Introduction: I realize I should explain more about my sale in November. Online sales will probably be available AFTER the sale is over. The reason I’m talking so much about it here on the blog is that is what is consuming me now. And I’m finding it really interesting and exciting, really, to see things I have stored away and to revisit their stories. I hope you’ll bear with me on this adventure. I’ll also be selling (for very, very little) my own work. I look forward to enjoying knowing who the new owners of my treasures are. I hope to goodness it all works out. For some of my special treasures from my travels I’ve even engaged an appraiser.
I was wondering where in the world my blouse from the Philippines could be because I wanted it for my sale coming up. Well, the big surprise was that it turned up in with my stack of ikat textiles from Uzbekistan!! You wonder??? It was balled up and bound with a rubber band! I guess that was it because was so stiff and took up so much space. I remembered it so well—we found it in a junk shop on the last day of our trip to the Philippines.
It was a mess and I needed to iron it, but how? So, to the internet and of course I found it right away. I think the fiber is abaca (not pina, pineapple fiber). Never iron when dry only damp on cotton setting, and then how to iron the sleeves?? It worked perfectly and was so fun to see this miserable wad turning into something so flashy. My sleeves aren’t perfect, but they’ll do for the first attempt. They are sometimes called butterfly sleeves. I think of them as Imelda Marcos sleeves.
You can see my original post about buying the blouse on the post for March 3, 2016.
I unrolled this rug to get it ready for my sale of my collection in November. I have to document everything which means take photographs, give it a number, put it in Word with the number, put it in the database. Then comes the rest: pricing, making the hang tag, packing it up, taking it to Fort Mason for the sale and then setting up. This is piece #644 and there are a lot more pieces to record.
I bought the sampler rug in Oaxaca while on a textile trip there some years ago. We visited the workshop and saw that all the yarns were dyed with natural dyes and then woven in the studio. There were skeins of yarn drying in the breeze on the roof. The same pattern is used but each section is made up of a different color combination. That’s what appealed so much to me. I love samplers and to sample.
Here is the pattern and you can judge the scale. Note this color combination.
A completely different color scheme for this section.
When I unrolled it, I noticed the signature of the weaver in the corner. What a joy to see it and remember seeing it and falling in love with it. It might be hard to let things go, but I am thoroughly enjoying visiting my treasures.
Several years ago Yoshiko Wada gave me some of this kibiso silk to experiment with. Then on a trip to a silk farmer in Japan, I asked for some. I was shocked when he presented me with an armful of 6 or 8 huge skeins of it. It’s the waste that is taken off the outer part of the cocoons. I’ve never seen a cocoon with this waste; it must be removed right away.
Here is a close up of one area of the skein. You can see there are finer and thicker areas. It is very stiff because the sericin is still on the filaments.
A close up of another area of the skein.
Here is a close up of an area of a hanging I wove with it as part of the warp. I didn’t put the kibiso threads in heddles but put them in between them. The threads didn’t go up or down but stayed in the middle of the sheds. When I wanted them on top I put the shuttle underneath the threads. When I wanted them underneath, the shuttle went over them. That is similar to how floating selvedges work.
Here is a close look at the loopy area.
Here is the whole piece. I did weave more small pieces and undegummed some of them. The fibers turned soft like cotton candy and the blue threads bled to dye them.
To quote Giovanna Imperia in our post dated July 5, 2022 found HERE:
“The filament from the cocoon is covered in sericin — which is a protein gelatin produced by the silk worm to bind filaments while making the cocoon (Think of it as worm spit). It is not removed from the filaments being reeled to add strength and minimize breakage.”
More from Giovanna.
To quote Cheryl Kolander in her book:
“Raw Silk” Unbleached, cultivated silk noil fabric is very popular under the name “raw silk”. This is a misnomer: true raw silk is silk which has not been degummed. The reason for the nickname may be that the noil fabric has the muted luster and lack of sparkles associated with true raw silk.
Oddly enough, it is the lack of luster of raw silk—both the true raw and the noil—that is their greatest asset. The matte finish gives them a casual look. They can be worn places and times where a sleek, lustrous silk would be too dressy.
Noil silks are also popular for clothes because they are very wrinkle-resistant. And noils spin a soft, bulky yarn that knits or weaves a lightweight but thick and substantial fabric.”
I bought this exquisite scarf from a silk farmer in Japan. The threads are single silk filaments.
A close up of the single filament scarf.
A close-up of a noil scarf.
Another shot of the noil shawl in the post on July 25, 2022. SEEN HERE
Introduction: Here are more bits and pieces of silk information that I think are interesting.
This is a corner of a large cap (flattened out) made of layers in preparation for spinning.
You can see one thin layer pulled back and the interesting edges of the layers.
I’m sure I bought this just because it was so interesting. I’m glad I saved the label. 130 layers is a lot of layers!
During the pandemic I brought home this silk roving and my spinning wheel. Remember, I’m a weaver and not a spinner! Besides my wheel doesn’t like to spin fine; it’s better just as a twister. But since silk doesn’t draw like wool, I thought to give it a try.
My silk spinning with no instruction. I’m reminded of how proud I was when I learned to spin wool and my thick and knobby yarn! Junco Sato Pollack wrote and suggested having a bowl of water to wet my hands but it all seemed too much. I’ve taken the spinning wheel back to the studio and don’t plan to spin any more in this lifetime. In the meantime, I have some thick silky yarn for a future weaving project.
Here is some silk that Junco raised herself.
These spools are what I used for the warps for sheer fabrics and my ruffles. The color is fugitive–temporary—only so those at the mill could know which were S or Z spun or plied or overtwisted. Most are undegummed (stiff) and highly twisted. You’ll see how fugitive the colors are in the next photos.
This is the color those threads on the spools turned into as soon as they hit the air on my warping reel. The white “fringes” were from a silky silk (degummed) skein that I gave up on unwinding and just cut the skein and laid in the long threads.
