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jeanweaves

~ Jean Williams, Handweaver

jeanweaves

Category Archives: Terminology

Always Learning, Always Growing

06 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by jeanweaves in creating, Designing, Looms, Terminology

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Drawlooms, Loom, Weaving

“What does this loom do that your other loom doesn’t?”

That’s the question my sister asked me when I told her last year that I was thinking about getting another big loom. It’s a reasonable question. A loom is a big expense. It takes up a lot of space. There’s only one of me and I can only weave on one loom at a time. So why get another one?

There’s no short answer, really. Weaving is just making threads go up or down to produce fabric. This can be done with your fingers, on frames, with back straps, even pieces of cardboard with slits cut in it. How many of us, as kids, wove those ubiquitous little pot holders with knit loopers on metal frames?

Looms are tools. Weavers use them to create the fabric that is in their heads. The real question is what do we want to weave? That determines the loom.

Schacht Baby Wolf jack loom

Schacht Baby Wolf jack loom

Most weavers learn on jack looms. When you step on a treadle, the shafts connected to it are jacked up, the others stay down. That’s how the shed is made. Each treadle controls any number of shafts, making design possible. My first loom was a four-shaft Harrisville jack loom, 22” weaving width, a good starter loom.

Counterbalance Union rug loom

Counterbalance Union rug loom

Many old rug looms and barn looms are counterbalance looms. Each shaft is tied to an opposing shaft so that when the treadle tied to the first shaft is depressed, that shaft goes down and the opposing shaft goes up. My grandmother’s old Union loom was a 2-shaft counterbalance loom.

Many Swedish looms are either counterbalance or countermarche. On countermarche looms, when a treadle is depressed, every shaft goes either up or down. Every shaft is tied to every treadle. This opens the shed in both directions, up and down, and is easier on the warp threads. It’s also easier to treadle designs with lots of heddles on individual shafts.

Countermarche tie-ups, every treadle on every shaft.

Countermarche tie-ups, every treadle on every shaft.

All these looms produce beautiful fabric: simple plain weave, twill, lace, overshot, blocks, units, diagonals, layers. The weaver is only limited by the number of shafts on the loom. Without going into a treatise on weaving theory (for which I am definitely unqualified!), I can say from experience that each type of loom has its design possibilities and limitations.*

When I bought my first big loom, my intention was to get the one loom that would do whatever I wanted to weave forever and ever, amen. But how was I to know what directions my weaving would take at this early point?

Besides my little Harrisville, I had woven on Glimäkra countermarche looms at a week-long class and really liked how sturdy they are, the overhead beater, the treadling action. During that week, I also wove samples on both a single-unit drawloom and a shaft drawloom. Drawlooms add a whole world of possibilities to weaving.

A drawloom has a set of shafts separate from the ground shafts. The shaft drawloom produces repeating designs across the warp. These can be symmetrical or mirrored, tiled or single figures. The single unit drawloom lets you lift individual units to produce asymmetrical non-repeating designs. After some careful thought, I chose a Glimäkra countermarche loom with a 20-shaft drawloom attachment to grow into.

But a couple years ago, I thought a second big loom would be very useful. The drawloom setup is different than the regular set-up and every time I needed to switch from one to the other, it took a day to change heddles and rebalance the loom. It would be more efficient if I could have one loom as my regular loom and one loom set always as a drawloom.

That was the short answer to my sister’s question—efficiency and productivity.

And now I am getting closer to that goal of a dedicated multi-shaft loom and a dedicated drawloom. This week I ought to take delivery on a combination shaft and single-unit drawloom. This set-up fits onto my second loom and will allow me to continue weaving the damask designs I’ve been doing, as well as adding single unit motifs. I’m thinking of flowers, birds, dragons, even words.

I can hardly wait to see what this new set-up will do. Always learning, always growing.

