Learning all the time

Focus this week has been the weaving of a wide 1m piece of cloth made from 2/17nm merino lambswool – 8m of over 600 ends (sett at 15epi) in a gradation of colours from blue to purple to lilac to blue green. After a few hours of measuring the warp and a day of dressing the loom I was ready to weave. It became immediately apparently when weaving that something wasn’t quite right as threads were snapping at each edge. After 45cm of weaving I had lost over 25 ends at each end…….

A little reading later and I found a number of possible solutions. I decided that I really ought to tie back the spare heddles which were rubbing on the threads at the edges, I ought to give greater yarn slack on each pick and that winding on more frequently and using a temple might help. A homemade temple was made using two large crocodile clips bolted into a pieced of predrilled wood. The idea of the temple was to pull the woven fabric out across the loom to ensure that the selvedge edges were in line with the slots on the reed thus preventing drawing in of the cloth upon weaving. To my delight this approach was pretty much successful with only the odd thread breaking (on the left hand side only?).