Category Archives: Tartan

Wedding Throw Gift completed

Project, Tartan, Weaving

With the wedding coming up in mid-April it was a case of rush rush rush to finish the previous tartan so that this one could be put on the loom and woven with time to spare. As it turned out we were well ahead of the game as it was slightly smaller than the last one and that made it far easier and faster to weave.

The colors were chosen and the warp wound.

The warp was tied on to the previous warp and pulled through the reed then heddles. Not the fastest process, but it went smoothly. After tying on to the front apron weaving was underway in just a little over two days (of part time work).

Weaving the Weddint Throw on ‘Big Mac’

It took three days (once again part time) to finish the weaving – it would have been quicker but an unexpected snag turned up. The knots, from tying on to previous warp, had little ‘tails’ and when a group of them came forward in the last pattern run of the throw they would tangle (behind the reed) and stop a clean shed opening! The solution was to spend half a day snipping the ends off. All that to finish the last 5 inches! Lesson learned. I cut the throw off, tied up the end edge fringes, trimmed them then gave it a delicate wash and tumble dry. Finally I combed out the fringes with a hair brush and it is now all ready to wrap up and post off to New York.

Finished Custom Tartan Wedding Throw

The next project is a run of 20+ cotton towels ready for the May Birchwood Fiber Festival. Always good to have a deadline!

Tartans and more tartans

Looms, Project, Tartan, Weaving, , , , ,

The weaving of the Brown tartan finished a little while back, but I kept the finished throw on the loom as we were visited by my sister-in-law and her husband (the new owners of the throw) and I thought it might be nice for them to actually see it on the loom. They were very pleased with how it came out. We’ll now take it off the loom and finish tying up the fringes on either end then wet finish it. Delivery will be next time we visit their Lookout Mountain home some time soon.

Brown tartan on the loom with yarn for the next tartan.

To save just a little time I will cut of the current tartan and leave the remaining warp threaded through the heddles and reed. I am currently winding the warp for the next tartan – a custom design for Anne’s niece and her fiance as a wedding present in April. By tying on to the threaded warp I can slight speed up the process of threading through both the heddles and reed. I have done this before and while it seems like it would be a real time saver – by the time you tie on every warp thread (or almost all – this throw is slightly smaller) it is quicker but not hugely. I think it might be one or two less steps that could introduce threading errors, which is a good thing.

A fairly simple tartan design but it does look good (on the software)

In between tartans I was working on the 2023 Scenic Valley Handweavers guild challenge which is to take analogous colors from a color wheel and also using black; highlight those colors. I was able to find three colors amongst my stash and decided not only to weave them somehow but also to, on the same warp, repeat the pattern three times using three different weaving techniques. A challenge on top of a challenge as it were!

The colors are from a very simple primary and secondary color wheel and are red, orange and yellow. The first technique was completely new to me and is called ‘skip plain weave’. Often seen in rugs (Central Asian), but also European and Southern American woven pieces. It is one sided as the ‘alternate’ colors float across the back behind the weft faced ‘front’. I have begun the second technique which is Turkish knot pile weaving. When I finish, the blocks will have the pile trimmed quite short. The final technique will be tapestry weaving. The warp is 8/2 cotton, the skip plain weave is 3/2 pearl cotton (left over from tartans) and the pile and tapestry are an acrylic knitting yarn left over from the ‘Four Horsemen’ blanket project. I will then mount and frame the whole thing, tentatively called ‘Blocks of Sunrise & Sunset’, before the deadline in June.

Dressing ‘Gypsey’
Skip plain weave
Starting the pile weaving

This project will take a pause while I push through the ‘Wedding Tartan’, but should be ready by the reveal date.

Two highlights

Studio, Tartan, Weaving,

After a week of winding warp (an hour or so a day – then on to studio build work) I had all the warp wound and all ready to go on the loom and there it sat, draped over the breast beam of ‘Big Mac’ waiting for action but I became fairly focused on getting the wiring in the studio ready for final inspection.

Nearly a month later I had everything done and arranged for the inspection which went perfectly smoothly, despite all my worries of tiny things that I thought might derail it! So now we have a fresh blue sticker on our meter box signing off the final inspection. Needless to say it has been a frustrating (at times) process and incurred some more expense (not on the wiring side) than planned, but regardless it is nice to see all the light fittings (bought at bargain prices from Lowes where Anne works) in place and working and being able to plug ‘things’ in wherever I like! We raised a glass of bubbly in celebration then I did an immediate pivot to get back to the tartan.