The overtwisted character made for wonderful collapse pieces. I had fun with collapse and was careful to keep water away from anything I didn’t want to collapse.
My ruffles I made by weaving very long tubes and turning them partially inside-out. The sett probably was 96 epi at one repeat (8 ends) per dent in a 12 dent reed.
This is a skein a friend gave me of silk chenille. I dyed it with black walnuts. It’s so precious I don’t know what to do with it.
These are more natural silk cocoons. In Japan a man I met at a flea market has a business of selling natural fibers. These cocoons thrilled me!
You can see why the above cocoons interested me when you realize most cocoons look like these.
Did you notice the stem on one of the cocoons in the above photo? I did and found out that the silkworm MAKES the little twig that makes its attachment.
Here is a little bit of the silk fibers in a fluff along with the silk “twig”.
Here is a skein of yarn made from the silk twigs. I am calling this the baby bear yarn. A strand of 5/2 cotton is for comparison.
This is the mama bear size yarn.
This is the papa bear size yarn.
This is grandpa bear size!
Here is a lovely shawl made from the cocoons shown in the first photo.
A closer look at the fabric. It is soft and a joy to wear.
Many know that I’ve travelled a lot looking at interesting textiles and all things textile related. I’ve brought home many things that interest me. The other day a friend came to my studio for some kibiso silk for her artwork and then came back again for a cocoon. When I got out my cocoons I found a lot of things I’d brought home from China, Japan, Uzbekistan, and India and ?? This post is the first one about cocoons. Note: I’ll be selling my collection of textiles in San Francisco in November. Stay tuned.
We visited a silk growing place in Japan where they raised at least two different varieties of silkworms. There was a video showing how they saved some males and females for breeding. They showed putting a pair of moths under a domed basket where they bred then I think the eggs came and the moths died. These two cocoons made two different silks.
This scarf is made of two layers. Each layer was made from silk from a different variety. One layer is pure white and the other is yellow-ish.
These cocoons made the thread on the spool. The silk filaments were reeled off as the cocoons were unwound. The silk threads in the scarf above were unwound (reeled off) from the cocoons. The scarf is stiff which tells us the sericin has not been removed and is called raw silk.
In the case of the breeding cocoons, the “bug” (pupa) inside the cocoon develops into an adult that breaks out of the cocoon as a moth. Since the cocoon is broken, the fiber cannot be reeled off. These spent cocoons were in a wastebasket in a mill where they were reeling off the silk. I helped myself to see what the cocoons looked like and was pleased to find one pupa. (The word chrysalis is the same stage as pupa but only refers to butterflies).
These cocoons were purposely cut open so that silk fiber cannot be reeled and must be spun. It means the moth can exit the cocoon on its own without being killed. However my understanding is that the moth soon dies a natural death.
On a silk growers farm in Japan we made hankies like these in preparation for spinning. The cocoons had been degummed, were wet, and had been cut open. We put our thumbs in the hole and worked with forefingers and thumbs from both hands to pinch and spread out the cocoons into flat pieces like these. We draped them over a dome and piled up a certain number (maybe 12?) together, then removed them for spinning. These were called caps. If they were flat they would be called mawata.
Here are silk hankies on a small frame with several layers. I’m finding there are lots of ways to spin silk in the book “A Silk Workers Notebook” by Cheryl Kolander. Apparently, each method produces a very different type of thread.
We all love to weave with silk! It is such an incredible fiber: soft, supple, yet very strong and with great aging stability. However, not all silk is the same. Starting at a high level, silk can be classified based on the moth type and the yarn construction. Below is a good way to visualize the differences:
Muga silk is also produced by a specific type of Antheraea moth (Antheraea assamensis) exclusively in Assam, India. It is very rare and is highly sought after because of its warm golden color and sheen.
Reeled silk Cocoons are placed into hot water and filaments from several cocoons are pulled together and reeled. This produces a continuous multi-strand yarn. A number of multistrand yarns are then plyed together to create the desired yarn size. The filament from the cocoon is covered in sericin — which is a protein gelatin produced by the silk worm to bind filaments while making the cocoon (Think of it as worm spit). It is not removed from the filaments being reeled to add strength and minimize breakage. Both Bombyx and Tussah silk are available as reeled yarns. They are both very strong. The nice thing about Tussah is that it can withstand high torsion due to its natural strength. So, it is possible to achieve high TPMs (Twist Per Meter) when creating crepe yarns. A good example is the Italian silk crepe that Lunatic Fringe currently sells. The base yarn is partly degummed Tussah silk. The Italian mill that I used to source the yarn was able to apply 1800 TPMs — making this a very tight over-twisted yarn with a lot of elasticity that can be used as warp. One word about degumming. This is the chemical process that removes the sericin from the silk. Degumming improves sheen and softens the silk, making it easier to dye. However, degumming also removes the protective layer of sericin that adds strength and protects the silk from abrasion. Partial degumming is an attempt to take advantages of both sides of the chemical process: remove some sericin to soften the yarn, but retain some to maintain the strength needed for high torsion. In my experience, undegummed or partially degummed silks are the best as warp. The long filaments rarely break under tension or due to friction. The sericin can be removed after the weaving process to achieve a softer, more drapeable fabric. Because reeled silk is a continuous multi-strand yarn, it does not pill or fuzz with use.
