the expected loss that I was talking about earlier, the risks and the consequences. If you take the expected loss–if you take risks and roughly consider consequences as well, if the expected loss is higher than the sample cost, then you want to sample.
[00:11:00.020] – Tien
This is basically like insurance. Again, if you’re buying fire insurance for your house, then you want to think about, how much does that insurance cost and how likely am I to lose the house and how bad will it be if I do lose the house? If you decide that the potential risk isn’t that high and the insurance is going to cost more than the potential loss on average, then you don’t buy the insurance.
[00:11:36.670] – Tien
An example of that would be earthquake insurance in California. In California, if an earthquake flattens your home, obviously that’s very expensive, but the odds of it flattening your home are fairly low. And earthquake insurance is not cheap. It costs about $1,000 to $2,000 a year, depending on your house. And as a result, it’s an actual decision about whether it’s worth it. And so you might opt for earthquake insurance because you decided that you can live with the cost, or you might opt not to do earthquake insurance because the cost is too high.
[00:12:20.640] – Tien
So basically, if your expected loss is low and the sample costs a lot, then you don’t want to sample because the cost of the sample is basically higher than what you will lose on average. If you have a high expected loss and the sample is cheap, then by all means sample because you’re buying that insurance at a very low rate. Then in between, if you have low expected loss but the sample is also really cheap, then it depends on what you want to do. It’s a judgment call. Again, if your expected loss is high and your sample cost is also high, then it falls in the it depends section. That’s kind of a judgment call on your part.
[00:13:08.740] – Tien
Back to here. It depends on what kind of sample you’re talking about. For the mug rug, sampling by doing a draft in your weaving software might be worthwhile because that is relatively quick and easy. Sampling by weaving a sample is expensive and probably more expensive than the cost of a problem with your mug rug. So unless you’re convinced that it’s going to go wrong if you don’t sample, then a woven sample might not be the best idea.
[00:13:44.730] – Tien
And then back to this one here. Consider if you weave a sample, this is largely non repeating. So if you weave a sample of this here in the center, then you’ve basically woven a good chunk of the cowl. This is a very expensive sample relative to the cost of the cowl. Then you could also consider, for example, doing a draft that will show you roughly what it’s going to look like. That’s a much cheaper sample than putting on the warp and weaving the sample.
[00:14:21.060] – Tien
Generally speaking, it’s cheaper and easier to do a draft simulation than it is to put something on the loom, which is why weaving software is so important. It’s one of the best ways of doing up a sample and examining your design without actually having to weave anything.
[00:14:40.800] – Tien
Now, as you get deeper and deeper into your project, the mistakes become more and more expensive because, basically, if you are putting 100 hours into something and you make a mistake at the very beginning when you’ve got five hours in on it, then it doesn’t really matter that much because you can catch it and correct it. And if it goes completely sideways, you’ve only lost about five hours.
[00:15:05.660] – Tien
If ,on the other hand, you’re 90 hours into the project and you make a mistake, you’ve just lost 90 hours of effort, plus all the materials. As you get further and further along, then a more expensive sample is justifiable.
[00:15:21.040] – Tien
So in this case, we have three different samples. One of them one of them is just a sketch, and I did this at the very beginning when I was just noodling on what I wanted to do. As I got closer and closer to the finished piece, at this point, in the center photo, I had a lot of hours into this project. This project total took me probably about 700 hours because there was a lot of sampling along the way because it was high risk. I didn’t know what I was going to be doing, and I didn’t know how to sew things and a whole bunch of other things.
[00:16:00.200] – Tien
So because the entire project was very high risk, especially as I got towards the end, I wanted to make absolutely sure it was going to work. So I went to all the trouble of dyeing all the panels to sew up a muslin in the exact colors because I had invested a lot of time already. This here in the center is a very expensive sample. It probably took me about, oh, I don’t know, a good 15 hours to do, plus all the material for the flannel. But at the same time, that was not a huge investment compared to the 300 or 400 hours I had already put in. So as you get further along in the process, you can justify having more and more expensive samples.
[00:16:46.420] – Tien
Now, this doesn’t have to be a giant, enormous project for that to be true, as well. As you get closer and closer to actually weaving something, something like a woven sample, which might otherwise be on the expensive side, is much more justifiable because you’re at the point of investing real time and materials into the piece.
[00:17:12.160] – Tien
You want to choose the least expensive sample that will meet your needs. If the woven sample takes the most time and materials to do–and sometimes it takes a long time to set up a woven sample, and sometimes it doesn’t. In this particular case, it happened to be pretty quick and easy.
