Warp One

It became apparent at the last show that we did not have enough placemats.  Of special note was the absence of neutral colors.  This week after my day at the center on Tuesday, I came home and wound a 17 yard placemat warp in white, and I had it wound on the back beam, threaded and 2 placemats woven by the following evening.  This warp is enough to do 24 placemats, and I hope to have them all done by the next show, just before Thanksgiving.

I was able to get the warp on rather painlessly because I used for the first time the trapeze system I had set in place last winter.  I had tried to use it in a warp weighted fashion, but that simply did not work for me.

The 17 yard warp, 12 bouts of 16 ends took 4 cones of 8/4 cotton almost entirely.  This is for future reference, in case I forget!

I am using 5 strands of natural to fill my ski shuttle, or at least I thought I was.  One of the "weft only" cones of natural I got from the center is a double strand, so I am really using 6 strands!  I only noticed it because that cone was emptying much faster than the other 5.  I can get 2 plus placemats worth of weft on one shuttle full.

I wove a little bit in stolen moments yesterday and got a total of 3 and 1/2 placemats done, but today I was able to finish the 6th placemat and cut that batch off of the loom.

With this particular pattern (Ellen's Pattern, or Tutti Frutti) we use a warp spacing in the reed that tends  distort the tension of the warp, in my opinion after 6 are woven.  So I decided to cut off once each set of 6 are done and tie back on.

I am not going to wait until I have all 24 done to start finishing them.  I try to vary my activity during my Studio time, so that I don't get too stiff and sore.  Using the Serger and then hemming this set will be a welcome break from weaving the next batch.

I will also take a few breaks to get this bread cloth warp back on the loom.  If I am lucky I may be able to get a couple of those done for the show as well.  I still have a lot of bobbins that are already wound to do the weaving.  (I had to take this warp off the loom when I needed to take the warp beam in for repairs.)

You can see here the trapeze in place.  I think I need to lighten the weight that I have on the warp.  I noticed that it didn't really need to be as heavy as I thought it had to be when I  worked on the white warp.

I have some plans for other things for the shows which will be using some handwoven remnants that I have laying around.  More on that maybe next week if I can get some of it done.

Until next time Happy Crafting, Tina