Examples of reeled and handspun silk. Bottom row from left: 2/260 partially degummed natural ivory tussah (Japan, from Lunatic Fringe), handspun tussah (Japan, from Habu Textiles), naturally yellow reeled tussah (Laos). Top row from left: two handspun tussah skeins in natural brown (Japan), reeled bombyx in natural white (Japan, from Habu Textiles)
Examples of spun silk with even and uneven ply. Top: spun handdyed variegated silk with even ply (China, Red Fish). Top left: hand spun handdyed, slubby uneven ply (US). Bottom left: tram handdyed organzine silk (Source unknown, dyed by Randy Darwell) . Cone on the left: bleached spun tussah uneven ply (Italy). Cone in the middle: recombed spun tussah organzine (Italy). Cone on the right: silk shantung loose ply
Spun silk Most spun silk commercially available today comes from China. In Italy, where the production of silk has essentially disappeared, many mills import the fiber from China and then ply and dye the yarn in Italy. This allows the Italian mills to maintain their quality controls while benefiting from lower production costs. Once the first quality silk is reeled from the intact cocoons, the reminder as well as the damaged or pierced cocoons are used to produce a variety of styles of spun silk. Sericin is first removed from the silk waste. Next the fiber is carded and spun. Generally speaking, spun silk tends to be weaker, more fuzzy and less durable than reeled silk because it is produced from shorter fibers. It is also important to consider how the fiber is being plyed: an uneven or slubby ply will make the yarn weaker, and more difficult to use as a warp. Not all the spun silk is the same. Since it is produced from the silk waste, different types of yarn are actually produced. For instance, here in the US we are very familiar with Shantung and Noil (In Europe also called Bourette due to its knobby appearance).
However, in Europe spun silk also includes another grouping called “Schappe”. This type of spun silk is actually a higher quality than Shantung or Noil. In fact, Shantung silk is typically produced with whatever is left over after the production of Schappe silk.
All three types of spun silk can be used in a similar fashion. The difference between them is mostly in terms of sheen, and smoothness of the yarn — with Schappe being the smoothest, most consistent and with the greatest sheen.
Let’s summarize: • Reeled silk is a continuous multi-strand yarn. Very strong. Smooth with no imperfections. Bombyx is high sheen. Tussah is more rustic. Reeled silk does not fuzz or pill. If undegummed, unlikely to be affected by abrasion. • Spun silk is produced from the silk waste. Short fibers that are always degummed before carding and spinning. Some are spun with intentional imperfections. Not as strong. Not high sheen. More sensitive to abrasion, and over time it fuzzes and pills. • Warp yarn: • Tight and balanced ply • Undegummed or partially degummed yarn • Spun silk with longer fibers • Weft yarns: • Unbalanced ply with slubs • Loose ply such as tram silk • Spun silk from very short fibers Shantung • Originated in the Shandong province in China • Spun from whatever is left over • Purposely stubby and uneven • Often confused with Dupioni • More refined texture than Dupioni with smaller slubs and less stiffness Schappe • Spun from the higher quality short filaments after the cocoons have been reeled, and from cocoons where the moth has emerged thus damaging the continuous filament of the cocoon • Irregularities are removed from the fiber yielding a smooth, regular, high sheen yarn
Bio At a very young age I became fascinated by the textures and visual and tactile experiences provided by certain materials such as fiber and metal. Over time, I also became intrigued with the possibilities created by the interaction between structure, techniques and material manipulation as a way of creating texture and threedimensionality. In my most recent body of work I have taken the tactile experience a step further by creating work that can actively involve the user as transforming agent. This is achieved by allowing the viewer to manipulate, reshape and reconfigure the work. Thus, transforming wearables and non-wearables into unique personal statements. My work has been shown in many juried and invitational national and international exhibits. Selected work has also been reproduced in textile and jewelry books, and can be found in private and museum collections. Over the years, I have written articles for Ornament Magazine, Strands, Handwoven, Shuttle, Spindle and Depot, and a variety of international braiding conferences proceedings. And, of course, I am the author of the book “Kumihimo wire jewelry.” Published by Potter Craft (Random House), 2011. Many of the yarns discussed in this blog are available from Lunatic Fringe Yarns (https:// lunaticfringeyarns.com). As I have been sourcing yarns in Italy over the last decade or so, I have built a collection of interesting spun silk. If you are interested in expanding your collection, I can be reached at giovannaimperia@mac.com
Weavers everywhere share a common language so I embraced the opportunity to virtually sit down with a group of selvedge to selvedge weavers and talk about what has become my first weaving love, tapestry. I started my weaving career making structured fabrics, moved to doubleweave when I wanted to make pictures, then decided to try tapestry. Two decades later, I’m still weaving images one pick at a time.
Tapestry weavers very rarely throw a shuttle and we don’t mess around with lots of shafts or threading and treadling drafts. Tapestry weavers might, on the face of it, seem a simple sort to those patterned fabric weavers who know and use lots of weave structures. But though us tapestry weavers most often utilize a simple unbalanced plain weave, we have a different set of skills.
Tapestry is officially defined as a discontinuous weft-faced weave that creates an image. While multi-shaft weavers of fabric are throwing shuttles and clicking through their treadling patterns while rolling off yards of fabric at breathtaking speed, us tapestry weavers are meditatively tap tap tapping our weft threads into warps. Over, under, over, under is our song. Sometimes we even do all this without the benefit of a shedding device.
But though tapestry is slow and highly reliant on image-creation for successful artwork, there is a deep satisfaction in the slow building of that image. All weavers understand the structure of starting at one end and weaving to the other and that is no different in tapestry. The biggest difference between shafted pattern weaves and tapestry is those discontinuous wefts.
To make our pictures, we tapestry weavers change colors constantly. You can weave tapestry line by line meaning one pick at a time. But the color can change many times across that one pick. This results in a fell line with a whole host of butterflies or bobbins coming from it.
I often weave my larger tapestry on a Harrisville rug loom. This countermarche loom has a warp extender and worm gear which means I can get the tension on the warp very tight and very even. In the tapestry pictured below (taken from above—those are my feet standing on the loom bench), you can see the weft bundles at the fell line. I believe there are about 30 butterflies being woven at that point on this 24 inch wide tapestry, Lifelines.
The wefts are in pairs because most Gobelin-style tapestry weavers also use something called meet and separate. This means that adjacent wefts move in opposition to each other in the same shed. This manner of working means that a weft can be moved to a new position to create a form without putting two wefts in the same shed. The diagram below shows three butterflies moving in meet and separate in the same shed.
In the image of my Lifelines tapestry above, I’m weaving line by line and using the beater on the loom to keep everything square. I’m also using a technique called hatching where sequences of colors are alternated to blend them which can only be done line by line.
