Nearly there...

This weekend was a praxis one, putting theory into practice. As part of 'investing' in weaving as a hobby, I have read and re-read different weaving books and blogs on methods of warping but so far I have only warped one way. It was time to try another method - to make sure I was choosing rather than doing the only method I knew. This is probably my 6th or 7th piece of weaving, and all the others have been warped back to front. There seems to be two main schools of warping, Back to Front, one where the warp is distributed using a raddle and wound onto the back beam before being threaded through the heddles, then thru the reed, then tied on to the front beam. Essentially the warp is wound on the back beam and then threaded from back to front of the loom.  The other method is Front to Back, the warp  is installed working from the front to the back of hte loom first it is sleyed through the reed, next threaded through the heddles then tied onto the back and wound onto the back beam.

This is the beginning of my first foray into Front to Back warping. Well actually there was a stage before this where I removed the reed, laid it flat on two supports and threaded the warp evenly across it. I had to find a way of supporting the weight of the warp while I worked - as it was likely to drag itself out of the loom and collapse on the floor. Looping it around my spinning chair worked well. There was a bit of loom ajdustment as removing the reed invovled a bit of a tugg of war - so I sanded and shaved the recess so the reed is a better fit into the beater. This should make it easier and quicker to remove the reed in future.


It seems easiest to work from the centre out so the next stage was to find the centre of the warp, easy in this case - as I have four equal sections of colour, and the middle point is between the second and third colour sections.  Each thread was threaded through the heddles, in  pattern - just a very simple and probably very  old [1-2-3-4-3-2] point twill.

Saturday I   threaded the reed, and manged to get one of the colour sections into the heddles. Sunday I worked a little more on this, and completed out to the edge of the right side. For me the right is always the more awkward side to thread through the heddles - as it means using the threading hook in the left hand ( I am right handed).  It is possible to work from the right side intoward the left - but that involves counting out threads and heddles and being very accurate, for this impatient beginner I find it easier to thread in pattern until I run out of warp.
I discovered that threading the heddles Front to Back is very much more comfortable than sitting at the front. The spacing is just nicer, a more comfortabel reach and height (the back beam is higher than the front on this loom)- that alone is likely to make this my warping method of choice. 

Sunday afternoon Bear helped me wind the warp onto the back beam. My other addition to my weaving kit is 5 meters of screen door mesh. This is my new layer between the warp threads. I love this!  The warp is smooth and it seems so much neater and flater than using warp sticks or wall paper or corrugated card. Corrugated card - oddlly enough would have been more expensive to buy than the door screen mesh. It was a bit tricky to wind on - definalty a two person activity to keep it rolled tight with two hands and to wind the back beam with a third hand. I love how flat and smooth and evenly spread out the warp yarns are.

The next stage was to sort the treadling tie up - to adjust all the cords between the shafts and the upper and lower lamms so that the pattern is correct. This is my first real working play with the texsolv as a tie up system.  It was much faster to shift pegs than it was to adjust the larks head knots on the nylon cord I was using previously. I now have working sheds - that is the warp opens enough to pass a shuttle through - but they could be neater - so over the next few days I will tweak the peg placements until I have it as neat as it can be.   Using two treadles for plain weave, and four for the pattern ... but I will play in iWeave it to see if there are variations to the tie up that I can add in with the last two treadles.

So - end of the weekend and all ready to 'throw' the first weft!
Exciting!
I would have continued but we had a family birthday dinner (Bear's) and it was 5:50pm... we were due at the resturant at 6:30, so I had to push this back to the wall and step away from the loom.

There has been knitting, and there is gardening - but more on those next post.
na Stella