[00:17:29.820] – Tien
But you want to think about, first, whether it will meet your needs. If I want to get a general idea of what my design is going to look like, then the draft, even though it’s not totally accurate about color and it won’t show me things like whether or not the structure will collapse into something different when it’s washed, this might be a good start. It’s not accurate about the wet finishing. It’s not totally accurate about color. But it’s pretty cheap and it will give you a good idea of what the design will look like.
[00:18:11.640] – Tien
The card wrap might take a little bit longer, and it actually takes up some materials, but it gives you a good idea of what the colors will look like in the warp. If you’re doing fancy stuff with the draft, then the card wrap is not nearly as effective because it doesn’t show you the effect of the interplay between warp and weft. But it also has its place if you wanted to check the colors, which is what I did.
[00:18:38.060] – Tien
Then the woven sample, like I said, is the most expensive sample in terms of materials and time. But there are times when only a woven sample will do. For example, if you are planning a collapse weave, something that is going to change when it hits the water, and you want to know what it’s going to look like, then the draft isn’t going to help you much because the draft shows you what it’s going to look like flat on the loom. But once you wash it, it will change. In that case, you would probably want to have a sample that might be more expensive, like a physical woven sample, but that will answer your question in the way that the draft will not.
[00:19:24.760] – Tien
Here’s one more example. These are a series of samples for Autumn Splendor that I did during the process. These happened to be showing the overall design of the fabric, but this same method also works in terms of figuring out what you’re going to be weaving. I started with a sketch, like you saw earlier, and then I started playing around with different ideas, and I took some pictures of the cloth that I’d woven and played around in Photoshop, basically doing more sketches of different design options.
[00:20:01.080] – Tien
Once I was happy with the sketch, I had to see–again, this is a fairly inexpensive sample because you’re just fiddling around on the computer, and it doesn’t take all that long. Once it got a little further along, then I wanted to start looking at it in physical cloth because this sketch gives overall lines, but it doesn’t tell you about things like drape. It doesn’t tell you about things like, will this actually work in a three-dimensional piece?
[00:20:35.150] – Tien
Then I moved over to the muslin stage, and I started sewing muslins. This is a more expensive but also more accurate test because now you see what it looks like in cloth.
[00:20:47.960] – Tien
Then at the very end, I decided that I wanted to test it in the colors, and so I dyed the fabric and did that muslin. Now, I wouldn’t want to do this final muslin at the very beginning because I was just playing around with different ideas, and it’s a very expensive sample. The sketches could tell me what I needed to know initially. So instead of picking the very expensive sample to get my answer, I would pick the much less expensive sample. You always want to pick the least expensive sample that answers your design question.
[00:21:25.880] – Tien
That is it for me. Any questions? Actually, no. Let’s leave the questions for later.
[00:21:38.440] – Dawn
Okay.
[00:21:39.100] – Tien
Unless you think we should address it now.
[00:21:43.650] – Janet
Well, what I’m going to talk about will address it.
[00:21:47.860] – Tien
Is what?
[00:21:50.450] – Janet
What I’m about to talk about, I think will cover Joan’s question.
[00:21:53.780] – Tien
Okay. Well, perfect.
[00:21:56.830] – Janet
So Joan’s question, she says her dilemma is that she likes to sample, but she hesitates to do it because she doesn’t want to put on a warp and then not like the samples, doesn’t like the yarn, doesn’t like the color choice, etc. Then what do you do with the rest of the warp that’s on the loom?
[00:22:11.190] – Janet
Well, the pat answer is you weave samples with it. I’m going to come back to that conversation in a bit, Joan, so just put a pin in that, and we’ll address it more fully. But I wanted to also say–hang on one second, I just dropped something.
[00:22:37.490] – Janet
Tien is talking about all the possible ways to sample or tools you can use for designing your project. Whereas I tend to think of samples as being a woven sample on the loom. Tien also is usually working on beautiful, big, fancy art pieces, whereas I tend to just weave the thing, just make the thing. I don’t often go through all those iterations, so I’m more looking at, is it good enough? Does it get the job done? Rather than the detailed process of, what about this do I love? What don’t I love? How can I make changes? And the iterative process to arrive at a beautiful art piece.
[00:23:25.880] – Janet
So neither one of those things is right or wrong. It’s just you use the process that is appropriate for the thing you’re trying to make and appropriate for your investment of time and energy. I mean, it’s exactly what she was just talking about. If you’re making a dish towel and all you really care about is being able to dry the dishes, then you don’t need to worry so much about colors or, I don’t know, the perfect location of whatever. So you can get away without a lot of sampling because the fabric will dry the dishes, and the dishes don’t care what size the cloth is, that thing.
[00:24:16.600] – Tien
Janet, what if you’re hurting the feelings of the dishes by saying that? Have you considered that?
