Welcome to Musings - The Loom Room Blog

This is a wonderful field of discovery for different textures.  The areas I have focussed on so far are different setts, different yarn properties, different weave structures, different ratios.

Today’s blog is a quick overview of how texture can be created through the manipulation of two different layers that can interact with one another.

In the first instance, you can sett your two different layers differently, and see what difference that makes to the finished effect.  You can use different yarns for each layer with differing shrinkage rates and watch the crinkles and puckers appear as you wash it.  This is particularly effective with plain weave as the non-shrinking yarn and a different weave structure for the shrinking yarn. 

You can vary the proportion of one layer to the other.  Bonnie Inouye has been working on this particular way of creating texture.  Bonnie tries different ratios of cloth in many different structures and has great fun with it.  I have also been using different ratios in both single and double cloth combinations. 

You can, of course, combine different ratios and different shrinkage rates for even more dramatic results.  You may be wondering what the difference is between sett and ratio.  The difference is that sett is how you plan one structure on its own.  Ratio is how you relate two layers to each other.  The simplest weave structures usually work the best for the non-shrinking layer, but weave structures that utilise floats are brilliant for shrinking yarns that pull the non-shrinking layer into all kinds of convolutions during finishing.

Finishing - now there’s a theme just ripe for playing with - is a great fun way of trying out texture.  The tumble dryer is a useful tool in this game - I usually combine my samples with a load of washing that I can’t hang outside (especially now we’re getting into winter which is a great time for experimenting with finishing treatments!) so I don’t feel guilty that I’m using unnecessary electricity because the weather’s bad anyway…. Try different wash temperatures, try different amounts of agitation, and different methods of drying.

In double cloth you have the wonderful facility of being able to interchange your layers, and designing different amounts of interchange can lead to some great textural results.  Play with your threading, create uneven sized blocks, vary your sett, use crammed and spaced sleying, try different beats in your weaving, try different ratios in your weaving too - 2 picks of one layer v 1 pick of the other, for example. 

You can see just with these different areas there is unlimited scope for combining different elements in different ways for different results.  You just have to be willing to make mistakes and not mind.  I try not to be too precious about my weaving which is why I sample such a lot.  It doesn’t matter if I make mistakes when sampling and I might just find something quite unexpected!

When I am designing for texture, I usually have an image of something that has inspired me and I pin it up on the wall and wonder about how I can combine different techniques to create that specific result.  Other people work in very different ways.  The main thing is to play and have fun.

Next week, I’ll take some of these ideas further and show you samples of the results….

Exotica. 

When the Midlands Textile Forum decided on this title for an exhibition to be staged at the Botanical Gardens in Birmingham, (on from now until 30th September), I had to smile!  I could just imagine certain men of my acquaintance brightening up with the titivating thought of what they might see!!  But they would be disappointed.

Not in terms of the quality of work on show, but in the subject matter. 

Exotica refers to the plants that can be found at the Botanical Gardens which, although not large (15 acres), is perfectly formed!  Just like the exhibition.  22 works are shown by 17 artists in a long thin gallery with good lighting and plenty of space around the exhibits. 

Themes are good for exhibitions.  One study day at the Gardens led to different interpretations from each artist, and the range of textile techniques used, the different approaches, the different subject matter taken from the Gardens worked well together.

Themes are also good for individual artists developing their work.  I used to be a total scatterbrain, tempted by a myriad of techniques, a wealth of subject matter and influenced by everything.  (Some would say that I still am but I suspect they don’t know what I was like before!!!) 

For me, finding weaving was a turning point in my life.  From living the life of a musician, I found myself pulled to weaving.  It stimulated my brain cells, helped me to look at life with the eyes of a visual artist, and challenged me in many different ways.  Then, in 2006, I got the book Above The Earth.  Casually flicking through this lovely coffee table book, I was taken over by a total certainty that I had now found my genre in weaving - a total expression through weaving of what I am about.  I still have that feeling today, and am aware that this will probably be with me all my life.  Satellite and aerial images of the unpopulated areas of the world, away from the obvious visual physical damage that humans have perpetrated on this lovely planet, inspire me with thoughts of how to affect people’s perception of their world through weaving. 

