Tiger update

I am so glad that "my" day in Glimåkra was yesterday, as we got the first snow in the evening... and I haven't changed to winter tyres yet. I hope today's booth-tenders got there safe!

So today I made a pattern for the tiger skin. (I do miss the old broadsheets, now all papers are tabloid - it took 4 sheets and a lot of sticky tape to get a big enough paper)

It was a tight fit, but I think (hope!) the width is enough. But... maybe I should plan the next piece "better", so that the stripes all fall inside the body?

I found this tiger skin photo somewhere on the 'net:

What do you think?
(I will not have the whole assembly done before Halloweave is over, anyway - )

First tiger fabric

The first tiger fabric is woven and cut off. Here it is, in the fading daylight, beside it's intended backing, being inspected by the residential Black Panther:

It is now in the washing machine. With some luck I will have time to mangle it tomorrow.

If it shrinks too much, I have enough warp for another-and-a-half - maybe two...

Another "animal skin"

I had hoped to wind the tiger warp before I went away for a couple of days, but I did not quite reach the goal:

I think it looks promising...

But, while in Stockholm, I saw another "animal skin" pile rug:

I don't know what animal it is supposed to be, but it might be an antelope of some sort? At least I think it has horns...
(Picture taken through the store window - I didn't dare go in and ask)

On adding borders

There was a question over at Weavolution about
adding plain weave borders to a waffle weave.

As the asker had 4 empty shafts on her loom, I started doodling about other possible borders.

To take it form the beginning – here is one possible 4-shaft waffle draft:

It uses five treadles, according to most(?) books/practices – which, had the loom been a "standard Swedish", would leave three treadles unused.

Adding 8 ends at each edge, we can easily get plain weave:

This only works because waffle with five treadles is treadled to a point - with straight treadling we would get two picks in the same shed every time we go from treadle 5 to treadle 1:

But... the reason I added the ends to all four empty shafts is that plain weave is not the best companion to waffle weave , because of the difference in draw-in/shrinkage.
So what about adding a twill border instead?

As usual, when treadling to a point, the outermost ends will not get caught when treadling in one direction, but the edge floats will not be very long , so in my opinion this will work in most instances.

So... could I find a nice "hem" (or, rather, "border" – at least in Swedish, a border (bård) goes crosswise, while something that goes along the warp is a "stripe" ("rand"))

This requires four more treadles, which would be a problem for the "standard Swdish" loom. As I understand it, US looms always (?) have two extra treadles.

Note that I changed threading direction at the left edge, to make the twill line match (actually "oppose") the line at the right corner.

As usual, all pictures get bigger when clicked.

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright...

Over at Weavolution, the annual Halloweave is just starting.

(Last year I was in the rebozo group, weaving the seesucker shawl/sample at the very latest moment.)

This year I decided to finally make that tiger skin I have been thinking of for some years, now.
I bought a lovely light grey sheepskin, to make into a ... well, "object". The general inspiration is the traditional fälltäcke (museum pictures here), but I'm using just one skin, and will not cut it.

The fabric will have to be sturdy, I think, therefore I'm aiming for summer&winter - which also has the advantage to give me all of 14 blocks...

So now I'm trying to get a nice tiger-patterned profile draft - this is where I am right now:

So why a tiger? It seemed the perfect combination...

(Both pictures stolen from Wikipedia, Tyger and Lamb.)

Which team I'm in? Frightful fibres, of course!

The profile draft challenge

The challenge in a nutshell: take this profile and "run with it" - completing, changing, interpreting, networking... and tell us what you come up with!

Some background:

A couple of years ago my local guild thought it would be nice if our national guild would present weaving ideas and/or drafts and/or complete instructions now and again.
We proposed that to the AGM, and we got very differing reactions – some thought it a great idea, others said they would never, ever "give away" their work for free. (If I tell "them", then "they" will know as much as I do – and then, where would I be?)

A year, or maybe 2, later it was decided that we should give it a try. (Now we have 26 "Månadens väv" published, all in .pdf-format. All are welcome to download and be inspired!) Me and my guild, being responisble for the idea, have taken it rather too seriously to supply drafts. (In fact, we have sent in over 30% of the drafts, having 2% of the members of Riks.)

"The usual" did happen: "oh, what a good idea – I love to see all the new weaves!" "What? Me contribute? But I’m not good enough/have only 4 shafts/only weave on a drawloom/..." (Note: nobody says, to my face, anyway, that they don't want to share.)

So I decided it was time to do something – and, in the last guild mag, I issued The Profile Draft Challenge (or click here for Swedish.)

I hope we can get at least 12 Månadens väv out of it!!!

After thinking a bit further, I decided to extend the challenge/invite to weavers from all over the world. (I may not be authorized to promise a publication as a Månadens väv, but as I am webmaster for the local pages, I can do what I want with them, right?)
To make the challenge even more open/accessible, I started a group on Weavolution, too.

So now I invite those of my readers who are neither members of Riksföreningen för handvävning nor members of Weavolution to at least read about it – and then maybe to become members of one or the other (or both!) – and join the challenge!

To get a .wif, you have to go either to the guild page(s) or to Weavolution.

My ”Halloweave”

Over at Weavolution there has been a fun event going for the month of October.

I “signed up” for a dare: to try the seersucker method that Cathie posted some time ago.

I had lots of other things to do, but, at the last moment, I managed to get it done!

On the Friday I dressed the loom.

On the Saturday I wove it (and fringed it)

(which, considering what I also did yesterday, was a bit of a feat)

and today, after wet finishing, tumbling and some press it looks like this:

As the method called for the main warp to be tight, the “seering” (or is that the “sucking” ;-) ?) warp(s) to have a lighter tension, I decided to do 3 stripes, and to tension them differently. As I got confused with the math, I ended up with approx the same tension (weight/end) for the green and the taupe stripes, less for the gold stripe.
I cranked up the tension on the brown warp as high as I could.
(All warps are cotton – the brown is 16/2 unmerc, the coloured is 20/2 merc. All are set at 12 ends per centimeter. The weft is an unmerc cotton 16/2, and the whole thing is slightly warp-emphasis - I think I had approx 8 picks/cm)

Just for the threading, I had wound the stripes on the second beam, meaning to take them all off later, to hang freely. Then it dawned on me: I could let them form loops at the back, hang the weights in the loops – it would make advancing the warp easier, too!

To begin with, I had too little weight on the stripes – after several skips I added to all three!

When weaving, the different tension did show up only when I advanced the warp. When cut off, there was just a hint of “something” in the stripes (see picture above).
So: my hope was the wet finishing would take care of the sucking... and it did. Some.

I had hoped the difference would be greater – or, I should say the visual difference. The real difference is there alright:

Try as I might, I can't get a good photo of the shawl (or "not-quite-rebozo") draped, the colours don't want to cooperate. But there are tendencies towards iridescence in both stripes and main part - maybe another day.

But there is some warp left over, maybe I should try with twill in the brown parts...