My student today had trouble seeing the floating selvedges. I got the idea to make the threads in a contrasting color! I never thought of doing that in all my years of teaching! It’s so much fun being able to dream up solutions after so many years.
Make the threads for the floating selvedges the length of the warp and wind them on a bobbin or pencil and put them in a plastic bag and hang weight on the bag–anything you can think of–enough so the thread stays in place during weaving. I used about 3 ounces of weight on each selvedge thread. Clothes pins helped hold everything in place. More on weighting separate selvege warps begins on page 306 in my new book, Weaving for Beginners. all about floating selvedges can be found beginning on page 304 in the same book.
Floating selvedges give a warp thread for the weft to go around on every shed, so there is never a thread left dangling out of the cloth at the edge. These floating threads move neither
up nor down when the sheds are made, but stay in the middle of the sheds. See Figure 520.
I have a question on the weight to put when using the crocodile clamps in place of a temple. I heard once it should be at least a pound on each side. Is this so? I have used fishing weights and it does not work, I know it needs more than that, but how much?
Dear Laritza,
I’m not sure of an amount of weight to tell you. You want plenty of weight, that’s for sure–probably more than a pound on each side. What you want to achieve is to have the warp spread out to the width it is in the reed. You need whatever it takes to accomplish that. A weaving friend suggested that if you have a very wide warp it might be better to use an actual temple to be strong enough to hold out the warp wide enough. I will post a request for advice. Keep me posted on your experience.
Peggy