The limitations of having a theme can be a positive thing - a jumping off point for delving deeper.  Limits are good for stimulating creative thought and lateral thinking.  As a child, how often can boredom develop into imaginative ideas for play, for making something out of materials close at hand.  I know for me as a child that I developed some crazy ideas that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t, but I always had fun finding out. 

Now I have found my theme for weaving, my world is opening up in ways unimaginable to me before. 

Do you have something that inspires you in a similar way?  Do you want one?  Sometimes just thinking about it can help address that overwhelming feeling that can come from too much choice.  Perhaps this week might be a good time to ponder what you want to be your special theme…..

Overshot is wonderful for creating texture.  The secret is to have all the floats on one side only.  Where the floats are not floating, they need to be woven into the fabric.  Bonnie Inouye first taught me this during the online workshop Wendy Morris and I did with her a few years ago.  Once I got the hang of designing that way, I was really pleased with the results! 

Here is an image of one of the samples I did on that workshop.

  This image used a heavy wool overshot yarn to give me weft-ways shrinkage.  This is a bit on the clunky side for me, and once I had got used to designing for overshot, I worked on a series of samples (about 497 in all!!) exploring the possibilities of using overshot on a cotton warp, a worsted warp and a woollen warp, with 3 different finishing treatments, 17 different ground wefts and 3 different overshot wefts!!  I did all that work so you don’t have to!

Whilst I used 24 shafts, this can be done effectively on 8.  You could use it on 4 shafts too.  You want to keep a plain weave going so you need to use traditional overshot threading of alternating odd and even shafts. 

The draft on the left has the floats on the surface and the draft on the right is the reverse side, showing the half-tones.

When you are weaving it, it’s much kinder on your loom and your body to turn the fabric so that you weave with the floats uppermost, and thereby don’t have to lift so many shafts. 

The 8 shaft version my first image is using looks like this…

  This follows exactly the same principles as shown in the 4 shaft version, but when you have more shafts, you can use different tie-ups to affect how much of the warp you weave and how much you float over. 

The following images are from a short scarf I did at the end of the long run of samples.  This was on 24 shafts, with a cotton warp of 3/18, and the shrinking overshot yarn is a 2/15 wool.  The ground weft was 2/20 Polyester.  The sample was washed on the wool wash of my front-loading washing machine and then tumble-dried. 

The first image shows an area of a straight progression in the lifting plan, and the second image shows where I have used a pointed progression. 

There is so much more I want to explore with this technique, and I hope it’s given you a glimpse into the possibilities…. 

Next week, we’ll be looking at double cloth techniques for texture, and introducing different structures that can be used specifically for texture.

This versatile float-based weave has lots of different uses.  More often used for tea-towels for its ultra-absorbency, and blankets for its warmth-trapping cells, it can also be used effectively for scarves and for texture.  Moreover it’s a fun structure! 

Using 5 or more shafts works best, as it needs a stitching element as well as the floats, just to keep everything secure.  In this scarf, I have used it on lots of shafts because I was using very fine silk warp (120/2), but with a thicker warp thread, you could use it on 5 or more. 

The detail above and the wider view on the right show the variegated weft yarn that I used.  It was a fine singles cotton.  Waffle is stretchy weave structure so you have to weave a much longer piece so you end up with the length you want after you take it from the loom. 

This is what this all-over waffle looks like in a draft. 

As shown in the draft, you usually weave waffle on a point threading.  However, you aren’t restricted by this, as this next piece was woven on a straight entry threading.  You can clearly see the stitching element which is part of the appeal of waffle weave.   

  The warp was again a fine 120/2, but this time, I used a fine cashmere weft for the floats and used the waffle weave in stripes on a 24 shaft straight entry warp.  The waffle element was over 12 shafts, and the draft would have looked something like this…..

The fun element in this waffle is that the waffle creates a little shrinkage and puckers the plain weave stripes in between the waffle, so making it soft and spongy but firm which is an unusual texture and a pleasing effect.  Having a cashmere blend also helps with the shrinkage element. 

One other way I have recently been using waffle is as the back cloth in stitched double cloth, but I’ll talk more about that in another post. 

