This time I watched a very instructive video from Craftsy - - Rigid Heddle Weaving with Angela Tong. The step by step instructions in this video helped me overcome my fear of using the warping board, and I have to say that running the yarn around the pegs was much faster than my first attempts at direct warping.
Even better, threading the yarn through the slots from my hand was amazingly quick and easy. I was frankly stunned with the difference in time - - I suspect that I will be using the warping board from now on.
I followed a pattern for a Log Cabin Weave posted on Craftsy in the video Rigid Heddle Weaving - Beyond the Basics with Deborah Jarchow. I found this video as clear and easy to understand as the Angela Tong video, and I learned a lot about working with colours from this video.
I warped up my loom with the same 3/2 mercerized cotton yarns in red hot and garnet, not necessarily because I thought these had the best contrast (they had virtually none), but because these were almost the only yarns I had that would work on my 10-dent heddle. As you can see when the loom was loaded up and ready to go, the difference in the two colours was very subtle indeed.
I was not thrilled with the way my yarn was crossing over itself on the back beam. The Craftsy pattern called for the following slot order, with L representing the lighter yarn, and D representing the darker yarn:
L D L D L D L D L D L D L D L D L D L D L D L D L D D D L D L D L D L D L D L D D D L D L D L D L D L D L D L D L D
This resulted in 116 ends, 31 pairs of D yarn and 27 pairs of L yarn. Once the slots were threaded, I then had to rethread the heddle in the following pattern, with the upper row representing the holes and the bottom row representing the slots:
Left side of heddle D D D D D D D D D D D D L L L L L L L D D D D D L L L
L L L L L L L L L L L L D D D D D D D D L L L L D D D D
D D D D L L L D D D D D L L L L L L L D D D D D D D D D D D D
L L L D D D D L L L L D D D D D D D D L L L L L L L L L L L right side of heddle
It was this rethreading that resulted in a lot of crossed warp threads. Deborah Jarchow's technique to deal with these is to push them to the back beam as the work is wound forward. It seems like there must be a better way to manage this.
I began following the pattern printed in the Craftsy class, and the first part of the pattern went well. Things started to spiral off the rails quite quickly however - - I broke a warp thread, which, although easy enough to fix, was a supreme pain in the butt initially when I kept getting caught on it. Second, it soon became clear that I could not really see the log cabin pattern at all:
There is just the merest hint of a pattern using these two yarns - - they are simply too close in shade to give the real pop of contrast demanded by this pattern.
I see just the barest, most subtle pattern there, but it certainly isn't doing Log Cabin any justice.
And because mistakes come in multiples (at least with me), I began to lose the pattern - - the change between the first couple of pattern blocks worked fine because the pattern called for two picks of the darker colour so that both of my shuttles ended up on the same side - - when I started the next change the pattern only called for 1 pick of dark colour so my shuttles were on either side of my loom - - I'm not sure that was intentional.
The pattern seemed straightforward enough, but I just didn't understand the colour changes and I couldn't see the colour changes, other than as the merest suggestion, so when I went off plan I had no real way of knowing.
As a test swatch, though (and only my third real project), this was still a useful exercise because I learned how to use my warping board, and I learned that contrast is everything with a Log Cabin weave. The good news is that I finished up the sample piece quickly enough, and I am going to try the Log Cabin pattern again, only with a much more contrasting yarn next time.
No comments:
Post a Comment