Paloma Textiles

Weaving Notes

Please join me in experimenting!

This page is for sharing with you what I come up with as I experiment with the yarns on this site.  It's not a page of recipes for fully fleshed-out projects, although if you want to email me with questions about anything you see here please do so (palomatextiles@gmail.com).  Rather, it's a log of what I'm coming up with as I conduct my "trials."   A research notebook, if you will.

Please add to this; I'd love to post other peoples' work here.  Just email me a picture and anything you'd like to tell about it.  You don't have to have bought your project's yarns from this site to post here, but the yarns should be similar to what we sell.  For instance, in my experience, linen and hemp are similar.  Also, the handspun soy yarn I've made has similarities to bamboo.  A project you've made with either of those fibers would be pertinent here, even though I don't sell them (yet).   

Hemp Scarf

For this project I used the 10/1 unbleached hemp.  I wound 299 doubled ends--thus making what in effect became an unplied 10/2 yarn.  10/2 cotton has a recommended sett of 24 - 36 ends per inch.  I picked the high end of the range, 36 epi, because I wanted a heavy material with some warmth.  Also, I love heavy, drapey twills.

Thus I sleyed 36 doubled ends, 3 ends per dent, in a 12-dent reed (adds up to 72 singles per inch).  My width in the reed was 8.3 inches.  I sleyed a bird's point twill in the middle for a diamond effect, and a straight twill margin on the sides. 

The weaving progressed quickly enough, although I will admit frankly that I had a few broken ends with this fine of a hemp yarn.  That was not a problem as the replacement yarns I added in seemed to "mend" into the fabric and I now cannot even tell where the breaks were.  However, this might be an issue with a less closely-sett cloth.

After taking the cloth from the loom I twisted the ends in groups, because I knew from prior experience that hemp ends can fray rather wildly and become knotted.  Then I machine washed the scarf in a regular wash cycle with regular soap, and threw it in the dryer.  Machine drying hemp really seems to bring out the softness and drape.

I lost about 12% of my width to shrinkage (scarf is now 7 inches wide), and 8% in length (it shrank from 68" long to 62 1/2", but the scarf is still a great size for me.

This project turned out perfectly for me--I love the drape, and it has a linen-like sheen to it.  I haven't decided yet whether or not to dye it.  If I had it to do over again, I would leave longer fringes on either end, because I feel that the twisted ends are a tiny bit too short in proportion to the rest of the cloth.

To the right is a detail of a woven hemp sample I made in plain weave.  Using the 10/1 hemp, I used a straight twill threading, with one thread per heddle.  I sleyed the threads 3 per dent in a 10 dent heddle.  Part of the sample I wove using a firm beat, so that I had almost 30 picks per inch of weft threads.  The result was an unremarkable plain weave that is light and sheer. (If you hold it up to your eyes and look through it you can see the vague shapes of objects beyond).  It has a crisp hand and would be a very good base for various forms of needlework.

The distortions apparent in this sample came about when I started experimenting with a looser beat.  I moved from one weft pick per treadle, then to two, then to three and finally four.  You can see that the distortion of the grid is greatest in the areas where I moved from single to multiple picks.  The distortion did not occur until after I cut the cloth from the loom, washed it, and dryed it in the dryer.

This piece is at its best with light shining through it.  Even with the loose beat, the resulting cloth does not feel "sleazy" since the hemp has enough body to give it a crisp, structured feel.  I have fantasies of weaving three large pieces like this and affixing them to large finished wood frames.  Connected with hinges they would make a standing screen for a room divider.

Card-Woven Band, Bamboo and Cotton

This is part of a sampler I set up to learn more about card weaving.  I used Bambu 7 yarn in River, Basil, and Borage, plus some old remnants of 10/2 pearl cotton in cream and rust hues.  Working from Candace Crockett's book Card Weaving, I focused on the chapter "Dark and Light Patterning," which shows how to wind a warp quickly by threading groups of cards all at once.  After warping, I worked diagonal stripes, and then worked the checks in the double weave method, which she explains in the same chapter.

This band is 2 3/4" wide.  I used 30 cards with four holes, and threaded the Bambu 7 in singles, and doubled the 10/2 cotton.   I've made two bands prior to this one, both in 10/2 pearl cotton, and those bands turned out rather stiff, due to the close warp spacing.  In this case, the bamboo yarn allowed the band to have a much more flexible drape, even with the close warp sett.  This is a nice feature of the bamboo yarn, although in cases where you'd want a stiff band, you would probably not want to use it.

I recommend Candace Crockett's book as a self-teaching guide for learning card weaving.  I have to admit I haven't read any others yet, but hers seems to explain everything a beginner needs to know.  Card-weaving is great if you don't have a lot of space for loom set-up.  You just need the cards (sometimes called tablets), yarn, and a couple of large c-clamps for wrapping your warp threads around.

  Women spinning and weaving.  From an Attic Greek vase ca. 560 B.C.