Friday, August 31, 2018

First of 12 Napkins

Since I last posted about the Napkin project, I have rethreaded the selvedges, because Marie brought to our attention on Tuesday, that one of our blog posts about selvedges had been sighted on Facebook.  Turns out it was one of my posts way back!  Well I followed my own instructions,  and I like it!  It is basically 12 ends in 3 dents, the outside dent gets 4 ends threaded singly in whatever pattern you are doing, say 1234.  the next dent in, if you are going from the right hand side, gets 4 threads threaded double in pattern, in this case, 3344, and the next dent in gets 4 threads again threaded double in pattern, in this case 1122. If you are coming from the left side you follow that threading pattern order. Clear as mud right!  I will link to the original post here when I can find it.

After I had corrected my selvedges I fixed a sleying error, and I began to tie onto the front bar.  For some reason the front apron only had one metal bar to tie onto, and it was in the apron.  Sometimes I can make that work, using the slits in the apron, but this time it was not going to work with the fine 16/2 that I am using and that for the first time.   I glanced over to the tall trash can in the corner, that holds all my sticks and tall straight things and my eyes fell upon a metal rod that was the perfect length for my loom. ( an old, old narrow Leclerc) YAY!  I spent a little time getting the two rods in place, and over the last day or two, I tied the warp onto the front apron bars.

Today was the day, after I ran the morning errands, and treated 3 goat for hoof rot. (I have never had to deal with this problem before, but it has been bad this year!) I finally got upstairs in the Studio, and finished tying on the napkins, and I went looking for a yarn that was enough finer than the 16/2 to use while weaving the hem, I wanted to make the hem section of these napkins a little narrower than the body of the napkin so that they won't have a bulky hem.  I found the perfect yarn, loaded the shuttles and began to weave.



I soon abandoned the hook style temple, because I saw that when I had to unweave to correct a treadling error, I found that the hooks were cutting the weft!  I had not had that happen before, and I will have to pay attention when I inspect this first napkin to make sure that there are no weak places  in the cloth.







This first time through the pattern I am taking many notes so that I can replicate it for each of the 12 napkins in this order.   I should have enough warp to do some extra ones, the best 12 will fulfill the order the ones that are left over I will set aside because I know they will come in handy.


I mentioned before that the dimensions of the breadcloth's were taken from a Handwoven collection booklet.  In this cut down Napkin version, the stripes are again my own design, but I did use the textured pattern found in the booklet for the center of the napkin.  I think it is delicate enough to do the job.

I stopped for lunch at 2pm when I paused to wonder why I was so hungry!  When I am working on a project, and I am able to really get into it, I often lose track of time.

Late lunch is over, my post is done, it is back to work on the napkins for me.

Until next time, keep on going, Tina

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