The dressing has been relatively quick and was threaded front to back. I now just have to tie on to the warp beam, wind it through and tie to the cloth beam – I hope to be weaving over the weekend.

December Progress

Project, Rug, Studio, Tartan, Weaving

After setting up for the Guild Christmas party and having projects on 5 of my looms I had no choice but to get stuck in and get some results. Two projects could definitely be classed as ‘faster’. The cotton towels and the Abalone colored scarf were both straight weaving with easy treadling and minimum weft color changes.

So while I concentrated on finishing them, Anne took up the weaving on ‘Bernie’ – the tufted rug and I took occasional breaks to make progress on the Tartan throw. First finished were the cotton towels on ‘Big Mac’. I had allowed for 6 towels as a test run for a larger run this year. Unfortunately and despite my careful counting I had wound on the warp in sections and miscounted one section by one turn so it being short limited me to just 5 towels. I thought of trying to tie on enough for one more towel with the knots at the join between two towels, but the amount of work for one more towel changed my mind quickly.

Cotton Towels

The idea behind these towels was to use the same design as the 2021 Christmas Towels but re-sleyed to open up the weave a little and using just one weft color per towel. They worked out well with some of the bold colors I had sitting around in the stash. The huck lace gives them a nice texture overall.

Abalone Scarf

The second project finished was the Scarf in Abalone colors. The warp was variegated black, grey, white and the weft variegated blues and greens. Both in 8/2 tencel. With long twisted fringes and a long scarf it looked great and after wet finishing it softened up even more. Anne claimed this one! I’ll now go ahead with a run of 3 or 4 in a slightly modified design.

Work has continued on the tufted rug with both of us working on it when we have time and we are now at just over 13 inches (of 50 inches total. Once the fingers develop some muscle memory you can speed up to a reasonable 11 knots per minute, with up to 2 inches a day achieved (weaving about 4-5 hours on this project). As this speed falls within Peter Collingwood’s ‘reasonable’ rate I’m happy enough. I shan’t be going into intricate designs a la Middle Eastern hand knotted silk rugs, I think some geometric shapes and colors should be achievable and a complete 4 x 8 foot rug in 2-3 months a reasonable goal. The tartan throw is now half complete and now that I’ve worked out the ‘throw’ to take the shuttle across the full width of the loom, it’s going easier.

We also acquired a commercial rug for the floor of the studio. It was straight concrete and needless to say rather cold if you are working in socks (necessary when treadles are close together (Big Mac mostly). Anne found a large rug down from $350 to $70 plus her work discount on top of that!

Left to right: the new rug and weaving progress in December. Tufted rug, and Tartan throw as of today. I put the heater on when I went to take the photo’s above so it should be warming up enough to head out and get some more weaving done.

Tartan Throw Finished

Project, Tartan, Weaving

We were away this weekend visiting long time friends of my wife Anne, in North Carolina. Along with a good amount of catching up, food, wine, etc we did get out to the Concord Alpaca Celebration (http://carolinaalpacacelebration.com/) and have a look around the various animal and vendor displays. The vendors had a fairly large amount of commercially produced product (largely from Peru), but there were some US home produced products to see/buy. I ended up spending quite a bit of time talking to the local guild who were there demonstrating spinning and weaving – a most interesting 30 minutes or so comparing our various guild, weaving, spinning backgrounds.

I had finished weaving the throw and we were in the process of untangling the fringe after the throw was wet finished, before our NC trip. As it turns out the light blue color perle cotton tended to ‘let go’ a whole lot more than the other colors and where that happened the ‘fuzz’ tied up other fringe yarn. It’s pretty straight forward to comb that out. The yarn drew in nicely and is now wonderfully soft. The last step is to wrap and post then time to move on to the next project

Finished tartan throw
The finished throw

Placemat Finishing

Project, Tartan, Weaving

Our custom tartan placemat and runner set is now finally nearing finished. It hasn’t been on the top of the priority list as the recipient of this housewarming gift has not been in great health so we have been delaying a trip down there. Not a great excuse really so now suitably guilty I’ve sewn, cut up, and added bias binding edges to two placemats and have the other two plus the runner to go.