* For a thorough look at weaving theory, check out these books:

  • Madelyn van der Hoogt’s The Complete Book of Drafting for Handweavers (1993, Shuttlecraft Books).
  • Sara von Tresckow’s When a Single Harness Simply Isn’t Enough (2014, The Woolgatherers, Ltd.) describes in detail the workings of drawlooms.
  • The Book of Looms by Eric Broudy (1979, University Press of New England) presents a good history of looms of all kinds from around the world.

A Satin by Any Other Name…

25 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by jeanweaves in Damask, Satin, Terminology

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Damask, Satin, Textiles, Weaving

My apologies to William Shakespeare:

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would still smell as sweet.”

Act II Scene II, Romeo and Juliet

What do you picture when you think of satin? Something smooth, with a sheen that reflects the candlelight? A fabric somewhat heavy but with a lovely drape? What is satin?

Red Damask on the loom

Red Damask on the loom

What do you think of when you hear “damask”? Do you see figured tablecloths on your grandmother’s holiday table? Do you see a dense fabric in a single color or an elaborate upholstery for the sofa?

In popular usage, satin is that shiny, slippery fabric commonly used in wedding gowns – and sometimes sheets, although I’m told that satin sheets don’t live up to their hype. Damask can be heavy suiting, upholstery, or table linens.

In weaving terminology, satin is “a weave with warp floats on one surface of the cloth and weft floats on the other.”  (van der Hoogt,  Madelyn, The Complete Book of Drafting for Handweavers. Coupeville, Washington: Shuttlecraft Books, Inc., 1993).

Snowflake Damask Runner

Snowflake Damask Runner

“Satins have one binding point only on each warp thread within the repeat.” (Cyrus, Ulla, Manual of Swedish Handweaving. Boston, Massachusetts: Charles T. Branford Company, 1956). Having only that single binding point produces long floats which reflect the light, thus giving satin its sheen. Using fine threads with more luster accentuates that characteristic of satin. Satin is closely related to twill but because those tie-down threads are scattered, there is no characteristic diagonal line.

Handwoven satin is not as fine as machine-produced satin, mainly because factory-produced cloth uses much finer threads than are available to handweavers. Nonetheless, handwoven satin produces a lovely fabric!

“Damask is a self-patterned weave which…is based on interchanging areas of warp and weft emphasis.” (Johansson, Lillemor, Damask and Opphämta. Stockholm, Sweden: LTs Förlag 1982). Satin is often used in weaving damask, but other weave structures can be used in one of the faces, satin with twill for example.

I’ve dabbled in weaving satin damask for many years and each time I thread the loom, I learn something else. This summer, I’ve learned a new way to weight my ground shafts so they come back to a neutral position (simple elastic straps). I’ve also played around with some floral motifs gleaned from early weaving manuscripts.

Red and White Dräll (as opposed to "damask"), front and back

Red and White Dräll (as opposed to “damask”), front and back

I feel like I have so much to learn about these structures. Case in point, in researching for this blog, I realized that I have been using the term “damask” exclusively when some of what I weave is more correctly classified as dräll weave which uses repeating blocks for patterning whereas “the patterning in damask is…freer and richer than the geometrical figures in dräll.” (Johansson).

I’d like to see how 8-shaft satin differs in look from 5-shaft satin. That experiment is yet to come. A friend also noted that a lot of early manuscripts show drafts that combine satin on one face with a different weave on the other face. Intriguing.  That too begs to be studied.

What do you think of when you hear “satin” and “damask”? Let me know.

Loom Envy

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by jeanweaves in Craft History, Looms, Terminology

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Craft History, Early American Weaving, Loom, Weaving

Many years ago, I heard a well-known weaver speaking at a conference. He joked that whenever he wanted to change threadings, he just went out and bought another loom. At least I thought he was joking and all us in the audience laughed with him. But now I wonder if, indeed, he was just being honest.

You see one of the most time-consuming tasks of weaving is threading the loom. Each thread has to go through a heddle and a dent (a slot) in the reed (the beater). Patterns weaves like damask and double go through two heddles and the reed. Some warps have hundreds of threads. So for that conference speaker, it was more cost-effective to buy another loom than to keep rethreading every time he needed to change patterns. I don’t think I can make the same argument.