[00:24:21.570] – Janet
I have not. No.
[00:24:26.750]
[laughter]
[00:24:28.000] – Janet
I do actually have a dish that has a cat on it that looks very much like an old cat of mine. I guess I should consider carefully whether the towel I am drying that cat with is one that he would feel comfortable and snuggly in. But for my other dishes, I don’t care what they think.
[00:24:50.705]
[laughter]
[00:24:50.840] – Janet
Because they’re dishes, and if they get mouthy, I’ll just drop them on the floor. Back to the woven samples. Yes, they can be expensive in terms of time and energy spent. And that’s true if you don’t enjoy that process. I really enjoy that process, so that cost does not feel high to me. But I know that I am in a minority of weavers who enjoy the process of weaving samples just for the sake of weaving samples.
[00:25:26.000] – Tien
I would never have put on an 11-yard warp just to weave samples, of course.
[00:25:38.240] – Janet
Okay. Yeah, I do that. What was I just going to say? Derailed.
[00:25:45.560] – Tien
Sorry about that.
[00:25:47.660] – Janet
Oh, woven samples that don’t have to be expensive. So here are some ways to do a woven sample that is less expensive in investment in time and materials and money. For one thing, clearly define what it is that you need to learn from your sample.
[00:26:04.610] – Janet
For example, I was going to weave some fabric that I knew needed to full well, and ideally I would have used a woolen wool, but the stuff that I wanted was not readily available in a woolen-spun wool, but I could get it in a worsted-spun wool. And all I needed to know was, will this wool full like I want it to? I didn’t care particularly how much it was going to full. I wasn’t trying to measure dimensional loss or any of that. I just wanted to establish, can I make it full? And how much effort is it to do that?
[00:26:40.810] – Janet
So I wove the sample for that on a Zoom loom. I don’t know if you’re familiar with those, but they’re, like, little 4-inch square pin looms made by Schacht. And it wasn’t the sett I would have used for the final project. It was a tiny little piece of fabric. But it gave me a 4×4 piece of woven fabric that I could wet finish in the sink in hot water with soap and lots of agitation and establish that, yes, it did full. So it was going to work for my project.
[00:27:10.800] – Janet
Later, when I needed to know exactly how much it was going to full or how much loss it was going to experience, I needed to be much more methodical and take more measurements and go through that process in more detail. But at the initial step, all I needed to know was a yes or no answer. Will it full? Won’t it full? If it hadn’t, I could have made another little 4×4 square and tried wet finishing it in a different way. And if I just couldn’t get it to full, I would say, okay, I’m not even going to buy that yarn. And so that was not a big investment in time or energy. It was an investment in that I had to use up some of the yarn, but I already had it on hand.
[00:27:56.270] – Janet
Another way that you can weave a sort of less expensive sample is getting back to what Joan was asking about. I always put extra warp on the loom when I’m weaving a project, whether it’s samples or it’s a project. And in Crunching the Numbers, I suggested that you always add a yard. My inclination is always to put a yard of loom waste into the warp at a minimum because then I don’t have to be very careful with tying knots. I don’t have to worry if I want to cut a piece off and wash it and then tie back on again. But in particular, because then I’m going to have stuff left over at the end.
[00:28:38.460] – Janet
If I am sampling for the project I am about to weave, obviously I do that at the beginning. Say I’ve decided to do a scarf. I’m pretty sure what colors and yarns I’m planning on using, but I just want to test and make sure that this sett is right or that the colors really look as good in the cloth as they did in the Color Editor or in my head. So I might weave 6 or 8 inches to establish whether the color works, or I might leave 2 inches and think, ugh, I didn’t like that color. Sorry, now I got to pick a different one.
[00:29:12.860] – Janet
If what I want to test is the sett, I might weave those 6 or 8 inches and then cut it off and wet finish it and see how it feels in the end. But assuming I’ve given myself 36 inches, say, for sampling, and I need 6 of them, and I establish, okay, this is all going well. Things are good. I’m going to weave my project now.
[00:29:34.900] – Janet
When I get to the end of it, I’ve still got 30 more inches, give or take, on my loom. Well, rather than just cut that off and make it into loom waste, I can weave other samples on it. I can test other colors. I can test other weights of yarn that are hanging around. If there’s a lot of the warp left on, I have been known to just put lease sticks through the cross, unthread it, and rethread it for some other structure entirely, or resley it, certainly. Then I could leave it threaded and resley it and try it at a different sett.
[00:30:14.040] – Janet
Sometimes I have another project in mind, and I want to answer specific questions about that project. And sometimes I’m just gathering information for future Janet to use should she ever decide she wants to do a project like that.
