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

Above photos: 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 strand to create silk yarn. It's a very delicate, laborious process.

Even after it's spun into yarn (such as the yarn on 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 much shorter -- and for that reason 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.)

In contrast, 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 yarn in the gum and I want to degum it after weaving, using a shibori-resist technique, so that portions of the woven fabric will be degummed (becoming soft and shiny and pliable, like silk Habotai) while the rest of the fabric will still be in the gum and stiff (like silk organza). The idea is to create contrasts 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 the fabric with tight 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 (shown below) because it Simply. Won't. Break. 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 additionally 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

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Post script: My shoebox creel didn't work. The yarns unwound and got tangled all over the dowels. So I resorted to a simpler approach: I put my two bobbins in two plastic yogurt containers that I placed on the floor.

Believe it or not, the weight of the bobbins themselves created enough tension for me to successfully wind my warp. I did take care to divide the two ends of yarn with my fingers, to keep them from tangling.

It worked! Warp wound. More to come...

Notes from CNCH, the Conference of Northern California Handweavers

 

Let's start with the photo above: a series of samples woven on eight shafts in deflected doubleweave by Marta Shannon. It's just one picture of dozens of interesting, colorful, and always original samples created by weavers in my workshop this past weekend: "Deflected Doubleweave for Collapse Fabrics."

The goal of my workshop was twofold: 1) to teach weavers to recognize and even design deflected doubleweave patterns and 2) to push the already tactile, off-the-grid quality of DDW by using "energized" yarns such as Colcolastic, metallic gimp, wool-stainless steel, silk-stainless steel, overtwisted linen singles in S and Z twist, overtwisted wool singles in S and Z twist, and, of course, the ever-reliable Jaggerspun 18/2 superfine merino, which fulls beautifully when you give it some wiggle room in the cloth. (Bottom line: plain weave resists fulling and other collapse techniques, because it's the most stable, firm structure of all, while DDW encourages pleating, poufing, and billowing of your fabric because it has warp and weft floats built in, by design,)

That's a lot of words, so here are some photos to give you a better idea of what we were working on.

Some four-shaft samples woven with wefts of both active and inactive yarns. Weaver Rusti Icenogle points to the bottom sample, which pleats vertically because the rose-colored weft is wool/stainless-steel yarn, which fulls and draws the fabric in after it's washed and agitated with hot water and soap.

You know that famous quote, I think it's from Laura Fry, "It ain't finished until it's finished"? We spent a lot of time at the sinks in the ladies' room scrubbing away at our samples, using regular hand soap....

Above, a series of samples woven by Autumn Barr, who was weaving on her brand new eight-shaft loom for the first time. Her warp was 10/2 cotton (brown) and 18/2 merino (white) and she alternated these two yarns as weft also. It's hard to see in this photo, but the sample at the bottom shows lots of horizontal pleats in the brown stripes, which are drawn in as the white wool fulls in the washing.

This sample belongs to Denise Lee, who wove an eight-shaft pattern I call Mardi Gras. For this sample, she alternated green Colcolastic and 10/2 cotton in the weft. The Colcolastic yarn, brand name Venne, has a 20/2 cotton strand combined with a strand of elastic, which shrinks up immediately when washed.

These samples are woven on eight shafts by Colleen Harvey-Arrison. The larger blocks in teal are 18/2 merino, which fulls and draws in the magenta cotton blocks, adding texture and making them curve and flow over the fabric.

The CNCH conference, affectionately known as "Cinch," is held every year in a different area of northern California. It's well worth attending, with exhibits, vendors (including Lunatic Fringe Yarns, Dharma Trading, and Eugene Textile Center), a keynote speech (this year by tapestry artist Susan Iverson), terrific meals, and lots of friendly fiber artists.

Take Sara Lamb, for instance, who is a well-known author, teacher, spinner, dyer, and weaver.

Sara wears a jacket she wove and sewed, of course! Plus the yarns are handspun silk that she dyed, all plain weave in structure -- showing off those yarns to the maximum.

The cloth is warp-emphasis (and is displayed horizontally in this photo).

I got to rub shoulders with other weaving royalty as well: seen below, Ana Lisa Hedstrom and Peggy Osterkamp. I had dinner with Peggy -- during which at least two weavers came up to our table to thank her for her many books that helped them build their weaving skills.

I fell in love with this tapestry on exhibit, shown below, titled "Pandemic Oasis" and woven by Nancy Isaac of the Loom and Shuttle Guild in San Francisco.

I also fell in love with this tatted piece, a work in progress by Nancy Alegria, in which she is recording the temperature and the sunlight (encoded in colors) of every day in 2024.

Even after the conference, I'm still taking it all in. Lots of learning, too many purchases (I won't list them, but there was yarn involved), and great camaraderie. 

Here's to next year!