What I enjoy about waffle is that you can create it in non-traditional ways and make it an unusual feature with some amazing insulating properties and textural qualities that no other weave can give you. 

Why don’t you have a play with waffle and incorporate it into other weave structures to see what it does?  I doubt that you’ll be disappointed with the results!  And if you do have a go, do please let us know what you’ve achieved! 

Next week, I’ll show you some overshot for texture…. In the meantime, have fun with waffle!

Over the last few weeks, I’ve indulged in some creative downtime!  After the hectic scheduling of Complex Weavers and Convergence, Agnes and I headed off for a road trip (aka Thelma and Louise - without the dramatic ending!!).  Agnes was in charge of itinerary, and we headed out to Arizona, aiming for Page, via the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest.  We took two days to get there, so we could take in unscheduled photo-call stops along the way.  Once at Page, after a day to get our bearings, drive around and see what was available, stopping in for quite a while at the lovely little Powell Museum in Page, each day we scheduled somewhere to visit in the morning, and then chilled out for the remainder of the day.  It worked well with the weather (thunder storms most days in the late afternoon and evening), and gave us some downtime to process everything we saw and experienced.  We both journal to help that filtering process, and we both took loads of photos, sometimes of the same shot, sometimes completely different things. 

Over the 10 days we had, we visited the Grand Canyon twice - the north rim was amazing both in sunlight and in cloud and rain - Bryce Canyon (which was simply amazing!), Antelope Canyon, took a ride down Glen Canyon, and came back to New Mexico via Monument Valley.  I haven’t got round to sorting out my photos yet as I’m teaching non-stop until September, but as and when I do, I’ll post a few with my Sunday blog. 

People had told me previously that these places are not appreciated until they are experienced, and I can wholeheartedly endorse that view.  The feeling you get when you are standing near the edge of any big canyon, especially when it is shrouded in mist and rain and you can’t see the edge (!), and suddenly the mist rolls back, the rain lifts and a peak is illuminated by a shaft of sunlight and glows a rich red is breathtaking.  This is when you appreciate the wonders of nature firsthand, and realise your place in the big scheme of things and acknowledge deep in your soul how small you are and yet how integral a part of the whole shebang.  It is a salutary experience and worth remembering when back in the hum-drum of everyday routine.  What food for the brain and visual stimulation for the eyes. 

Agnes and I had a ball!  We are both still friends <G> and found we have more than weaving in common.  We think in a similar way, so we appreciated the wonders of everything we saw, in both nature and in the people we met along the way.  We now have brains full of inspirational images and ideas that will, at some point, find their way into our different forms of weaving.  We’re now waiting with baited breath to find out where the next Convergence and Complex Weavers Seminars will be - so we can plan our next road trip in the US!!

In my last texture blog post in July, I was talking about honeycomb.  At the same lecture that I gave at Complex Weavers Seminars on honeycomb, I also showed the results of shibori and seersucker techniques in creating texture in single cloth. 

Shibori is usually associated with tie-dyeing.  There are two fabulous books on Shibori that have been inspirational to many people.  These are : 

1)  ”Shibori - the inventive art of Japanese shaped resist dyeing” by Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada, Mary Kellogg Rice and Jane Barton.  The book covers tradition, techniques and innovation. ISBN is 978-4-7700-2399-5. 

2)  ” Memory on Cloth - shibori now” by Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada.  ISBN is 978-4-7700-2777-1.

I started reading these with interest, but no real thoughts of applying this to my texture research, until I came across some images that showed the resulting fabric in physical textural relief as a result of the shibori process.  Many of the designs created visual dimensionality on the 2D surface, but these few actually showed the 3D potential of shibori.  This piqued my curiosity and I decided to focus on this as a method of obtaining dimensional effects in my fabric. 

I also had “Woven Shibori” by Catharine Ellis, ISBN 978-1-931499-67-5 and decided that using loom-controlled shibori effects were what I was particularly interested in.  The chapter written by Kay Faulkner on warp-controlled shibori got me thinking deeper still, and then I attended a workshop given by Kay in December 2008.  Whilst the focus of the workshop was on the dyeing effects created through the warp shibori technique, several of us were fascinated with the textural possibilities. 