[00:30:30.760] – Janet
So especially if it’s a yarn that I use a lot, say I’ve got a project on with 8/2 mercerized cotton, that’s a yarn I use all the time. So I might as well, if I have an extra yard or two yards at the end of the loom, resley, rethread, try other stuff with it, experiment with it, try something completely different from what I was just weaving, and see what I get. I may get a mess, in which case I know I don’t want to do a project out of that in the future. Or I may get something really cool.
[00:31:04.750] – Janet
I try unexpected treadling combinations, unexpected treadling systems. What happens if I have this sett for twill, but I want to try weaving it as overshot, or as crackle, or as summer and winter? What happens if I use 8/2 cotton sett this way for deflected double weave, etc., etc.? So I don’t have to put on an extra warp to ask and answer those questions. I’ve already got a warp on the loom, and I’m just going to wind up checking that stuff anyway, so I might as well test it.
[00:31:40.780] – Janet
That’s a way also that you can test how much a yarn is likely to shrink. Or you can get an idea–say you’re planning on doing a project. Your next project is using three or four different yarns, and you’re wondering if they will behave sympathically enough in wet finishing that combining them will be okay.
[00:32:06.020] – Janet
Well, say my next project is a shawl, and it’s combining those four different yarns, and my current project is a set of tea towels, and I’ve just got cotton on the loom. And there’s nothing in this project that’s related to that project, but I have this extra yard or two of fabric on the loom. I can weave 6 inches or 4 inches or whatever, 4 inches say, with each of my 4 yarns on this cotton warp.
[00:32:35.870] – Janet
Then, first, I can say, hmm, is there anything about this that I like? Do I like any of these fabrics enough to think about using them in a future project that isn’t related to this one I’m currently testing for? But then I can also wet finish this thing. And if my 4-inch stripes shrink up significantly differently, I’ve learned something about the relationship between those four yarns. Yes, they’ve been woven onto a cotton warp that isn’t how I’ll use them in the final thing. But if one of them shrinks up and becomes much narrower than the other three, I know that one is likely to give me some issues in the next project, and I haven’t had to put on a sample warp for that project.
[00:33:20.520] – Janet
Another thing that you can do–I talked about resleying your current warp or even rethreading your current warp. You also don’t have to weave the entire width of it. In that example I was just talking about, saying I had tea towels on the loom, but say those four yarns I wanted to test, if they were precious or I had limited supply, I wouldn’t want to weave those stripes across a 25-inch width, probably. So I’d probably take out the outside bits of it and just use whatever was left in the center 8 inches or 10 inches or something of my tea towel and weave on that.
[00:34:02.020] – Janet
For example, here is a–I dropped it and then I picked it up again. Here’s a tea towel I was weaving not too terribly long ago in crackle. The warp is 8/2 cotton, but it’s sett as for twill, not as for crackle. I wanted to see what weft combinations would work to give me a crackle fabric that I was happy with.
[00:34:35.690] – Janet
So I tried a couple of different weft weights. This is not the project as planned, but why not try it? I tried different weft weights and tested to see how those yarns beat in. Decided that was too heavy, didn’t care for that, switched to a different weft weight. Quite liked that. Wove enough of it to make a square. Why not? I had the warp available, and I liked the way it looked, so I’ll go for it.
[00:35:05.300] – Janet
Then at the end, I started other treadling systems possible on crackle, just with the leftover bits of bobbins, and determined that in some treadling systems, one particular sort of value combination worked well, while other combinations didn’t, which means that if I later go ahead and plan a project in crackle–this is a sneak preview of coming attractions from Learning Path 3–we have some ideas for how to design with colors in those various treadling combinations.
[00:35:44.770] – Janet
This was a different treadling system using completely inappropriate weights of weft, and I decided that I really, really like it. I like the way it feels. I like the way it looks. It’s not at all what you would normally do with this structure, this sett, these fibers, but it’s cool, I think.
[00:36:06.860] – Janet
I did these tests, and I wanted to keep going and trying other stuff, but I didn’t want to use up all my weft. So I took out, I just completely unthreaded the two stripes on the outside, and then I resleyed the stripe in the center, and I wove a bunch more samples. Trying different things, just experimenting. And if I got bored, I’d be like, okay, now what am I going to try? Maybe I’ll just reach randomly into the bobbins and see what I haul out. Okay, now that’s what I have to deal with. What can I make out of that?
[00:36:46.050] – Janet
So my point is, if you don’t want to put on a warp just for sampling, you are not alone. Most people don’t like to do that. I love to do that, but I am weird. That’s fine. I will own that. But you can put on a yard or two yards extra. And if two yards makes you cringe, put on a yard or half a yard extra. And just weave off the extra bits left at the end with leftover bits on your bobbins. And try to think to yourself, well, how else could I have woven this? What other treadling could I have used? What other colors could I have used? What can I learn from what’s left on this warp that might be useful to me in the future?