The reason for the bias binding is to do with selvedges on this tartan. As noted previously the number of warp ends or weft picks of each color in the pattern is always even – which means the overall tartan pattern is ‘square’. This also means that the weft yarn changes are always on one side. This is typically taken care of by running the non-woven colors up the selvedge, collecting them when wrapping around the floating selvedge.

  • Left hand selvedge
  • Right hand selvedge

Needless to say the left hand selvedge would be fine to leave as is, the right hand less so. If this were weaving yardage for a kilt the left hand selvedge would go to the bottom where there is generally no seam. The right hand selvedge would be covered with the top band.

The solution this time is to add bias binding around all edges.

Finished placemat

Selvedge Fringe

Tartan, Weaving

The tartan throw is now half finished – this wet weather is certainly helping! Yesterday I had a trip up to Townsend to do some final measuring of spaces for the Fiber Arts Festival. All went well and we managed to squeeze in one more vendor making us full+. On return I checked the studio build for drips/leaks and as there was nothing significant, started on the weaving.

I decided to have a fringe on all 4 sides on this throw. Normal end fringes are taken care of with the loom waste and simple knotting will look fine on this project. To add the side fringes meant adding a floating selvedge beyond the last warp end at the distance to make an approximately 6″ fringe (a little less after knotting). The yarn for this needs to be reasonably slippery to allow the weft yarn to loop around and then slide towards the weaver as progressive picks are added. I used some very slippery nylon cord I had in the workshop, looped it onto the breast beam then through the reed, no heddles and weighted over the back beam. When ready to wind on I take some scissors, stretch the weft loops away from the floating selvedge and cut it in a group. Then working from the previously knotted edge take the appropriate number of weft picks and tie a simple overhead knot (I do groups of 4).

Depending where in the pattern I stop to wind on, this may leave either two or no ‘left over picks’. If two then they get knotted into the next batch by adding the first two of the new block to make up the 4. Overall this is a fairly tidy finish. There is no problem of the edge of the weaving drawing in unevenly as the edge is controlled by the knots.

  • Looped weft picks
  • Knotted fringe
  • Slippery floating selvedge

When winding on, once the cloth has wrapped around the cloth beam care should be taken so that the knots are flipped up before they go around the beam to ensure they don’t get under the cloth and start impacting the evenness of the tension. As they move around the beam they’ll drop down and eventually wrap (outside the edge of the cloth – so no impact on tension).

More rain today, but I do have to finish fitting the garage door so weaving will wait until tonight.

Card Weaving

Equipment, Project, Tartan, Weaving

At the last Scenic Valley Handweavers Guild meeting one of the members returned my card weaving book which somehow ended up with me volunteering to lead an ‘introduction’ to card-weaving at the August meeting.  Given that my experience to date was to read said book and produce a band which was turned into a strap for my mandolin with the addition of some leather ends.  Hardly an expert!!

Nevertheless I do have plenty of time (I know, famous last words) to prepare, so to that end I have begun some background research into resources (lots and lots available via the Internet) and to start weaving some test bands which I will take along to meetings from now until then to drum up interest.

The first challenge was to find my set of cards in the weaving room – first fail.  They’re there somewhere, but under something and certainly not on the shelf where other related items are.  Plan ‘b’: produce my own…

I made a small set out of 100lb card stock – similar to playing card thickness – by drawing them on the computer 4 to a page then printing them out and punching holes and finally cutting out the individual cards.  This seems to work until a bit more tension appears when the twist builds up (more on that below).  I used a wooden ruler as a beater last time I wove this way which works but is not quite as ‘classy’ as a combo beater/stick-shuttle.  I had some seasoned white oak that I’d stored in the shed for a couple of years so quickly cut out, shaped, and sanded a test model.  Works fine!

Custom cards
Custom beater
Trial band

The warp yarn was the 8/2 tencel I used in the recent scarves.  I was curious to see if the solid and variegated contrast would show up. It did.  I’ve initially used a thicker weft yard but will also weave some with the same yarn as the warp to shorten the pattern and tidy up the selvedges a little.  This pattern calls for just backward turning of the cards which leads to twist building up behind the cards and would normally shorten the amount of warp yarn available for weaving and as mentioned adds tension which my thin cards don’t handle well.  The solution was to attach the warp at the back to fishing spinners so that each 4 warp yarn ends that pass through a card, can be ‘unwound’ simply by letting the spinner spin.

warp spinnersIn this case I just attached the spinners to a rod held onto the table by small clamps.  When the tension builds (excess twist) it is simple to slide something from each card towards the spinner and at some stage it slips and releases all the spin.  This test band only has 10 cards;  with larger amounts of cards more spinners would obviously be needed and a more advanced approach to space them out in rows would be required.