Back at home, I started investigating all the books in greater depth, teasing out the textural applications and then exploring.  These explorations are going to be included in a monograph that should be available in mid-October, but I’d like to share with you a few ideas from my lecture to the Complex Weavers!

There are several ways to create the supplementary warp that is the shibori warp.  You can use a shrinking warp yarn for your shibori ends so that you don’t have to remove them from the warp in order to create the pulling up.  You can also use a thicker yarn such as a 3/2 or 6/2 cotton, so that you can bunch the fabric up easily on your shibori ends in order to create the puckering you want.  Kay Faulkner uses fishing line or monofilament that is very strong and very slippery.  (NB: don’t use a cotton that loses its dye when washed or steamed at hot temperatures!! - How do I know?!!!)

If you are using supplementary wefts for your shibori pull-up, then you can use fishing line/monofilament or strong cotton (crochet cotton does a good job as well) again.  However, I found that wool didn’t work as effectively in the weft.  However, if you tried elastane or Lycra, that might give really good results…. 

For your main warp yarn, use a non-shrinking yarn.  I used 18/3 cotton because I had a lot of it!  But any good cotton, or maybe linen, would give you a great result.  You can also use worsted or superwash wool, if you prefer. 

Next week, I’ll explain how you can create simple ridges and bumps with a few shafts, and some simple wave shapes.

I promised to send attendees at my seminar ”Beneath the Surface” - textures in double cloth, that I would send you the Resources page of my presentation.  If you would like to receive this, please email me at stacey@theloomroom.co.uk and I will email it to you.  If you have a problem receiving it (sometimes US isp’s block UK static addresses, let me know and I will send it via a web-based server. 

Thanks for attending my class and I hope it piqued your curiosity (pun intended!!)

Like many other weavers, my blog this week is about old friends and new friends.  After visiting New Mexico for the Complex Weavers Seminars and HGA’s Convergence 2010, in Albequerque, many of us are buzzing with new techniques and information that we’ve learnt, and ideas from seeing others’ work and the surrounding areas in New Mexico.  The art galleries that have been visited, the different approach in cultural terms that we have absorbed, and the camaraderie that we’ve shared are all food for our brains, our eyes and our souls.

On stepping out of my taxi at 11pm after a very long day travelling the first person I saw was my room-mate for 3 weeks, Agnes Hauptli from New Zealand.  Agnes and I first met at the last Convergence in Ruby Leslie’s workshop, the 3Ds of 3D.  Then last year, Agnes came to me on a bursary to study jacquard weaving on my old card-driven jacquard sample looms, and then we met up a week or so later for the European Textile Network’s conference which was held in Haslach, Austria with the theme of jacquard weaving.  On the strength of getting on well together, we decided to be room-mates at the two Albuquerque conferences and then to go on a road trip together (more of that another time). 

The next day it was wonderful to meet up with lots of Complex Weavers I’d met before, and lots of laughter and hugs abounded!  The fashion show was good fun, although I didn’t really get to take a close look at the wonderful garments and scarves that were paraded round as I had to read out all the technical information on each item, but this has to be one of the great parts of the Seminars.  The work is outstanding and the reception of each item was warm and admiring.  The weavers’ handshake (going up and feeling someone’s handwoven item) was very evident and this is one of the few occasions when you know you aren’t going to get funny looks at the mildest, and a slap on the face as the most extreme reaction! 

At each meal-time, we try to sit at a table which has people we’ve never met before and have a chat, and the atmosphere is so congenial.  Every meal is a time to enlarge our friendship pool and find more soul-sisters (and brothers!!) 

The seminars are all given by the knowledgeable CW members and what a variety!  From historical techniques to cutting edge techniques, from kumihimo to shibori, and everything in between, it is a feast of knowledge, experience and enthusiasm!  Also I just have to mention the Lillian Whipple Retrospective and the wonderful surprise event of an animated weaving movie created by Alice Schlein with the woven help of many of our most respected weavers!  It was awesome!! 

There’s loads more I could say but I’ll run out of room to talk about Convergence if I don’t move on now.  Convergence had a wide range of classes of various lengths, from 1 1/2 hours to 3 days, some practical hands-on, some lectures.  The vendors hall was busy and there seemed to be more booths there this year than on the previous occasion, at least to my eyes.  There were so many wonderful, delicious yarns and gadgets to drool over, and looms to try out and covet!!  There were lots of events going on in several places and it is my one regret that I didn’t have the time or the energy to go to them! 