[00:37:39.320] – Janet
This information will give me some of what I need for crunching the numbers later. But it doesn’t give me–because the warp width and the fiber and the yarn combinations are not necessarily what I’m actually going to use for a future project, it doesn’t maybe give me the very best information to calculate dimensional loss, but it certainly gives me better information than just guessing. So sampling like that can also lead into crunching the numbers later. Okay, there. That’s my spiel.
[00:38:19.610] – Tien
It’s funny how you and I have such different approaches.
[00:38:22.560] – Janet
So different, yeah, but I think that’s great. I think it’s great because there’s nothing wrong with either one. And most people, I’m sure, land somewhere in between us, right? Most people are not looking for the absolute minimum effort required ever to produce a tea towel–that would be me–or planning to take the next 13 months to weave a gorgeous wall installation. But there’s something valuable to learn from either one. And somewhere in the spectrum in between, they’ll find themselves and make use of it.
[00:39:09.340] – Janet
Okay, so Celia says, if I’m working with something expensive, like qiviut, but I need to sample, I put a less expensive, similar-sized dummy warp on, as short as possible, and tie on a small amount of the real warp to the dummy and weave a small sample. That’s an excellent idea.
[00:39:27.800] – Janet
Yes, I always put on a dummy warp for weaving qiviut to minimize the waste. Absolutely. I would be inclined, assuming it was going to be plain weave, I would probably weave any qiviut on a rigid heddle because then you could have next to no loom waste at all. But, yeah, that’s a very, very good idea. So a dummy warp is a way of minimizing loom waste, which is a thing that will come up in Crunching in a bit.
[00:40:02.080] – Janet
Just because it’s relevant to the conversation, but I don’t have it prepped because I didn’t know the conversation was going to go this direction, I want to try to find a picture of a warp I did where I did this thing I’m talking about. Warp was finished. I wanted to try something else, so I unthreaded it, rethreaded it, and tied it back on. I’ll see if I can find it later when Tien is talking, if there’s an opportunity, or I’ll post it to the recording page.
[00:40:33.130] – Janet
But you’ll be able to see in the picture that the back apron rod is maybe 10 inches behind the castle, and the front apron rod is maybe 6 inches in front of the beater. So the whole warp is only this long for this project, but it gave me enough to weave a little bit of a sample without having to put on another warp for the purpose.
[00:40:58.980] – Janet
Any further questions about sampling, woven or any of the many other kinds of sampling that we’ve talked about, that Tien had talked about or that’s covered in the course, before we move on to some comments about crunching? That sounds like a no.
[00:41:26.260] – Tien
Go ahead. No, go ahead.
[00:41:32.740] – Janet
Okay. All right. So the Crunching the Numbers course is all about working out the numbers for a project, figuring out how long your warp length needs to be, how wide your warp needs to be, how much yarn it’s going to take to make that warp, how much yarn it’s going to take to weave that cloth.
[00:42:03.080] – Janet
And there’s a little bit there on how to tell how much you can get out of the amount of yarn that you have and also a section on various ways of adjusting a pattern, project, recipe, whatever you want to call it. I try to stay away from the word pattern because it means so many different things depending on the context. So a project recipe, to change the width, to change the yarn, to change the length, to change the various things, and then what are the implications for the rest of the math when you make those changes.
[00:42:40.680] – Janet
And there are worksheets and tons of examples all through the course. So rather than go over step by step, here is the math and here is the worksheet, I want to talk about some things that are only sort of mentioned in passing in the course but are worth some additional attention for people who want to sort of see under the hood a little bit. I tried to not get too technical in the course because it was designed for people to be able to get the math done when the math is not their favorite thing.
[00:43:19.830] – Janet
So one thing that–the process that’s laid out in the course and in our project calculator, which is not linked to from the course because it does things in a different order and a somewhat different format, but it gets you to the same place, is to begin with the finished dimensions of your piece. So you say, I would like to have a scarf that’s 8 inches wide and 70 inches long, and you start from there to make plans.
[00:43:49.160] – Janet
And I mentioned in passing in the course that that’s not the only option. And in fact, I, personally, hardly ever do that. I am far more inclined to say this is how wide I’m going to put it in the reed, and then it’ll be however wide it turns out in the end. And this is how long I’m going to weave it on the loom, and then it will turn out to be however long that shrinks to in the end, and I don’t care that much.
[00:44:20.280] – Janet
Partly, that’s because I am very rarely weaving for a specific person or a specific item for a specific function. In my weaving life, I’ve either been weaving samples or I’ve been weaving stuff for sale. When you’re weaving scarfs for sale on spec, you don’t know how tall people are going to be. You don’t know how wide they’re going to like their scarves, so it doesn’t really matter. There’s no benefit in aiming for a specific target.
