I have seen the enemy and it is Log Cabin weaving

I have to admit to my complete and utter failure to weave an adequate Log Cabin pattern on my rigid heddle loom.  Well perhaps I exaggerate for effect.  If it was not a complete and utter failure at the very least it did not go as planned. 

With the arrival of my new 12-dent heddle I could now warp my loom with a higher contrast 5/2 mercerized cotton yarn in Bermuda Blue and Purple.  The colours were lovely and rich looking in the light, and I had high hopes for sufficient contrast to permit the Log Cabin loveliness to shine through.

Things fell off the rails when it came time to begin weaving.  I didn't know if I should be running a pick of the light colour AND a pick of the dark colour with the heddle in each position, or if I should be simply alternating the colours.  A Craftsy instructional video by Deborah Jarchow seemed to suggest that one should run both colours through the shed when the heddle is in each position, but all the charts I found on the internet suggest that one simply alternates colours.  In the end, I tried both ways, and I think that the alternating picks of colour with the heddle moving up and down is the way to go.

I threaded by heddle using the skipping slot technique I saw on Bon Tricot's blog, and was really pleased with the result - - I had many fewer crossed warp threads than in my first attempt (in the usual style).  That part worked well.

Detail showing the skipped slots and holes

What didn't work?  I kept losing track of my counts and lost my pattern over and over again.  The same thing happens to me when I golf - - am I lying 3 or hitting 3 - - I can never remember.  Have I just raised the heddle so now it's time for a light pick, or should I be lowering my heddle and doing a dark pick?  I could usually muddle along and figure out the colour, but I can see from my result that I kept forgetting whether I should be working on an up shed or a down shed. 

I tried both methods of Log Cabin weaving, both the 2 colours through 1 shed technique and alternating colours and sheds, and the latter came closest to replicating the pattern for me.  If I hadn't kept losing count, it might have been the way to go.  You can see from the example below that my various sections looked more and less Log Cabin-y, depending on my technique and accuracy.

So much for consistency...

So this was largely a frustrating exercise.  Some positive strides in threading my heddle and setting up my warp, but many many small frustrations in trying to make the pattern. 

So many mistakes...!  Don't weave while distracted, kids!

I am sure I am just having a minor block, and that one day all will be clear to me with more practice.  For now I will go back to a nice houndstooth pattern in the same blue and purple yarn just so I have the positive reinforcement of completing a project.

New test - Log Cabin Weave and Using a Warping Board

Flush off the triumph of the hounds tooth table runner worked in 3/2 mercerized cotton yarn in red hot and garnet, I yearned to try a more complicated pattern - - Log Cabin.  I also wanted to try and use the Kromski Harp's built-in warping board rather than direct warping the loom as I had done with the hounds tooth, as direct warping takes forever (for me at least, because my warp threads keep getting tangled). 

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.