A Saga of Silk in the Gum: Chapter 1, Winding the Warp

Three photos above: first, gossamer-weight silk on the cone; second, a detail of one strand of silk yarn; last, a microscopic look at the same yarn (about 100x).

Thanks to the valiant de-stashing efforts of a friend, I now own about 3 ounces of raw silk organzine, which has a grist of about 18,700 yards per pound. It's wonderful yarn because it's reeled silk -- a.k.a. thrown silk or raw silk -- meaning it came straight from the cocoon. A single strand of silk filament from one cocoon typically ranges from 2,000 to 5,000 feet long. And it's very strong.

Silk reeled straight from the cocoon is still "in the gum." When the silkworm spins a cocoon, the filament it creates is coated in sericin -- a gummy substance that makes each ever-so-fine strand adhere to others, in order to create a sturdy, solid cocoon. To make silk yarn, these filaments are gathered to create one strand of silk, which is plied with another to create silk yarn. It's a very delicate, laborious process.

Even after it's spun into yarn (such as the cone shown at the beginning of this post), silk in the gum is not easy to handle, because of its tendency to twist back on itself. Also, the stiffness of the yarn causes challenges: If it's not under tension and it's on a cone, it unravels all over the place, fast. Elastic socks (cut into a tube) don't help much, in my view. Neither do "yarn bras" (otherwise recognized as the green plastic webs we put over wine bottles to keep them from breaking). I use them to store the yarn, but not when I'm winding a warp.

(A slight but necessary digression: Nearly all of the silk used by weavers today is degummed, so that it's silky and shiny and gorgeous. Further, nearly all of the silk used by weavers today is spun silk, which is made from fiber left over from the reeling process or from damaged or imperfect cocoons. Spun silk is not as strong as reeled silk -- because the filaments are so short -- and it's much fuzzier, so it often pills. I've sometimes resorted to a seam ripper to separate two warp yarns that were bound together by one of these pills, or "nits," as I call them.)

Still, despite how tricky it is to handle, reeled silk is a genuine treasure, creating fabric with a drape and hand that's hard to find with any other yarn. Plus, it takes dye beautifully.

Above: detail of a scarf I dyed and wove using degummed, reeled silk.

It's a 12-shaft Echo pattern I call "Pagoda." 

Reeled silk still in the gum is used to weave silk organza, a gauze-like fabric with a stiff hand and a matte finish. Above, a silk organza scarf shibori-dyed in black by Ana Lisa Hedstrom, which I was lucky enough to buy at the Conference of Northern California Weavers (CNCH) last year. 

Again, back to the story. I've got this fine silk in the gum and I want to degum it after weaving, using a shibori-resist technique, so that portions of the fabric will be degummed (becoming soft and shiny and pliable, like silk Habotai) while the majority of the surface will still be in the gum and stiff (like silk organza). The idea is to create a contrast in texture -- a dimensional fabric -- with lots of interesting pleats and bumps. 

Below is the pattern I plan to use. The red-colored ends in the drawdown show where I will add the shibori-resist yarns, yarns that I will pull tight and knot to create a sort of "package" of accordion folds. When washed in soda ash and Orvus paste to remove the sericin (gum), the edges of the folds will be exposed to the solution while the interior of the folds will not. At least that's my theory. I'm going to weave up some small samples first, of course, because you never know. (Best-laid plans and all....)

You'll note that I've got red ends at the corners of the diamonds in both warp and weft. That's because I plan to sample it both ways: using warp tie-ups to create horizontal pleats and, for another sample, using weft tie-ups for vertical pleats. Once you draw the fabric in using these yarns (which have to be very strong or they'll break and ruin all that weaving), you will have a tight package of pleats ready for degumming. The pattern is #78120 from handweaving.net.

For the warp ends that I'll use as shibori ties, I plan on using this Nymo beading thread because you Simply. Cannot. Break it. My fingers may hurt, but my shibori ties will be intact. Again, that's my plan.

But first I have to wind the warp. I called my friend, Deb Kaplan, a brilliant weaver from Boston, and asked her about winding the warp from cones -- knowing full well that it would be a challenge. She suggested I first wind the yarn onto spools, which I don't have so I substituted bobbins. She also suggested using a manual bobbin winder rather than an electric one, because a manual winder is slower, making it much easier to keep an even tension as I wind the bobbins.

You want the yarn to look like this as you wind it onto the bobbin.

Not like this. (Excuse the background. Weavers need stuff.)

To get just the right tension, you might want to wind the yarn around a chair leg or anything rounded and handy. Here, I used part of a steel utility shelf.

Deb suggested I wind two ends at once in the warp cross, which I often do. Of course, winding the warp is the ultimate even-tension, straight-line-to-the-warping reel kind of challenge. A creel would be helpful in this case, but alas, I don't have one, so a shoe box will have to do. (Final Sale, $31.73 at Macy's.)

Below, my shoebox creel with bobbins in place (with yarn coming forward from underneath the bobbin, hoping that gravity will also help tame it a bit). Ready to begin warping. 

Samples to come, probably a good couple of months from now, as I already have a warp on the loom....

 

Thanks for reading!

Bombyx Mori silkworms munching mulberry leaves, courtesy of Wikipedia