[00:44:49.460] – Janet
And if you sett all your warps 10 inches wide in the reed, it doesn’t matter if some of them come out 7 inches wide and some of them come out 8.5 inches wide and some of them come out 10 inches wide because somebody will come along eventually and want to buy that thing. Or they won’t and you donate it. But rarely does anybody go into a store and say, I need a scarf that is 7 and 3/4 inches wide, and I will not consider a scarf that is any narrower or any wider than that.
[00:45:18.280] – Janet
Same with lengths. Length often depends on the height of the person who’s going to wear it, but it depends on style and how they like to wear it. And it’s a fool’s game if you’re weaving for production to try to aim for a specific length.
[00:45:36.020] – Janet
If on the other hand, cousin Suzy writes to you and says, I want a shawl for my wedding, say, and cousin Suzy is 5’4″ and she wants the shawl to fit her just so, then it makes much more difference. Then you’re in the situation where, yes, you start from the finished size and do the expensive woven samples, expensive in terms of time and energy, to come up with the hard numbers for calculating dimensional loss.
[00:46:08.180] – Janet
But most of the time, at least in my experience and the experience of all the weavers I hang out with in my guild, people are way more likely to say, I’m going to make the thing 18 inches wide in the reed, and I’m going to put on a 3-yard warp, and I’ll weave until I run out.
[00:46:33.000] – Janet
You can certainly start from the set-up dimensions instead of the finished dimensions. And on the worksheets, you would just skip the finished dimensions part at the top and put in where it says width of warp in reed, you put the numbers in there, or overall woven length, you put the numbers in there.
[00:46:54.080] – Janet
For the project calculator, though, you need to trick it a little bit. The way to trick it–this is the project calculator on our website. And I will just mention parenthetically that because somebody sent us feedback and said, it would be really nice if we could print this out, you can now print this out. There’s a button at the bottom that will generate a page that will print.
[00:47:19.520] – Janet
At this point, our project calculator is only imperial. We will work on a metric version. But I want to–this is the calculator from my old site, and I want to refine this so that it works better. And I want to do that in the imperial before I duplicate it in the metric.
[00:47:44.280] – Janet
But anyhow, this calculator works just like all the books and the lessons say. Start with the finished length and then you add something for dimensional loss. Well, if you just want to start with your woven length, then the trick is to say your dimensional loss, both warp-wise and weft-wise later, is zero. I don’t have any dimensional loss.
[00:48:12.480] – Janet
So you put in the overall woven length in the finished length spot. I’m going to weave this thing 76 inches long. That’s the length that was chosen for us for the Weave-Along sample scarf. I am not going to worry about warp-wise dimensional loss take up at this point because I don’t want to add anything extra to this for woven length, for how long do I weave it to make it 76. I’m just going to weave it 76 and find out later what I get.
[00:48:46.690] – Janet
And then later there’s a spot to do here, weft-wise dimensional loss. Again, you put 0% in there, if you’re just going to say, I am making it this wide in the reed, and I don’t care how much narrower it’s going to get.
[00:49:01.200] – Janet
The other thing I wanted to point out here before I disappear again, or before I–sorry, stop sharing this–is that if you’re weaving a project that has hems, hems are part of the woven length. They get weft, so you need to account for how much weft is going into the hem. And they do have dimensional loss. They lose length in a way that fringes don’t. Fringes might shrink up a bit. Fringes get trimmed off a bit. But fringes don’t deflect over and under any weft threads, so they don’t have nearly the same amount of dimensional loss.
[00:49:42.710] – Janet
So hems get included before you add any percentage to adjust for the loss. But fringes come after. So that’s why fringe is later in the unwoven warp length. That unwoven warp length includes fringes and loom waste. The default down here is 24 inches of loom waste. But as talked about previously for sampling, I would increase that to 36.
[00:50:14.000] – Janet
The other thing I want to talk about–this is getting mathy now. So if you are not a fan of mathy bits, you could just consider this story time and let the words wash on past. And maybe later if you think, oh, wait, I really wish I’d known that thing and paid attention to that thing that Janet said back in April of 2023, you can come back and find the recording and listen to it then. You have my permission to turn your ears off right now if math does not make you a happy person.
[00:50:48.080] – Janet
But people who are mathy will probably have thought to themselves at some point–and this is the thing that drove me nuts for years and years and years–if I say I’m going to have 10% of dimensional loss, for example, do I apply that to the finished length, or do I apply it to the woven length? Because it’s not the same thing.
