Paper Weaving Update

Here is my first sample in use for a little over a week as my daily dish cloth (we called it a dish rag when I was growing up in Ohio). Since I live in a retirement place and don’t cook (not for 14 years), I use a dish rag to mop up around my espresso machine with spots of coffee grounds and drips of coffee. It’s not showing a bit of weakness or falling apart. It only lost ½” in length and 1/8” in width. I initially soaked it in hot water, then scrunched  it up daily and wetted it to do its job, and finally it went in the washing machine. Next week I’ll put it in the dryer too.

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I first tried plain weave with my spun paper weft and wasn’t very happy with the look. As  a dish rag, it’s just fine.

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Next, I tried weaving broken twill but instead of weaving with 12, 23, 41, 34 to make a balanced broken twill, I just lifted one shaft at a time for a 1/3 broken twill—more weft dominant. With 1 shaft up and 3 down I was  lifting shafts 1,2,4,3 in that order. I like it a lot better. It shows the paper that I spun better. Notice the red dot.

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I used paper from this Japanese account book. They were used all over before credit cards. Each customer had a page and when the bills were paid, they were crossed off in some way. Sometimes a red stamp would appear. These books were readily available in the flea markets when I was travelling in Japan.

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Here is a photo of a page for a customer. You can see where the black comes from in the weft. See my previous post showing making the thread of the account book paper. HERE 

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