Supplementary Warp—Something Different

Introduction:
Supplementary warp is a structure where there is a warp across the whole width plus another warp that goes part way across. In the areas where the extra warp(s) is/are there are actually two warps threaded together in the heddles and the reed. (I like complicated things that are actually simple ideas.)

African Thoughts
I wove this in a class at Pacific Basin School of Textiles where I really learned to weave. The subject was supplementary warp. It turns out to be one of my favorite weave structures. I liked it right away because “the weft couldn’t muck up my warp!” In other words, I only had the warps to think about and that was a relief. I copied the triangles from a book of African textiles. Then I played with all the other designs that I could get with the threading for the triangles. To me it was a sampler that was becoming pretty nice. So, I ended it the same way I began to make it look like I planned it that way. The embroidery floss was in my stash.

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Lidded Box
Actually this was my project for the “sampler” I wove in the class. The assignment was to make something 3 dimensional using the supplementary warp structure. That was the beginning of my infatuation with boxes. It’s double weave with the supplementary warp in between the layers.

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Reflections
I think I wove this on my own sometime later. I got the idea of reflections using some twills.

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Twinkle, Twinkle
I was to weave something to do with music so got the silly idea of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. I have a loom built for supplementary warp with 40 shafts for the extra warps. There are 4 other shafts for the ground weave. The 40 shafts work with a mechanical dobby. The 4 shafts have treadles and their own shafts and heddles. It’s available if anyone would like to have it. It has around 18” weaving width. Jim Ahrens built it. I bought it from Kay Sekimachi, so it has a good provenance. It’s in my studio in the San Francisco Bay Area. I thought I would weave Jin weaves and collected some information but time has run out for me now. However, I see people are weaving Jin now, so maybe someone will want it. Best Offer.

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Color Blanket with Triangle Illusion
This I wove in the double weave class. I was hot to have a color blanket so one side has the supplementary warp grey triangle. The back side has vertical bands of the colors with black or grey wefts crossing. I was disappointed the triangle didn’t appear to lift off the surface as much as I’d like.

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Red Squares
This time I wanted to see if I could gradually make an image disappear. I used 6 shafts for the supplementary warps and 4 for the twill ground since I have 10 shafts on my original Ahrens loom. It needed the shafts to be held down so I could get clean sheds when all but one of the shafts was lifted.

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