[00:51:11.800] – Janet
10% of a longer length is longer than 10% of a shorter length. And so you get different answers depending on whether you apply it to this one or to that one. And usually the language we use when we’re talking about things is, I’m going to weave it 80 inches, but I’ll probably lose about 10%, meaning 10% from that 80 inches.
[00:51:36.870] – Janet
But almost every project calculator out there in the world, including ours and including all of our worksheets, do it the other way. I have a finished length of 76 inches, and I’m going to add 10% to that in order to figure out how long I should weave it.
[00:51:59.850] – Janet
So when I was writing this class, I went through several iterations of explaining exactly how those two things are different, and why you should know, and how it will affect things, and da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. I was afraid it was going to be very confusing, except for the people who get all excited about math, like I do.
[00:52:22.380] – Janet
And I realized that the difference between option A and option B is really very small unless you’re talking a really long piece of fabric, yards and yards and yards. And all of these numbers are estimates anyway. They are designed to give you an approximate length to weave when you’re not sure what the dimensional loss is going to be.
[00:52:50.800] – Janet
If you need to know, if you need the actual numbers and you are aiming for a very specific length or width target for cousin Suzy’s wedding or whatever, then really you have to put in the time and the effort to buy the earthquake insurance and make a woven sample and calculate it. In which case, you’re no longer working with an estimate. You’re not adding an estimate of 10% to this one or to that one. In that case, you’re working with the ratios that come later in the Calculating Dimensional Loss section. And it takes into account–the way the ratios are set up, it automatically applies the loss in the right direction, depending on the question that you’re answering.
[00:53:45.760] – Janet
So I just went ahead with adding the dimensional loss figure, whatever that percentage is, to the finished length because it’s much more straightforward. But mathy people, be aware, or at least know in your mathy hinter brain that it’s different. You’ll get a different number if you apply it the other direction. Usually it doesn’t make that much of a difference, but that either one is the right answer some of the time. But the distinction between the two is not significant enough to make the folks who don’t go, math, goody, let’s do percentages, worry about it. Because I gather there aren’t that many of us.
[00:54:34.610] – Janet
Okay, that was the additional information I wanted to water hose at you about crunching the numbers. But there’s still more there in the course. So if you have questions about mathy parts, feel free to fire them at us now during the question period.
[00:54:54.720] – Dawn
Hey.
[00:54:56.220] – Janet
Go ahead.
[00:54:57.550] – Dawn
We have one question so far. Darlene says, Janet, you mentioned different scarf lengths for different height people. Do you have standards you can share?
[00:55:11.900] – Janet
Yes. Generally speaking, people’s wing span, their arm reach, is very close to their height, and either of those numbers is a good length for a scarf. But it entirely depends on how the person likes to wear their scarves.
[00:55:38.480] – Janet
If I am designing a scarf for–some people like just a scarf that comes around under their lapel and hangs down and doesn’t cross and doesn’t do anything and doesn’t have fringe to get in the way of stuff and only comes halfway down their torso. That is a much shorter scarf than somebody who likes to wrap their scarf around and around and around or to artfully fling one end over their shoulder and maybe pin it where you can’t tell, so it looks like they are just so artfully poised that everything stays put, even though it’s all held up with scaffolding.
[00:56:18.340] – Janet
It depends on whether you like to fold your scarf and tuck ends through the fold. That uses up more length than another option. It depends on how wide the scarf is. We’re saying scarves, I’m assuming things that are long and skinny rectangles, but some people hear scarves and think a 45-inch or whatever square.
[00:56:45.090] – Janet
Generally speaking, something about your height seems to be kind of a good–or at least I have read that as a recommendation. Personally, what I do is say–like, if I’ve got lots of scarves on a warp, I make a measuring string that is somewhere in the range of 72 to 74 inches, and then I wind my bobbins. When a bobbin runs out that’s fairly close to that 72 or 74 inches, or when my patience runs out somewhere fairly close to that 72 or 74 inches, or where my yarn runs out somewhere close to that 72 or 74 inches, I call it done.
[00:57:35.820] – Janet
If it’s 70 inches, fine. If it’s 65 inches, I think, oh, I hope a short person wants this scarf. If it’s 84 inches, I think, okay, well, I’ll just wrap that one around a whole bunch of times. Maybe I’m enjoying weaving so much that I didn’t notice I’d actually made it long enough for a giraffe. That has happened.
[00:57:56.570] – Tien
I am reminded of a conversation we had when we were trying to decide how to make the scarf for the Weave-Along. Janet said we should make it 72 to 84 inches long. And I said, why on earth would you want a scarf that’s 84 inches long? And she said, well, some of us like to keep our necks warm. I was, like, oh, I live in California.