One alternative is to put on very long warps. For me, “very long” is defined as 20 yards. One of my friends routinely puts on 21 yards. Some weavers put on 50 or more yards. The longer the warp, the more fabric you can weave before you have to re-thread.  But what if I get bored with the pattern after 10 yards and there are 20 more to go? What if I get an order for something that needs that width, but there are 20 more yards to weave before I can change warps?

Loom threaded with damask, using drawloom shafts.

Loom threaded with damask, using drawloom shafts.

Earlier weavers had a solution for this. Their looms had pieces that could be interchanged. There are references in their records to “gears” which controlled the pattern. When they needed to weave an overshot coverlet, they put that “gear” into the loom frame and tied on a new warp. If they needed to weave dimity, they stalled that “gear.” So it sounds like they had a limited number of loom frames and multiple “gears” to weave the various patterns they offered.

I’ve tried to imagine what these gears were. I have an antique Newcomb loom which has a cast-iron device that changes the shed and advances the warp every time the beater is pulled. Is this what they are talking about? If so, it would be pretty heavy to change out when a new order came in. Or are they referring to the actual shafts with heddles? I can see bundling my threaded shafts and carefully rolling them up to preserve a threading, but it would work better if I kept the threads in the reed and bundled the reed with the shafts. That requires extra reeds.

All this discussion is really an attempt on my part to fend off “loom envy.” For the past year, I’ve vacillated about getting another loom. I’ve pretty much decided that it’s not necessary, but there are times when I really could use another wide loom. A girl can dream!

A Word about Words

17 Tuesday Sep 2013

Posted by jeanweaves in Terminology, Uncategorized

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Tags

Loom, Weaving

No matter what field you are in, you are sure to speak your own “language”, using terms that lose people outside your expertise. Weaving is no different. Some weaving terms have worked their way into common idioms (Have you ever heard someone refer to “the warp and woof of life”?) but are still a little obscure. So here’s a quick little lesson to help clarify cloth-making for you!

The place to start is the loom. The loom is the primary tool used to create cloth. There are lots of different kinds of looms: warp-weighted looms, horizontal looms, vertical looms, Navajo looms, backstrap looms, barn looms, draw looms, dobby looms, and computer-assisted looms. To learn more about all the different kinds of looms used throughout history, check out The Book of Loomsby Eric Broudy (1979, University of New England). It is a thorough presentation of lots of different looms, even if it is an older book and doesn’t include the more recent computer-assisted looms available now. Here is the 12-harness Swedish draw loom that lives in my studio.

what1The harnesses or shafts are the frames that hang inside a floor loom and carry the heddles through which the warp is threaded. There can be anywhere from 2 to 24 or more harnesses on a loom. The more harnesses one has, the more patterning is possible. Each warp thread goes through one heddle (white string heddles here) on one shaft. The exception to this is the draw loom which has two sets of harnesses and the warp will be threaded through one shaft on each set. I know—it’s complicated. Here you can see the front harness on my draw loom with the draw harness hanging in the back.

what2The beater holds the reed which pushes the weft thread down to make the cloth. Each warp thread is threaded through one slot or dent in the reed and then through one heddle on one of the shafts. Here you can see the reed in the beater with the warp yet to be threaded on my 8-shaft loom.

what3The warp is the foundation of the cloth, the length-wise threads that are tied onto the loom. Here you can see the warp threaded through the reed.

what4The treadles are tied to the harnesses and control their movement, leaving the hands free to throw the shuttle, which carries the weft across the warp.

what5The weft is the thread that is interwoven with the warp. In some older texts, the word “woof” is used, but it is the same thing. Here you can see the weft thread wound on the bobbin in the shuttle with the weaving in progress.

what6That is a quick lesson in weaving terms and a quick tour of a warp in progress. More on weaving terms in coming blogs.

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