I still have to add a coat of varnish to the beater so that color from the yarn doesn’t stain it and find a better front attachment – I’m currently using a mid-sized clamp that works fine but gets in the way when sitting at the table.

Other work for the day was some more threading heddles and sleying the reed for the tartan throw – slow but steady progress there.  I also sewed the bias binding edging onto the Florida tartan place-mat/table runner set.  It worked out well so now I’ll finish the rest so that this house-warming gift can be delivered.

Dressing the loom
Florida tartan place-mat

 

 

Weekend off

Project, Tartan, Weaving

We decided to head to Nashville for our anniversary break and are now back in the valley.  It was our first visit there and we certainly overdosed on the huge variety of music and entertainment.  Our downtown hotel allowed us to walk everywhere to sample food, entertainment, play pool, darts and try a few different drinks.  Sunday morning it was nice to go for a walk in the much quieter parts of the city, before heading home after lunch.

Clean loom
Warp on the angel wings
Warp spread through the raddle

Leading up to and on return from the trip I have been working on the tartan throw.  First job was to clean up after the Christmas towels and scarves.  30 cotton towels tends to shed a lot of dust and very fine cotton fluff.  I managed to burn out the vacuum cleaner rubber drive band as I didn’t notice that the upright vacuum was sitting on a rya rug while I was using the hose to get under the loom – until I smelt some very hot rubber/smoke!  I should have bought a model that automatically disables the spinning brushes when the vacuum tube is disconnected.  Anyway – the cleaning finished I was able to then start dressing the loom by putting the individual sections of warp (9) onto the angle wings and then spread them across the back beam via the raddle.  I couldn’t find my home made raddle for this loom so had to use the one that fits my upright loom.  It has 1/2″ spacing so I used 8 then 7 ends in each space across the width.  I still have to lash the rod onto the back apron and then with help, wind it on to the warp beam.

Custom Tartans

Project, Studio, Tartan, Weaving

An idea that is slowly coming together from the initial seed (from Anne) is that I create a business line that deals with tartans and specifically custom designed tartans.  Largely inspired by some previous and current efforts this would entail working with a customer who supplies color palette thoughts.  I would use weaving design software to work those colors into some tartan examples then work through the process of selecting appropriate yarn, adjusting colors appropriately, then finally weaving the selected cloth – for any purpose.

My first custom tartan was a ‘family tartan’ for Anne and I, combining colors from both of our family ancestral histories.

Tennessee Prentice Family Tartan
Handwoven Tartan

For this tartan I spun the wool and made a 3 ply yarn.  It was then dyed, with commercial dyes to get the bright colors, and finally woven in a traditional twill.  Given the time taken to spin and ply the wool this only made enough cloth for a small cushion! Definitely not the way to make material for a kilt!

The second custom design was for a housewarming gift for friends in Florida.  The red and white was from room colors in the house, while the blue, green and black were for the waters where Chris enjoys his hobby of diving.

Bond Florida tartan
Bond Tartan

This tartan was woven with 8/2 cotton in the chosen colors.  I began weaving this at the 2019 Smoky Mountain Fiber Arts Festival and even wore a kilt on the Saturday whilst doing so.

The current project is a tartan throw for another housewarming gift for a friend in Southern Virginia.  She gave us colors of the pokeweed bush and a belted kingfisher.  That gave me some fairly good contrasting colors to work with.

First design
Winding the warp

The computer design looks way better than the screen shot, but got the go-ahead from Terri.  Then finding yarns that would come close to those colors took a little while, but eventually everything needed was available in 3/2 mercerized cotton from the Yarn Barn.  I’m winding the warp in smaller groups (9 required) before dressing the loom).  I’ll update with a separate post on the progress.

The final tartan will be a baby blanket for a nephew. He and his wife are having their first child in a few months.  We have the colors but as yet I haven’t even started on the design.

Custom design and products is one part of the original idea.  There are also ideas for classes in designing, color choices, weaving, etc that might someday be taught in the Kiwiweave studio.