[00:58:23.330] – Janet
Right. Right. Of course, it’s also going to depend on your materials. If you’re using–if you’re making one of these little, dinky, go-under-your-lapels, it’s just an accent on your business suit kind of scarf, then maybe you’re not going to do that in a big, heavy, squishy, squishy wool. But if you’re making a scarf and its purpose is to keep you warm when there are 20 inches of snow outside in April, then you’re going to use the squishy, squishy wool, and you want it to be a heck of a lot longer than 50 inches.
[00:59:03.140] – Janet
There really isn’t a standard. But like I said, I aim for somewhere in the 70s-ish, and I stop when something suggests that I should. I’ve run out of yarn. I’ve run out of time. I’ve run out of interest. I say, oops, I want to weave another scarf, so I’d better stop this one and start that one soon.
[00:59:28.970] – Janet
People used to ask me–the other question people would ask me, because when I was weaving for sale, a lot of what I did was placemats and runners, and they’d say, how long do you make your runners? I would say I make them two pirns long. If I fill that pirn really fat, that might be 36 inches. If I don’t fill it that fat, it might be 26 inches. Or maybe I’m going to go with three pirns long. But I did not stop when I had a little bit left on the pirn. Or if I was two inches short of my goal and my pirn was empty, I didn’t fill another one and use up more stuff. When the pirn ran out, I was done.
[01:00:09.020] – Janet
Because, again, you never know what size table the person coming in the door is going to be looking for. You never know whether they want the runner to hang off the ends or sit in the center. I am a very practical and expedient–I no longer, or at least I try not to, describe myself as basically a lazy weaver, but expedient and practical. [crosstalk 01:00:38] trying to make any money. Not that I ever did.
[01:00:42.020] – Tien
Whereas I, on the other hand, once wove 10 panels of fabric that had to match each other within about three-quarters of an inch.
[01:00:50.260] – Janet
Right.
[01:00:51.910] – Tien
We’re the odd couple.
[01:00:54.000] – Janet
We are, which is perfect because sometimes somebody’s going to need to know how to be that precise. And sometimes that same person is going to need to know they can just let it go and not agonize over an inch too long or too short. You get to make the choices. Only you can decide how much insurance you need from sampling. And only you can decide how precise your calculations have to be or whether you’re okay with something that’s close enough and how close enough really is.
[01:01:36.300] – Tien
So we’re a little bit over time. So do you want to answer that last question?
[01:01:41.200] – Janet
Okay. Sure. Eda Lee is asking, how do you have bobbins left to sample? Well, I don’t always measure it right. Well, for one thing, I don’t weave production runners anymore. So that ended two pirns thing. I didn’t have pirns left over then, or at least none of that material.
[01:02:04.940] – Janet
But now I just fill up a bobbin when I want to weave experimental samples, like the ones I showed earlier. I fill up a bobbin part way. And if I learn what I want to learn, or I decide that I don’t like weaving the thing, or I don’t like the color or whatever, then that bobbin goes into a hopper, just like it does for everybody else, I think.
[01:02:27.080] – Janet
Plus I inherited a bunch of bobbins that were full already from the woman from whom I bought a loom. I’ve gotten them from various places. Or I go to Mom’s place, and she’s got all these little bobbin end left over. Partially filled bobbins happen like wire coat hangers. You cannot avoid them. So I never have a lack of those.
[01:02:56.900] – Tien
It took a while, but I found him.
[01:03:00.410] – Dawn
Hello, bubby. Mr. Man.
[01:03:03.070] – Janet
I still haven’t hauled up my tiny, little, scary, shaved cat.
[01:03:10.400] – Tien
All right. Are we all set?
[01:03:13.460] – Janet
All right. [inaudible 01:03:14]. Let me just see if I can find her.
[01:03:21.980] – Dawn
Oh, yes.
[01:03:41.750] – Janet
My little skinny lady.
[01:03:44.220] – Dawn
Oh, there she is. Pretty girl. She’s done. No, thank you.
[01:03:55.100] – Janet
She’s awfully spry for 19. Going on.
[01:04:00.480] – Dawn
Eda Lee’s cat watched us for the whole hour in her lap. And Deb’s admiring your shaved kitty.
[01:04:09.040] – Janet
Sounds like a euphemism.
[01:04:10.860] – Dawn
You know, I just had to read it.
[01:04:13.090] – Janet
You can leave that out of the transcript.
[01:04:15.530]
[laughter]
[01:04:15.620] – Tien
All right. Shall we go?
[01:04:20.740] – Dawn
Yes.
[01:04:21.340] – Tien
Bye, everyone.
[01:04:22.600] – Janet
Bye.
[01:04:23.170] – Dawn
Bye-bye.