The diagram below shows irregular hatching. This is a little different from the shaft weaver’s clasped weft technique as we don’t lock the wefts around each other unless we’re specifically doing a weft interlock to close a vertical slit. Irregular hatching often means weaving line by line and in my work, I do a lot of it.
Tapestry can also be woven one shape at a time. It is common to build a shape with one color before picking up the bobbin or butterfly of another and building that shape. In another section of the Lifelines tapestry I wanted to create smooth lines around a curve and I built up shapes so I could do that. That curve can then be outlined with a weft that does not move perpendicular to the warp. This smooths out the steps that happen due to the gridded nature of weaving.
Making pictures
As a tapestry teacher, I find that the biggest stumbling block for weavers of patterned fabric when they first come to tapestry weaving is the design component. Suddenly there is a big piece of the puzzle that has to come from your own head. There aren’t books of tapestry patterns though there are many ways to create a tapestry pattern from external sources and I provide some simple starter ones in my courses. The weavers who embrace this new skill of designing most often discover a new well of creativity and expression and create some marvelous tapestries.
Rebecca Mezoff, Handbasket (detail), 14 x 14 inches, wool, cotton
Equipment for tapestry
Tapestry can be woven on large beamed looms but it is also a wonderful thing to weave on small equipment. You only need a small frame loom, cotton seine twine warp, a tapestry fork, a shed stick, and some time. There are many kinds of looms from the small untensioned tapestry looms pictured below by Handywoman Shop to larger tensioned frame looms like those made by Mirrix to large high-warp tapestry looms with beams and low-warp floor looms like the countermarche Harrisville Rug Loom I favor.
Simplification
Tapestry weaving is a great way to incorporate images in woven form. Those images often need to be simplified from what we might like to create due to size and sett limitations, but those challenges can also be fascinating. The world has gotten so complicated that some time with a simple loom, a variety of colored wefts, and the slow tap tap tapping of the weft into the warp is certainly a balm to our rushing way of life.
Tapestry is a wonderful adjunct to patterned shaft weaving and I challenge you to expand your weaving language and give this slower form of weaving a try.
Rebecca Mezoff, author of the bestselling book, The Art of Tapestry Weaving, loves nothing more than helping new tapestry weavers untangle the mystery of making images with yarn. Her fledgling career as an expert latch-hooker died before she made it to middle school, but her love of fiber never abandoned her. Now she creates large-format tapestries and is often found weaving in her pajamas which she affectionately calls her “home pants”. She runs an online tapestry school which has over 3,500 members and occasionally she leaves the studio to teach weavers in the real world about color, design, and technique in tapestry. Her current artistic work focuses on human perception and the long scale of geologic time. Her studio is in Fort Collins, Colorado. You can find out more about her on her website and blog at www.tapestryweaving.com.
I’ve been intrigued about moiré for many years. I ran across some samples and when I picked them up and saw light behind, I immediately saw wonderful moire patterns. Voila! These double weave tubes produced moire if seen backlit but only then. This photo shows that two layers superimposed can or cannot make moire, depending on the set up. I put a card behind a portion of the piece to show how it looked lying on a table and hanging with light behind it.
Here is the same piece as a little hanging. Art!
Another little moire piece I discovered and made into a little hanging.
A third scrap turned into a hanging just by hanging it up.
Here is one of my original pieces where I discovered moire.
Moire sometimes isn’t desirable. This is part of an illustration in my book Weaving for Beginners in the Rigid Heddle chapter. Again, 2 layers superimposed can cause the moire effect. Perhaps you’ve seen in when 2 screens are next to each other.
This photo is from my go-to book for textile definitions. For moire it said, “see Watered”. The definition: “Term used to describe textiles in which a rippled or watered effect is produced by pressing certain ribbed fabrics in such a way as to flatten parts of the ribs and leave the rest in relief. The flattened and unflattened parts reflect the light differently. Synonym: moire”. From Warp & Weft A Dictionary of Textile Terms. Dorothy K. Burnham. Royal Ontario Museum, 1981. Now that I think of it, I think I had some fabrics like that from Uzbekestan, and we went to see the big callerending machine that pressed the ridges.
I got the idea for pads of graph paper when planning my booth for CNCH. I was thinking maybe some weavers might have questions and it would be much easier to work on graph paper that was on a pad like a tablet. I love my padded graph paper now. I took a sheet to my copy place and voila! They made copies and made them into a pad. So much nicer to work on a cushioned surface than on my desk which usually is full of papers. And I can rip off pages as I make variations or keep them together.
While I was at it, I thought if I wanted to help anyone plan a project, working on a padded surface would be nice, too. These are my project worksheets that I always use. They are in my book Weaving for Beginners. Someone asked if I could put them here on the blog so it will be easier to make copies than from the book. I first posted them on my blog 9 years ago in 2013. I posted them again in 2016 after I had 598 subscribers. Now after 2,135 subscribers, I’m posting them again—but this time with the pads idea. There are two sheets but often I just need one of them for a different version. So, I made each sheet on its own pad. You can download both sheets HERE
I use my worksheets to calculate the many things needed when planning a project. When I was starting out, I was always worried that I’d forget a critical calculation. Now I don’t worry about forgetting.
People loved these balls of rags. I do, too. I bought them in an antique shop in New York. I will sell them along with other textiles from my collection in a sale next year. Stay tuned (become a subscriber if you are not already one).
This needle book caught the eyes of many people, too. A weaver had one and I had to make my own. In this previous post, I explained how I wove it. See it HERE
Here is the second needle book I came across. Check out this previous post for a lot of needle books that I have now and love. See it HERE
Hi fellow weavers! I have a beautiful Ahrens loom I would love to donate to an enthusiastic intermediate or above weaver who is mechanically minded and familiar with Ahrens or AVL looms. I live in San Francisco, and you would need to move the loom. There are 25 cement steps to get to the loom. And the loom is heavy.
Send me an email if you are interested. Be sure to tell me why you are the person for this loom. And thanks for helping find a home for my very neglected Ahrens loom.
Introduction: CNCH (Conference of Northern California Handweavers) was last weekend. There was a whole lot of excitement and energy for the exhibits, Tableau (fashion show), classes, and vendors. I had a booth and bonded with the other vendors. Here is who else had booths and enticing things to sell. I didn’t sell anything but visited with a lot of weavers, friends, and enthusiastic new weavers. It was thrilling to meet up with so many who knew of my books, blog, and also my name!
Amazing Yarns is located in Redwood City in the Bay Area. The shop specializes in unusual hand spun and hand painted yarns and classes. They also have hand dyed yarns for knitting, weaving, crocheting and roving and fleece for spinning, dyeing and felting. www.Amazingyarn.com. Phone 650-306-9218
Carpool showed a lot of beautifully dyed yarns and fiber. I asked about the company name: a lot of travels caused it. They can be found on facebook.com/lisamendezmakesthings. Lisa dyes all the yarns! 773-507-8582
Ephemera Creations had beautiful “small batch hand dyed yarn”. They are dyed in Humboldt County, California. The photo of the booth says it all. www.ephemeracreations.com. Instagram & Facebook: @ephemera.creations.
Eugene Textile Center had a large booth that looked just like a store. You name it, they had it: Yarns, books, looms, spinning wheels, tools, and everything a fiber person would like. The store is at 2750 Roosevelt Blvd., Eugene, OR 97402. Phone: 541-688-1565. info@eugenetextilecenter.comwww.EugeneTextileCenter.com
Featherweight Finery sold vibrant handcrafted Jewelry all made by Sue Toorans. ”Elegant enough for a night on the town, comfortable enough to wear all day.” Sue@FeatherweightFinery.com . www.FeatherweightFinery.com on Facebook and Instagram as Featherweight Finery.
Lunatic Fringe Yarns. “Unique Yarns for Unique People!” They are known for Tubular Spectrum yarns in all the colors on the color wheel. Their newest line is “GevolveYarns. They are from the unique collection of Giovanna Imperia. www.lunaticfringeyarns.com. Phone: 800-483-8749
Peggy Osterkamp. I had my booth to visit with old and new weavers, colleagues, and students. The large pieces on the back wall are examples of textiles in my collection which I will be selling in the future. www.PeggyOsterkamp.com. Instagram at PEGGYOSTER and on Facebook.
Junco Sato Pollack is a nationally and internationally known artist. She served as a cultural ambassador for a while, at the same time, her interest was always to find ways to do 3-D surfaces and forms by combining fabric and layered techniques. She has used a variety of techniques in fiber. These include weaving, surface design, sculptural work, heat transfer printing, and paper making. She is Professor Emerita of Georgia State University where she taught in the Textiles Program.
In one very early series of her art were silk hangings woven in damask with printed warps. After the cloth was off the loom, she added silver leaf which was adhered to the woven surface by screen printing adhesive and pressing silver leaf onto the surface. The silver leaf in this hanging has tarnished to dark grey.
This detail shows more of the damask patterning in the cloth itself. The silk damask has screen-printed warp images of ivy. Then she adhered silver leaf leaves on the woven surface. The weave is a 16-shaft damask.
Reed and Sett Junco tells that “Japanese silk hand weaving is mostly plain weave based on tsumugi fabric which is hand-spun weft on plied reeled silk warp. The weft is coarse, but both warp colors and weft colors are interactively visible. (What we call tabby.)
“So, denting is usually double dent, and this is why we have so many fine reed numbers per inch, ie. 45 coarse, 55 medium, 65 fine. Double dented, they become 90 epi, 110, 130 and so on. Thus, achieving well distributed warps and no dent lines, called “shirome” (white looks) of lines.” (What we call reed marks.) The photo is of a bamboo reed of mine I have “ for show,”
Peggy O.
Besides being an artist, ambassador, and teacher, she has grown silkworms and reeled out the filaments. The reason for raising silkworms was that she wanted to create 3 dimensional raised patterns on silk fabric. That required the use of sericin-rich silk threads to create the thermo-plastic silk for a 3-D surface. She wove in “shibori binding stitches” while on the loom, and heat set the pleats after the stitched-in threads were gathered up. This process is now called “woven shibori.” By weaving on a jibata loom, it was easy to create an extra harness to weave in shibori stitching threads. Images of her work can be found at JuncoSatoPollack.com.
This is a diagram of how the Japanese traditional jibata loom works. A loop of string attached to the loom’s heddle stick and the weaver’s toe is how warp threads are moved to make the sheds. The backstrap of course lets the weaver lessen and tighten the warp as needed. This helps to make clean sheds with dense warps of fine threads.
Jim Ahrens (a part of AVL as you all know by now) taught us Ashenhurst’s way to calculate sett that industry uses. It’s especially handy when winding such very fine threads on a ruler would be difficult! I use this method and teach it to my students. This worksheet is in my book, Weaving for Beginners, and the information also is in Winding a Warp & Using a Paddle (in the big chapter on sett).
The Ashenhurst formula calls for the square root of the yards per pound. I don’t even have a cheap enough calculator anymore and certainly don’t remember how to find square root. What to do?? I Googled “what is the square root of 30,000.” That was a yardage Molly McLaughlin gave in the previous post. The answer: 173. Then I multiplied 173 by 0.9 (on iPhone calculator) to get 155 for the diameters in an inch. That’s a calculation for the wraps per inch concept. According to Ashenhurt’s Rule you should then divide the diameters by .5 for plain weave or .67 for twill. However, it looks like Molly skipped that step and took 80% of the diameters to come to 124.5 for 120 epi for her 30,000 ypp silk. Previous tips on my website explain the calculation more thoroughly. See them HERE. Here are two Tips: “A Weaving Tool: Ashenhurst’s Rule” and “Good Reasons to Use Ashenhurst’s 80% Figure”.
Introduction: I can’t thank Molly McLaughlin enough for all the information she generously shared. She’s been weaving for over 30 years and has developed her own unique weave structures to weave beautiful, intricate, and exciting art pieces. This post is about her work and the fine silk threads she uses. Master Weaver, Lillian Whipple has been weaving for over 50 years and has all the qualifications as Molly but her comments supported Molly’s so much I chose to include them as comments. Molly is on Instagram: @mollymclaughlinsfiberart. Lillian is on Facebook and it’s a good idea to Google her.
This picture is of Molly’s Oxaback loom. This is what she mainly uses because countermarch looms make very clean sheds easily. You can see it in her crowded studio by looking through her Nilus loom in this phot
Reed and Sett Molly uses a 40 dent reed for different circumstances and doubles up the threads in a dent as required. Double cloth is sett at 360 epi. Single layer cloth is 120 epi. For linen she has used 100 epi but would like it more dense. These setts are for twill based ground cloths. She gets the reeds from the Woolgatherers (woolgatherers.com). They are specially made by a reed maker in Germany.
Silk and Other Threads 120/2 at 120 epi uses 3 ends per dent. There are 30,000 yards per pound 240/2 at 200 epi uses 5 ends per dent 260/2 at 200 epi also at 5 ends per dent. 40 gauge copper she setts at 80 epi Molly also uses a nylon thread sett at 60 epi (for tabby based ground cloths)
Notice that all of the silk threads are 2-ply and they should be of good quality, smooth and not at all fuzzy. Lillian Whipple says, “The thread must be beam-able. If I can’t beam it, I throw it out.”
I wondered how Molly could get a hook into such a fine reed. Her first answer was she cut one out of a plastic clam shell box—with the warning to put some color on one end or “you’ll never find it when it falls to the floor!” Ashford makes a thin one that will work if you put it through the middle of the dents where the wires are more flexible. Lillian Whipple told me that she uses her threading hook, which is thinner, to sley her fine reeds.
Beaming Beaming is done with 1-inch sections on a warping wheel on a plain beam with a 1-inch raddle. Look behind the heddles where you can get a glimpse of the raddle. Molly stressed that beaming is critical. Lillian uses a warping drum.
Heddles Both Molly and Lillian use Texsolv heddles. Molly had no trouble with metal ones up to 120 epi on 8 shafts. She went to Texsolv because they use less space and are much lighter to lift.
“Over time I have worked to reduce the necessary number of shafts. Currently, I prefer to use 4 shafts for a single weave and 10 shafts for double weave. However, I space the shafts on the loom so that there is a space between each shaft, so 4 shafts take up the same amount of space as 8 shafts. This separation of shafts makes it much easier to avoid mistakes in the threading and to fix broken threads. I used to try and spread the warps over as many shafts as possible to reduce friction and heddle density, but I found that less shafts with more space between them made life much easier.”
“Along the lines of keeping things simple, I only weave double cloth if the shifting of layers will make it easier to actualize the cartoon that I have created, generally with a 3D component. Otherwise, I stick to single weave…here is an example of a design that called for double weave.”
“At the moment, everything that I am producing is being created with the intent of going to some large shows this fall and winter, so nothing is currently available for sale. But, I am including a photo of the piece that is currently on the Nilus, because it is pretty.” Molly McLaughlin.
Introduction: A teacher loves to teach. In fact, when I want to procrastinate, I compose a new post. That means questions and comments are welcomed. That also means no question is a bad one! In my blog I hope to teach and give good techniques that will make your weaving a pleasure, not a hassle. If I don’t have a good answer to a question, I’ll ask experts for their advice. That’s where I am now on the issue of fine threads. Several expert weavers have shared their advice and I’m working on how to present it all. I’ve often said, “The teacher learns the most.” And, “It’s the bright people who have the most questions because they can read what I’ve said in different ways.”
One student in a workshop said, “I pray when I’m warping.” I said, “I don’t want you to have to pray. I want to teach you good techniques, then you can be as artistic and creative as you want.”
I learned to weave at Pacific Basin School of Textiles in Berkeley, California in the 70’s. The curriculum was structured and full of the principles of weaving and designing woven textiles. Each term’s class relied on what we’d learned before. I had a year’s sabbatical from teaching in a junior high school in San Francisco. So, I took the full year’s courses (plus some night classes after I went back to the classroom). I spent another year as an apprentice with Jim Ahrens, the “A” in AVL in a production weaving studio at the school. When we moved to Washington, DC someone in the guild there asked me a question. That was the minute my weaving life and teaching life collided.
“THE ONLY THREAD THAT CAN’T TANGLE IS ONE UNDER TENSION.”
Jim Ahrens, the “A” part of AVL.
Tangled threads are a major obstacle to confident weaving. They’re troublesome in themselves and they can cause threads to become uneven, snag, and break. The underlying purpose of many of the methods I teach is to keep threads under tension. And most of the techniques have been used for centuries around the world for efficient, production weaving.
Generally, the chain keeps most warp threads organized enough so that they don’t tangle. However, some yarns (for example, linen) can be quite “jumpy” or springy and tangle easily as can a large number of fine, silky threads. I recommend winding the warp on a kitestick instead of making it into a chain so that the threads are always on tension and thus, can’t tangle. In the case of a large warp made in sections, you would have each section on its own kitestick rather than in several chains.
Introduction: Tal Saarony’s posts have led me down a wonderful “rabbit hole” for information about fine threads. I’m still gathering information from very experienced weavers, so I’ll start with how I’ve dealt with fine silk threads. You can see some of my sheer pieces by checking out my Gallery and the photos for on the headings for the various tabs on my blog. Check out my post from April 9, 2021 “Unwinding Skeins of Very Fine Threads” HERE
When I was planning my “ruffle warp” all I knew was that I wanted the cloth to be sheer. That meant neither the warps nor the wefts could be close together. Here’s what I remember how I determined the sett (epi). When Master Weaver, Lillian Whipple asked a reed maker for a fine reed he said, “I can make one as fine as 75 dents per inch, but you won’t like it. It will be too fragile.” He suggested putting a threading unit in a dent instead. Going on that advice, my first silk threads were threaded at 96 epi with 8 threads per dent in a 12 dent reed. Since I wanted sheer and an open weave, the reed marks weren’t a problem for me. Another thread was finer yet so I sett it at 120 epi with 8 threads per dent in a 15 dent reed. Both Lillian and I used a warping drum when beaming. I think I’ll try a trapeze the next time because it won’t take so much space in my studio. Lillian’s drum is no longer made by AVL and I had mine built. Directions for it are in my book, Warping Your Loom & Tying On New Warps (newly available in print).
To make it easier to beat, I decided to weave double cloth thinking the two layer’s worth of threads would give more friction in the reed. That meant ½ the epi was in each layer. I don’t know if it helped, but it turned out that the tube made the ruffles. That was a lucky surprise.
Here is an idea I had “post ruffles”.
Another idea I had. These were in my blog post dated March 8, 2013. You can search on the home page for “ruffles” for that and other ruffle posts.
The ladies in Sicily made these for Easter. I was there on Palm Sunday in 1004 and loved seeing them being made.
Another Easter sculpture made of dough.
My former husband made these 50 years ago! He covered the eggs with wax and embedded the beads and painted one.
These quail eggs were in a grocery store in Japan. We were so taken with them my husband blew out the insides and I’ve kept them all these 55 years! So beautiful.
Introduction I see I made a post about unwinding skeins of fine threads exactly one year ago today, the day I am making this post. See it HERE.
There were a lot of comments responding to Tal Saarony’s previous two posts. It was mentioned that swifts work better mounted like a Ferris wheel rather than a merry go round. I remember hearing that from my mentor Helen Pope when I encountered my first umbrella swift. However, I probably didn’t remember it all the time.
In Japan fine silk threads were wound on this kind of spool. I bought some when I realized that the circumference is larger than a spool’s and that has made it easier to wind off skeins of fine threads.
It took a special winder for the spools.
Here is the skein holder that goes with the Japanese winder. Note it is positioned like a Ferris wheel, too. Another commenter said that the yarn coming off the skein should come off the bottom. I was told when you can’t find an end to pat the skein from the inside so the end could fall out and show itself.
I bought a cone winder with a skein holder attached from ETSY that came from Hong Kong. I haven’t tried it yet—too many other things to do before I go back to fine threads again.
I bought this skein holder in Bhutan. Simple with straight sides unlike an umbrella swift. I think they all used the same size skeins in a workshop, but it wouldn’t be hard to exchange the bamboo sticks to change the size of the holder.
I bought this treasure years ago and finally sold it to an antique dealer.
This came along with the one above and went to the same dealer so someone else can enjoy it.
The skein winders we had at school and grad school were all of the swift, or umbrella, type. This one is a random picture from Amazon:
I struggled with the umbrella swift as I struggled with all things weaving. There are so many processes, so many tools. I am not technically gifted. When, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, I asked my teacher to help with my first mess of a warp, he said he had never seen a warp with so many crossed threads. He had been teaching for many years, so it was quite an accomplishment on my part.
Over the years I only ever used the umbrella swift. I didn’t know there were other types (this is pre-internert). As the years passed, my swift and I developed a mutual aversion made more bitter by co-dependence.
I will explain the reasons I dislike umbrella swifts; just a caveat — I’ve only ever used wooden ones.
1. They can collapse. No matter how much I tighten them, I can never be sure they won’t collapse while I wind or unwind. This by no means happens every time, nor does it happen frequently, but the few times it has happened (during many years) make me distrustful and fearful of them.
2. The wooden ones are never smooth enough for my fine silk yarn. The yarn snags on the wood.
3. They are narrowest at their center and expand in width outwards, so the length of yarn per rotation is not equal and a skein will have within it different lengths of yarn.
4. They don’t rotate smoothly.
The skein winder I use now is this:
I bought it on Etsy. I like it much better than the umbrella, although it too is not perfect. It rotates smoothly and the yarn is generally the same length. But:
1. there are many nuts and screws. The nuts do loosen if not checked regularly. I have had an arm fly off once during an intense session at high speed with an electric bobbin winder (sorry, that sounds vaguely obscene).
2. While the yarn rotation length is in theory the same — the space on the metal yarn holders being flat — I tend to apply too much pressure while winding, and the front of the metal holders gets pushed down a little, making the yarn toward the outer edge shorter than the yarn toward the inside.
3. It is adjustable for different skein sizes, but some skeins will be loose because you can play around with the pre-drilled holes, but obviously the available combinations will not be perfect for every size. I haven’t had a major problem, but it is something to consider.
4. It has a dinky handle to help rotate when winding, but the handle is quite small, more of a peg, really, and it fits loosely into one of the holes, but is not very stable. Sorry, it’s not in the pictures.
Tal lives in Belmont MA, a town adjacent to Cambridge. She graduated from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and Cranbrook Academy of Art.
Hello genteel and/or uncouth followers of Peggy, My name is Tal Saarony and I have been weaving for many years. I belong to the tribe of masochistic weavers who enjoy, while cursing like a sailor, battling with very fine yarn and, on occasion, inlaying patterns with several complicated treadling sequences, e.g., different overshots, into each row of weft. Not for me the simple life. These days I’m more of a plain weave kind of person, a balanced-weave tapestrier (in contrast with the weft-faced kind), but it still takes me hours to weave a full inch of cloth.
I recently asked Peggy a question she thought the rest of you might like to know the answer to, and she generously invited me to share a post with you.
I will add some pictures of my weavings at the end of the post for your perusal.
I recently bought some very fine silk yarn in skein form.
I needed a way to store it so that I would be able to cut pieces off to use for inlay in my weavings. Normally I use bobbins for yarn storage, but I would have had to buy a large number, probably about a hundred, and I was hoping to avoid the expense. I don’t use regular-sized bobbins and shuttles — my shuttles and corresponding bobbins are very small. While, to my thinking, you can never have too many bobbins of any size, it seemed silly to buy a hundred bobbins just for yarn storage.
Here are bobbins and a cardboard spool I have. I normally use the middle bobbin.
I came up with the idea of a bobbin that would have very wide flanges that would allow me to store the yarn on. I thought I invented this ingenious idea and in my mind’s eye was seeing the pots of money it would be bringing in, but apparently such spools have already been invented. Probably two thousand years ago. But I didn’t know this, and enthusiastically made a wonky paper prototype.
Before embarking on mass production, I sent an email to Peggy — whose knowledge and deep understanding of all things weaving is unparalleled — and to another master weaver friend, Bhakti Ziek. Both warned me kindly but firmly of the dangers of collapsing flanges and the ensuing loss of yarn and sanity. Peggy explained it thus: “Big problems if the flanges aren’t VERY strong. They will pop off and make a mess as the spool fills. As a spool fills, more and more pressure is applied to the core of the spool, squeezing it dramatically. That is what can cause the ends to pop off. A lot of pressure is being applied to the flanges, too as more and more thread is wound on.”
Both Peggy and Bhakti alerted me to the existence of cardboard and plastic spools such that I desired. The dreams of pots of money evaporated in an instance. I would have liked the plastic spools, but, alas, finances dictated cardboard. The spools are available at Halcyon Yarn, and also at other yarn and weaving tool stores. I have been sternly warned that the flanges of the cardboard spools have been known to pop off when the spools fill up, with catastrophic results.
I have not had this problem. Although my spools don’t look very full, the yarn is extremely fine and, in my estimation, there are tens of thousands of yards on each of the spools. Some of the skeins took as long as half a day each to wind on an electric winder (admittedly with frequent breakage).
The current spools are reinforced with metal. Check for that when you buy.
And so I invested in 30 spools.
Here is a skein of silk yarn on a skein winder being wound onto a cardboard spool mounted on an electric bobbin winder with which I have a love-hate relationship. Please excuse the tissue that sneaked into the picture. I assure you it is snot-free.
Spools wound with my silk yarn.
The inside diameter of the spools is larger than my Leclerc bobbin winders. I have one electric and 2 manuals (and don’t get me started on how much I dislike them all. Are you listening Nilus Leclerc? Contact me for design tips on how to make your bobbin winders user-friendly, weaver-friendly, human-friendly). The electric one is at least 30 years old and the others older; I skeptically wonder if newer ones are made differently (why improve something inadequate if it has been selling for years). For the electric one, Bamboo skewers — not much thicker than a toothpick, but longer — and insert it along with the spool onto the winder. The skewer will be destroyed with each removal of a spool from the winder, so you will need a packet of them. It takes a bit of trial and error to get just the right length of skewer sticking out toward the body of the winder. Push the spool inward as far as you can but leave about a 1 mm space between the spool and the wooden base.
The skewer method works with manual winders too, but it makes an unholy racket; they’re, annoyingly, noisy enough already. I found that wrapping some masking tape (you will later have to scrub off the sticky residue, so there’s that to consider) around the shaft works better.
The photo shows the end of a skewer peeping out. Note that the spool is pushed almost all the way to the wooden base and pushed a little bit onto the thicker part of the shaft. In the background is the manual winder with masking tape that was shredded when I struggled to pull the spool off.
Peggy expressed concern that you, the reading weaver, might be dazzled by my paper spool and rush to make your very own. Do not! Should you attempt to use such homemade crappy specimen, you are sure to end up ensnarled in a tangle of yarn; tearing at your hair; clawing at your eyes; and muttering incoherently, until your loved ones are forced to ship you off to a suitable facility.
Happy winding, and do heed the warning re homemade spools…
Tal
Mosaic Photos These are my most recent weavings. The pink ones are off the loom, but not cleaned up yet. The blue are still on the loom, the last two pictures are the same piece, still in progress. Click the first photo to see it larger and the details then use your arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate.
My last post was about my sampler that came before my overshot wall hanging. In the final piece I corrected the draft for the circle to make it symmetrical. That is, I used the rule about turning blocks. You’ll find it when reading the instructions for drafting overshot.
Here is the circle I began with which was in my sampler.
In the wall hanging I made more circles at the top but with white pattern weft as well as white tabby weft for white on white. An idea to think about.
Here at the bottom of the hanging you can get an idea of the drafts I used from the sampler. For most of the hanging the texture won’t give a clue as to the blocks threaded in the sections.
The draft I used directly from the sampler was in sections 2 and 4. The corrected circle draft was used for the sections 1, 3, and 5.
I made the texture by just treadling the same pattern block over and over. With the tabby wefts as usual. The warp is a smooth rayon and the pattern weft in the textured area is a nubbly yarn. The tabby might have been the same as the warp or some other appropriate smooth yarn.
Here is the finished wall hanging that followed a very ugly sampler.
When I learned about overshot and designing for it, I wanted to try everything in my sampler. So, a different technique/design went into each of the four sections. The outside sections were similar 2-block overshot on 4 shafts.
In the section with the big X, I designed a large circle. The other middle section I designed for the optical blocks you can see further on. My other idea was to graduate the colors of the pattern wefts from dark to light—not thinking about what the yarns themselves looked like!
Here you can see both the 4-block circle and the optical circle. In 2 blocks.
Looking closely I noticed my circle wasn’t symmetrical. I had disregarded the instructions for threading turning blocks. (So that’s what turning blocks are all about!)
Progressing along with various yarns and techniques for overshot threadings, my sampler became more and more ugly.
Near the end I was just wanting to get to the end, so I tried weaving the same block over and over. I made the last section the same as the first hoping it would transform it into something nice—didn’t work!
When thinking about what my final project would be my teacher asked what my favorite part was. This repeated-one-block design was my reply. And that was enough to start me on my final design. More on that the next time.