My heartfelt thanks and congratulations go out to both the organising teams for their wonderful skills in pulling off two excellent conferences.  Meg Wilson and her team at Complex Weavers broke new ground in setting up this Seminar, and Candy Burbag and her team had a huge task (usually thankless!) in putting on Convergence.  Thanks guys for a wonderful, inspirational, heart-warming, friendship-enhancing time in Albuquerque!

Today’s post is about honeycomb. The first thing to clear up is what I mean by honeycomb.  In old weaving books, and in UK and Europe, what I am talking about is distorted weft.  In the US it is known as honeycomb, and I am using that terminology because it looks like a honey-bee’s honeycomb to me.  What is known a honeycomb in UK and Europe is known as waffle in the US, because the result looks like a breakfast waffle.   Many of the new books on weaving are coming from the US and are widely known in the international weaving circle, so that is another reason for me to use the US terminology.

Anyway, on to the basics.  The honeycomb is created by using a minimum of two blocks in the threading.  Each of those blocks consists of 2 shafts, and the threading and liftplan looks like this.

As you can see, you only need plain weave to create honeycomb.  The cell that you are not weaving consists of warp floats and weft floats. 

You can use an outline weft, usually twice as thick as your cell weft, to weave plain weave all the way across the warp in between the two different cell positions.  If you lay in the weft with extra curve(by this I mean making the weft curve in an arc when you insert it instead of a diagonal straight line), then when you beat it up (firmly), the yarn starts to bend around the cells you have just woven, curving into the non-woven areas of warp and weft floats.  Then you weave the alternating cell, and repeat the outline 2 picks, again putting extra curve into the thicker yarn.  That will then start to bend around the cells and into the unwoven areas, thereby creating the undulating effect, and hence its UK name of distorted weft.  Also, as you start to weave the second block of cells, they will pack down into the non-woven area below them and form more of a rounded shape than a square block.

This cannot be seen on the drawdown as the rectilinear approach cannot depict what happens in the real world in this instance. 

Here’s what honeycomb looks like.

There is a lot you can do with honeycomb.  You can use as many shafts as you have on your loom so long as you use 2 shafts per cell.  With more shafts, you can play with how and where you place your cells.  I’m just about to include this topic in a seminar at Complex Weavers Seminars, using 10 shafts. 

If you play around with different outline wefts, and different fibre compositions to your cell wefts, you can get many different versions which look completely different from each other. 

I find honeycomb incredibly versatile and fun to use, and I hope you’ll explore it a little….

I’m going to take a short break whilst Complex Weavers Seminars and Convergence are on, and will resume posting some texture blogs later in August.  I hope you’ll join me then.  In the meantime, if you’ve a topic that you would like me to cover, drop me an email :  stacey@theloomroom.co.uk  and let me know!  I’ll do my best to post a blog on it for you!

Last week we looked at introducing textural elements into your plain weave to give instant changes.  This week, we are looking at a technique called Warp Repp.  This is a fabric where the warp yarns are so closely sett to each other that the weft yarn cannot be seen.  This is known as warp-faced cloth.

Firstly, a little information on sett and how it impacts your cloth. 

Imagine wrapping your yarn around a ruler so that each new strand touches the one preceding it, so you can’t see in between the strands, but the strands aren’t overlapping each other.  Normally you would use this method to give you the total number of wraps per inch, and then mentally replace some of the threads to allow space for the weft threads to pass through the warp ends. 

For instance, if you wanted to weave a balanced plain weave (which we talked about last week), you would need to create space after each strand so that a weft yarn of the same size could fit through the gap.  If you did that all the way across the inch, you would find that you had halved your original number of strands.  So if we want plain weave, we divide the number of wraps per inch by 2.  That gives you your sett. 

