It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! I am excited to have halvdräll up next on the big loom. Warp chains are white cottolin. The weft is white cottolin for the tabby, and red linen for the pattern. Red and white for Christmas. However, if it is not finished by December 25th, there’s always Valentines Day, right? I would love to have this table square ready for Christmas, but I am not willing to make shortcuts on quality to make that happen. It will be finished when it is finished.
Warping reel is used to measure a warp of bleached 22/2 cottolin. A counting tie goes between every 50 ends.Red 16/1 linen pattern weft will add Christmas (or Valentine) flair to the bleached 22/2 cottolin.
Do you ever find yourself being controlled by circumstances instead of convictions? Convictions are firm beliefs that guide our actions. Convictions are like signposts on an unfamiliar path. It’s like having time-tested weaving techniques that help you navigate any new weaving adventure. In time for Christmas, or not.
If I could do it over, I would put on a shorterwarp for this experimental project. I enjoyed weaving plain weave, with the simplicity of one shuttle and one color. I did not enjoy, however, stopping every six inches to stamp the warp with paint. Clearly, I am not a paint person.
Bare warp beam, with the end of the warp inches away from coming over the back beam for the final stretch of weaving.
You can guess that I was overjoyed to see the tie-on bar come over the back beam! That hope of finishing propelled me to the end. Of course, I still have work to do–fixing a few floats, wet finishing, and then sewing a tiered skirt. The root of my problem was not that this was long and slow. The root was my uncertainty. Isn’t that always the case? Is all this effort and mess going to be worth it? Will this fabric even work for the skirt I want to make?
Printed woven cloth, just off the loom, awaits finishing and sewing. The print was made by stamping the warp on the loom, using fabric paint, before it was woven.
When we are stumbling in the dark, we long for light. It can be discouraging when you are not sure where your decisions will take you. The light of God shines in the darkness, bringing hope. Hope dispels darkness. Much like the tie-on bar at the end of a long warp, when we see hope rounding the corner we know we can make it.
May your path be lit with hope.
By the way, if you are a paint person, I have a set of gently used hand-carved wooden stamps I will send to the first person in the continental U.S. who asks for them. Postage is on me! Get in Touch to let me know you’d like them. *UPDATE*
The stamps have been spoken for! Sandy O. is going to use them to experiment on her rigid heddle loom!
I need only a few simple shapes to stamp the warp. Fortunately, my woodcarver husband agreed to make the wooden stamps for me. Steve asked me to draw the shapes on white paper, and said he would take care of the rest. The result? Superb wooden stamps for making painted designs on the warp while it is on the loom.
Thread on a carefully wound quill comes off effortlessly. I love the feel of the boat shuttle chasing back and forth between my hands, with no resistance whatsoever from the unwinding thread. I wind a few quills at a time and drop them in the loom basket that hangs on my bench. Then, when I empty a quill, I simply reach into the basket and quickly replace the thread in my shuttle, and continue weaving. It is satisfying to do something as enjoyable as weaving, and have it end up as lovely cloth.
Freshly-wound quill in the boat shuttle replaces an emptied quill. The new weft thread will overlap the end of the former thread, and be secured with the swing of the beater, and changing of the shed.
I do hope to make beautiful things, but it’s more than that. The weaving procedure, itself, seems beautiful to me. Such strategy. Such alignment of movement and function. There is a deeper satisfaction than merely being pleased with the final results.
Beauty serves a purpose. Beauty points us to our Maker. Yes, purple mountain majesties and intricate iridescent hummingbird feathers do point to a masterful creator. But I am also talking about the beauty of how things work, and how people are responsive to love, and how everything in our solar system fits together. It’s amazing. It’s beautiful. What a Grand Weaver we have!
To stamp the warp, I stand on the foot beam at the front of the loom and reach over the beater. A six-inch board hangs just below the warp on loops of Texsolv cord, behind the beater, as the platform for the stamping and painting. A strip of blue painter’s tape stuck onto the backside of the beater divides the warp into three sections–A, B and C. The sections denote three tiers of a tiered skirt for which this fabric is intended to be used.
Back of the beater is marked with blue tape that shows the A, B, and C sections of the warp.
I was concerned that this would be hard to do–thinning the paint, reaching over, stamping in sections, letting it dry before advancing the warp, and so on. But it is not nearly as hard as I anticipated. It’s not actually hard at all.
When I step on the foot beam at the front of the loom, and reach over the beater, with paint palette (disposable plastic picnic plate) in one hand, and stamp or paintbrush in the other, this is my view.
Similarly, at times it seems hard to do the right thing, even though I know that loving God means walking in his ways. Simply thinking something is hard to do, though, is not reason enough to avoid doing it. And, more often than not, we find that doing the right thing is not hard to do, after all.