Handed in

Daff completed, and handed in. (There is to be a big jubilee exhibition for Hemslöjden Kronoberg 100 years)

Hung as a curtain, to show how much light it lets trough (left), and as a room divider:

(The size? "It" (ie whatever one wanted to make) could not be more than max 160 cm. I suppose it can be called a "sample")

Here are some construction details. First, if there has to be a hem at the bottom, the layers have to be woven separately. I also chose to weave them simultaneously, to make them even at the bottom. Thus, the start sequence:

It could be done with only one pick at a time, but it is so much faster to weave two picks in each colour.

When the hems were long enough, I switched to the "body plan" (here shortened; I had 24 ends/picks per layer). I put in three "empties" between colours. The turquoise pick in the middle is to remind me to (and facilitate) pass the light green shuttle from top to bottom, to match the unwoven warp.

When I got to the upper end, I wanted to make a sleeve for the mounting dowel (provided by the organizers). Decided to end the middle, white, layer with a hem in the middle of the sleeve. This meant a white-hem-but-outer-layers-going-on (still shortened):

Which then gave way to the two just-green-with-empty-distances part:

Yes, I did not need to use 12 shafts, but from the beginning I had planned for a different enlacement of the "layers".
(I did weave the whole shebang "backwards", according to the software: "reverse direction)

The parting shot: daffodil with trimmed petals

(And nobody has commented on the hems... yet)

- maybe I should also add: 100% cotton, 24 ends/"column", also per inch, same in weft. Yarns used were mostly 16/2, but there were several both fatter and thinner, total of maybe 12 colours/nuances.

How to do a ”proper hem” (Swedish style)

(or, at least: this is how I learned it, when I was at weaving school)

Let’s start with an ordinary 2/2 twill: comparing the two faces, we see that the twill line goes in opposite directions.

Thus, if we just take the whole piece as is, and turn under, the reverse side with the hem at the bottom would look like this:

If, instead, we weave the hem part “opposite”, what we see on loom would be this:

And, with the hem turned, the reverse side has the twill line going the same way all over:

Going on to a 2-block twill – if the right side looks like this

the reverse looks like this

and therefore the hem part should be woven like this

Note the clean cut(s) between the hem part and the body. It is of no structural importance, but it looks much neater.

And, in parts of the world where the weaving police is active, it is a must!

In those parts, it is also of vital importance that the pattern on the 2-block hem is "correct" - and also that there are exactly the same number of picks on the two hems (of one hemmed piece - or, if one is presenting a stack of towels, for instance, the same # on all the hems).

How do I know? Because I was rejected from a (Hemslöjden) exhibition because there were not the same # of picks. The hems
measured the same, and the pattern matched, but that was less important...
(And no, the primary cause was not my uneven beating - I had used a relatively fat and uneven tow yarn... had I woven one more repeat it would perhaps have evened out. Or not)

Do I always plan/sew hems this way? No, and I even sew my hems with a machine. (Unless they are meant for a Hemslöjden exhibitions, of course.)



The same reasoning can be applied to other bindings (structures) as well.

Here is part of a profile draft for "cat tracks", with the hem at the top: