Paper threads

 From the Comics to the Unknown

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I wanted color in my newspapers, so the Sundy Comics are providing it. Now, all I have to do is improve my spinning of it.

My first skein had so many knots because whenever my “yarn” broke I just tied the pieces together and went on spinning.

Fewer breaks and knots for my 2nd skein using the comic section. This is how I’d like the yarn to be (no knots). I’m thinking of making a vest if I can get good enough and comic sections from my neighbors.

I decided to take a chance and ply 2 yarns to make a stronger yarn. I like it a lot but it means spinng twice the amount! Maybe I will only have enough for an accent wefts.

Here’s the spinning wheel I’m using, and I like it a lot—a Louet. My teachers like it for their beginning students.

This is my own spinning wheel. It would draw in too hard and I never could get a thread that wouldn’t break. I thought it would be good because it is known to be a good twister. I guess one still has to have something strong enough in the first place. I bought it in the 70’s before I learned to spin because I loved the look and the large orifice.

More Learning: Spinning Pattern Paper and Newspapers and Using a Spinning Wheel

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I’ve learned to spin pattern paper and am working on newspapers now. Using a spinning wheel to do it is a whole new experience for me. This piece uses pattern paper and all the colored newpaper I could manage for the first week.

I had several serious spinners teach me and I discovered my “Indian Spinner” wheel wasn’t going to work. Now I’m borrowing a Louet wheel which is what they use for teaching. I conquered spinning black and white newspapers, but when I saw bits of color in this piece I began to want to spin colored parts of our local newspapers—something else to learn!

I tried basket weave to show more of the paper wefts. The colored paper I still had not conquered.

This is my first newspaper experiment. I was just learning to weave newspaper and when the thread broke I just tied the two pieces together and kept on spinning. The knot ended up right in the middle and I needed every inch of thread, so I just left it there.

I’d made a piece before using strips I cut from a page in an old Japanese book. I had to try this soccer boy! You can see my previous paper spinning on my website HERE.

Got Creative: Paper Thread and Beyond 

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Introduction:

When the paper warp was done, I still had more ideas to try. The second warp was linen (not enough commercial paper thread). Then if an idea came to me, I tried it. It was great fun—no sweating or worrying how it would turn out. To make the pieces coordinated, I began each with my “2-stick heading.” I use it all the time when I want to cut off samples or pieces before the warp is finished. 

Horsehair weft in a plexiglass box I had made.

Kibiso weft. That’s made from the waste material on the outside of silkworm cocoons. It’s hugely irregular and wild.

A page from an old Japanese book as weft.

Since I made two-stick headings on everything, why not weave a whole piece with just “headings”? 

I was inspired by a piece I saw at the paper thread maker’s studio in Japan. The piece was quite long with weaving at the top and somewhere in the middle. I just used the loom waste at the end of the warp. The Japanese one was better proportioned.

Paper Weaving Update

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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 

The Raddle is Loaded!

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Note: This warp is made of commercially made paper threads. My spun paper will be for the weft.

Here is my raddle clamped to the top of my loom with all the warp threads are in their dents. I have 2 special raddles—a 5-dents per inch and a 6. Good for fine threads when ½” spaces are too wide. I’m using my 6-dent raddle here.

Today began with taking the warp off the warping reel and winding it on a stick like a kitestick. This keeps all the threads under tension so they can’t tangle.

Here the sticks are in place: An end stick and the lease sticks. The ties haven’t been removed yet. This is to check to be sure the sticks are in the correct spaces.

Loading the raddle from the group cross made when winding the warp. This should make loading the raddle a piece of cake. There are three threads in the group cross I made for the raddle. Ie there are 3 threads in each space of my 6-dent raddle.

These paper threads are wild. I’m glad for all my choke ties I made in the warp! (You can see the kitestick in the back. Only enough warp is unwound for loading the raddle.)

These paper threads are REALLY wild and jumpy! I’m glad for all the production weaving techniques I learned from Jim Ahrens and put in my books! Remember what he told me: “The only thread that can’t tangle is one under tension.”

Watch out! Weaving for Beginners is being reprinted for the 4th Edition—with a few additions!

A Paper Warp: after not Weaving for a Long Time

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This is the first warp I’ve made in years—I know my last warp was made before the pandemic. It felt good but almost  like the first warp I ever made, somehow.

All the cross ties in. Check!

All the ties for the group cross for the raddle. Check!

All the choke ties in. Check!
Tomorrow I will load the raddle.

Paper Threads: Learning Bit by Bit

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My first paper spinning was a workshop in Japan. I thought I knew all there was to know. My own first thread was years ago using paper pattern paper. Lately I’ve been using paper from Japanese account books and I thought I knew all there was to know. However I started to worry that my handspun paper was highly over twisted and it wouldn’t swell or be all right for dish towels.

A friend suggested hers was overtwisted, too, and she wetted her skeins and weighted them to dry and the overtwisted kinks straightened out. I wanted to try it but I was at home away from my studio which has all my equipment and tools. This is how I weighted the my skeins. And they did turn out straight as could be (but kept the little bumps which I love).

I had to make do without a yarn swift to make the skeins. I turned a stool upside down to use the legs to wind my skeins. I was zooming with my weaving friends and one suggested putting the stool on the seat of my office chair and to whirl the chair around to make the skeins. That worked and made large skeins. Which I wetted and weighted as seen above.

This is a tool for making skeins. It’s called a niddy-noddy!

Several people said they were using a drop spindle so now I’m trying that out. I’ve spun a bit and know the principles of spinning so I can spin a thread.

The book suggested using a drop spindle and mentioned making S-twist thread. That means twirling the spindle counter-clockwise. I don’t know why but that’s what I’m trying. And I can control the twist much better and not have the overtwisted problem.

I hope you can see it’s much less twisted and perhaps notice that the twist is in the S direction. That means the diagonal lines of the twist go in the same direction as the middle section of the letter S—from the upper left to the lower right. I don’t think I’ll need to set the twist by wetting and weighting this time. Now I’m really trying to spin enough for a project. Hooray for the Democratic Convention this week.

Flea Market Finds: Gold Leaf Paper Wefts

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My first find at a flea market was this fragment of a Japanese fabric with gold threads. I immediately turned it over and yes! Gold leaf paper threads were there! (This end of the cloth shows the name of the weaving designer woven in. It shows that it was not machine made or mass produced.)

The reverse side showed floats on the wrong side that were definitely strips of “gold paper”.

Here is a close up of the right side of the fabric where gold areas can be seen woven in the brocade.

At the edges you can see that the wefts were individual strips of the gold “threads”. Look closely at some of the edges of the previous photos and you can see the ends of the wefts sticking out.

In a dusty junk shop I saw this bundle and knew what it must be. Fine strips of gold paper cut and  attached at the ends ready to be woven into a brocade. The “threads” were really long for a very wide warp I realized. The strips would be pinched off one weft at a time and a special hook would be used by the weaver to pull it through the shed. Special artisans would do the gold leaf process, then someone else would be the one to cut the thin strips.

Here is a close up of the cut threads still attached to the edge of the gold leaf paper.

Here is a bundle of shorter threads. It would be for a much narrower cloth—perhaps an obi. (On my first trip to Japan I saw this demonstrated by a woman weaving an obi. She gave me some threads and the hook that would be used-treasures I still have.)

Paper Thread Continued: Now I Know What to Weave: Dish Towels!

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I got a lot of comments on the paper thread post. Some were inspiring so I have to share them. I understand paper threads were used to weave clothing and the cloth is machine washable and OK in the  dryer. There was an article about someone weaving dish towels and that inspired me. Apparently the cloth gets softer and softer. More to come! I’m debating whether to use cotton or commercial paper thread (I got in Japan) for the warp. Note that I haven’t tried it yet!

Comments:

Anna: “I took a workshop with the author of the book you mentioned. She had us use drop spindles to spin our paper yarn. Also there are some videos on paper spinning on YouTube by Susan Byrd. Her book is also very informative, “A Song of Praise for Shifu”.

Mary Alice: “This is wonderful, Peggy . I’m very intrigued. I wonder what you can and cannot use the finished cloth for? I’m assuming you wouldn’t want to get them wet.”

Kay: “Interesting, I’ve got to try this! As a spinner a whole new adventure. Thank you.”

Simone: “Thank you for sharing this! I love this and will use this technique. I used to coil paper or dried grass for making baskets.”

Lori: “Oh that is just fascinating! I wish I’d kept my father’s old maps – he was a land surveyor – I bet they would have made wonderful strong thread. I’m a basket weaver as well as a cloth weaver – this has given me all kinds of ideas. I may have to devise a tapestry loom. What do you use for warp?”

How to fold the paper for cutting: Specifics for more refined threads are given in the book.

The author suggested laying out 4 sheets of paper to cut at once. I did that. In the photo I just show a single sheet. I’ve done that, too.

Fold the paper lengthwise with the fold away from you.

Take the top layer and fold it so that it extends about an 1-1 ½” above the fold line you originally made.

Flip the paper over and fold the other side to match up with the fold you just made.

This view shows the folds. If you have trouble, the author explains things thoroughly and clearly.

Making Paper Threads: My Way

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A bobbin with paper thread.

What I like is the irregularity of my thread: thick and thin and the black specks.

My thread is made from paper from Japanese account books I got at flea markets in Japan years ago. It’s commonly used for making paper threads. Long, long ago I made paper thread from old sewing pattern paper.

Before credit cards, people charged things on the pages in account books. Sometimes pages have red stamps which make the woven cloth even more interesting. I didn’t find any in this account book, though.

You take a page and fold and cut it in a certain way.

You pinch off the cut strips so you get a long length to make a thread.

You want a long length after you carefully pinch the uncut areas to separate the new thread from the cut paper.

Make a paper quill instead of using a plastic bobbin.

Starting the paper strip into the quill on the bobbin winder. I was told a spinning wheel can be used instead of a bobbin winder.

As you crank, guide the strip onto the tip of the winder so it twists the paper into the thread.

The thread will have lumps where the cut strips were pinched off the paper.

After twisting a bit, I wind the twisted paper onto the quill. Here you can see again that the paper was made into a long thread before twisting.

I used the clear illustrations and text to make my uneven threads with the slubs. You can also use the book to make paper that is absolutely regular if you prefer.