If you wanted to weave a balanced twill weave on 4 ends, that structure needs 2 threads to be adjacent to each other, then a space for the weft, then another 2 threads together, then a space (for 2/2 twill).  Alternatively you might want 3 threads adjacent to each other, then a space for the weft, followed by just 1 warp thread, followed by a weft space.  Either way, you have pushed 2 strands out of the way to create the space for the weft.  Therefore, only 4 out of 6 strands are required for a 4-end twill, so you would divide your total number of wraps per inch by 2/3 to get the sett you would need for twill.  This is very approximate, and varies depending on the weave structure you want to use and the yarns you are using.  If you have hairy yarns( ie mohair), you may need to leave more space for the weft, and for very smooth yarns (such as rayon) you may need to close up the gaps a little.

Anyway, the closer together you sett your yarns, the more warp-faced it becomes.  If the warp is all you can see, that is called warp-faced.  If you can see a little bit of the weft, then it is called a warp-emphasis  fabric.  If you can see equal amounts of warp and weft, then you have a balanced cloth.  If you can see more weft than warp, but you can still see some warp, then you have a weft-emphasis fabric, and when you can only see the weft, and no warp, then it is weft-faced.  Both extremes are very useful for rugs! 

Note:  it is a very useful exercise on its own to do a sample warp where you do a sample with warp-faced, and resley for warp-emphasis, then resley for balanced, then for weft-emphasis and finally for weft-faced.  This gives you an idea of how the different setts can affect your weaving, and the texture differences that are created just through a change in the sett.

Warp Repp

It’s quite fun to have two different colours, or combinations of colours, in your warp and to sley them so closely that you can use thicker and thinner weft yarns to create colour ridges.  This is called warp repp, and to do this you need to put one colour (or combination) onto two shafts, and the other on two more shafts, and sley them through the reed twice as closely as you would for a normal balanced weave.  Once you have done this, you weave using the two shafts with one colour as if they were one shaft, and alternating them with the other two shafts with the other colour. 

 Warp  1

Warp 2

Why bother putting the two colours on 4 shafts?  Why not just use 2?  Well, if you put the threads that closely together so that the weft yarn doesn’t play any visual part on the surface on the fabric (other than its thickness making one colour warp more prominent) then it is really hard to lift all the warp ends you want in one colour without snarling them up with the other colour.  4 shafts enables you to spread the threads out just a little, and raise one shaft first to raise half the threads you want, and then the other shaft to raise the other half, before putting the weft yarn through.  

The fun comes here with the varying of the thickness of the weft yarn.  Basically the weft yarn just sits in between the two different layers of colour which alternate being on the top or the underneath of the fabric.  If you use two wefts of similar thickness, both warp colours have equal prominence.  Don’t forget that the weft yarn won’t be seen except at the edges where it turns round to go back into the next pick because the warp yarns are so close together. 

However, if you change the thickness of one or both of the weft yarns, so that one is much thicker than the other, you change the emphasis on the colour showing on one side of the fabric.  The opposite colour will show more on the other side of the fabric.  If you create a thicker weft yarn by doubling, tripling or quadrupling the number of strands of weft in one pick, you can vary the amount of colour showing on one side at will.  If you choose to graduate the thicker yarn so it gets thinner over a period of several picks, whilst the thinner yarn gets thicker over the same period, you will effectively be changing over the predominance of the colour on one side, with the reverse happening on the other side.  This is what I did here….

 Warp repp side 1

         Warp repp side 2                                                           

If your warp happens to include some textured yarns in it, then there is even more interest in the appearance of the fabric.  However, do be aware that because it is sett so close together, textured warp yarns might well be hard to separate into their respective layers. 

These illustrations are from a series of samples I developed from a greetings card.

In the process of weaving one of the samples, I made an error.  I was not a happy bunny about this mistake at the time, but the next day, with a cooler head and a more objective eye, I realised that this mistake could be turned into a distinctive feature and here is the result.

Sunset at Sea.

The moral of this is that there are no mistakes in weaving, merely opportunities, which is what my first weaving teacher told me in my first week of weaving.  What a mantra to live by!!

Next week, combining different setts to get different effects.

In future weeks, I shall be introducing one of my favourite simple weaves - honeycomb, introducing you to overshot for texture, crepe weaves and woven shibori.  Later blogs will include creating texture in double cloth. 

Please feel free to share the blog with your weaving friends.  The more the merrier!

© Stacey Harvey-Brown 2010