Ever Thought of Giving Up on a Warp? I have– many times so far on this warp.

A few years ago I wove ruffles out of fine threads. This summer I decided to make another warp using those threads again. Here is my saga.

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I’m trying to show how fine the threads I’m working with are. Here is a thread on a sheet of regular notebook paper. I got several spools from Lillian Whipple, a well-known weaver of fine threads. Long ago I wove my ruffles with it so I thought recently, “I can do this.”

However, I also thought, “What if I try using a trapeze instead of my warping drum?” That was a big mistake. When these threads are not strictly on tension, they squiggle up on themselves and also their neighbors.

Besides, I don’t know what I was thinking, but I put 12 threads in a raddle group, using 6 spools on my warping reel. (My reel does act like a paddle so that I had a true threading cross). But 12 threads together in the raddle then trying to make a thread by thread cross after that was crazy. I threatened to throw out the warp after I finally got it beamed.

My idea then was to pull the warps from the raddle (not threaded) and use them as bundles of threads…somehow. But the bundles would have been skinny and not at all like Sheila Hicks’    lovely bundles of silk with colored threads wrapped beautifully on them.

I let it marinate for about a month, then decided to try to thread it and try to weave what I had planned. I wanted the warp to be invisible.

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If I dared pull even slightly on a thread as in threading the heddles, it flew into a twisted mess with itself and neighbors. I used a straight pin to undo many of the knots that the tangles made.  Again, I thought probably I should cut it off and start over again.

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I did thread the loom and sleyed the reed at 2 per dent for 24 epi. It is a sparce warp of fine threads.

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I decided lacing on was the only option. I clearly couldn’t  tie those wild threads to the apron rod. The lacing went wonderfully well—I followed the directions and especially the tricks in two of my books. (The directions and tricks are in both, Weaving for Beginners” and “Warping Your Loom & Tying On New Warps”).

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Here is the beginning of the weaving. I’m experimenting with spinning “threads” out of silk fabrics I dyed during the pandemic. These were dyed with avocado pits. I temporarily wove in the fine yellow threads to hold the wefts in place at the end of the day’s weaving. I will take out the yellow threads before continuing weaving with my “cloth threads”. By the way, the warp threads started out vibrant colors but the dyes were fugitive, so we don’t see any color anymore. Except for the yellow thread that stayed yellow!

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A close up. Now I’m getting more ideas and maybe the 5-yard warp isn’t way too long after all!

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