Learning Curves

 

Learning curves, plural. For example: In the photo above -- a networked Echo threading on 32 shafts -- can you see two threading errors? I will give you a clue: They're pretty obvious ;o)

These are just two of nine, count 'em, nine threading errors in this project so far. I've named it "Learning Curves" because it's the inaugural project for a new-to-me 32-shaft Louet Megado.

I am thrilled, to say the least, to have this loom. However -- and this is a big however -- it may be 15 to 20 years old and may have sat unused for the past four years or more. Which means that, not only did I have to up my game to weave on such a complex machine (which meant hours and hours of designing on Fiberworks), but the loom itself had to be reconditioned, basically. (Spouses are useful in this regard, particularly if they are smart and willing to help out.) And learning how to recondition it involved making mistakes, lots of mistakes, in the process of weaving this first design.

For instance, ends fraying and breaking at the left selvage: Too much draw in (which I should know enough to avoid). My answer was to go easier with the shuttle and, more important, to use my lovely Bluster Bay end-feed-delivery shuttle, which really makes a difference on the "drag" of the weft against the selvages.

And then I needed Texsolv cord. Lots of it.

Texsolv: Don't weave home without it.

I needed -- well, rather, WE needed -- lots of Texsolv because the cords that ran the pulleys that connected to the dobby box that lifted the shafts... kept breaking. But what we didn't know was that, more than Texsolv, we needed Teflon spray to un-gum-up all the pulleys. 

Teflon spray: It works.

We did lots of consulting, too, primarily through that brainy listserve known as WeaveTech (weavetech@groups.io, an invaluable resource for all questions weaving). There I learned how to get in touch with Dave Vanstralen, president of Louet Looms, who got back to me immediately and gave me lots of pointers on how to get this ship out of dry dock. And then there was Mimi Anderson, president of Complex Weavers, who pointed out to me that I should actually check back on WeaveTeach to look at all the answers people had posted. And Fran Osten (www.danforthweavers.com) who suggested using heat-shrink tubing to protect the Texsolv cord from abrading when it meets a screw that's attached to one of the pulleys.

Heat-shrink tubing, which we haven't used yet, because painter's tape is doing the job. 

I won't bore you with a photo of painter's tape! And I may be boring you right now, if you've read this far, because this is a blog about weaving and I haven't shown you any weaving.

Well, long story slightly shortened, I am finally weaving. There is just one more threading error to fix, but here is where I am at this point, weaving an Echo design on 32 shafts.

This same is the same tieup and threadling as the design in the first photo of this blog post -- but here the weft is an azalea-colored 20/2 cotton.

I didn't mention that the warp comprises two highly saturated complementary colors in 10/2 cotton:

These are colors I would not ordinarily have chosen for an Echo warp, but that my previous blog post discussed the use of complementaries with Echo designs. I was thinking out loud about how complementaries can add so much energy and interest to a weaving -- and so I decided to go full bore with these striking colors. Not pretty, but striking.

I really like the results so far.

The top sample uses a dark forest green/emerald weft in 20/2 cotton, while the bottom portion uses a gold/khaki-colored linen singles that I don't think works as well as the cotton.

After this, I hope to do more samples: another Echo design, a few in Jin and a couple in double weave. I'm hoping to try some differential-shrinkage techniques with one of the double-weave designs. Here's the drawdown I'm thinking will work for pleating and puckering.

Meanwhile, I will keep the Teflon spray nearby. Thanks for reading!

Why Do We Love Complementary Colors?

Color choices in weaving -- choosing from the untold number of hues in the yarns and dyes available to us -- are among the most valuable decisions we make as weavers. Color can transform a well-known, often repeated weave structure and turn it into something interesting, illuminating, even heartening. 

For an example, take a look at the photo above: It's a simple turned twill on 8 shafts, woven with a hand-painted 5/2 Tencel weft on a hand-pained 60/2 silk  warp. To me, the glow of the yarns, combining an electric blue and a coppery orange, makes for a visually appealing fabric. Nothing fancy going on here, really, just a juxtaposition of complementaries.

It's amazing to me how complementary colors -- those that lie across from each other on the color wheel -- have such immense appeal to our eyes and spirits.

Farbkreis by Johannes Itten, 1961

Nature understands this, of course. 

Leaves of green and magenta

Blues and rose-golds of a sunset

Rose bushes with pink and green

Why are these combinations so beautiful? Science tells us it has to do with the photoreceptor cells in our eyes -- the rods and cones that interpret color for our brains. Rods can detect light and dark, while cones detect colors. And it seems that, if these receptors become overstimulated, they seek to return to normalcy. 

We all know about the after-image effect: When you stare at a bright color for a while and then look away, you will see a ghost image of its complement on the color wheel.

Stare for a few seconds at the green geese on a red background, then look away. 

You will see an after-image of geese in magenta on a blue background.

It's as if our eyes seek balance, as if a marriage of opposites is soothing to our senses. Our eyes look for harmony. At least that's my interpretation. 

So what does this mean for our weaving choices? It all depends, of course, on which technique we are using, what effects we seek and what color combinations we ourselves enjoy, as everyone's rods and cones are different. 

But if I can speak for one technique -- that of choosing warp colors for Echo threadings, where you're threading your loom in two or more alternating colors -- I've come to the conclusion that complementary colors in a warp can produce unexpected and beautiful results in the fabric. It depends greatly on the weft, of course, as it so often does. Here are a few examples, from workshops I've taught.

Most recently, Anne Benson of North Carolina chose these two colors for a workshop I'm teaching, "One Warp, Many Structures: An Exploration of Extended Parallel Threading." 

If you go back to Itten's color wheel, you'll see that these are complementaries: a cherry red and a lime green. And taken at face value, most folks would say that this is an unlikely combination, right? Well, I heartily endorsed her colors for this workshop because I've seen what happens when you start to weave. And here's what happened, using a teal-blue weft.

The fabric now has a softer, more nuanced and very lovely palette, with the chartreuse becoming turquoise and the red becoming magenta. In my view, that's because the teal weft shifts and unites the two complementaries in the warp, serving as a sort of mediator and bringing the opposing colors into harmony, visually speaking. 

Here's another endorsement for using complementary colors in your weaving. In this case, the complements are one of the warp yarns and the weft.

Sample by Sandra Schulz, 4 shafts based on "Blooming Leaf" pattern

Blue and orange working together once again, where a warm red in the warp (what I'm loosely calling orange) works to with the light blue in the weft (which looks almost textured in this photo) to make it seem to pop and glow.

And let me take this one step further, to show you a sample I wove on four shafts using four seemingly discordant colors in the warp.

This is a 4-end parallel threading on 4 shafts.

Here, the four colors in the warp are red, orange, chartreuse and turquoise: two sets of complementary colors (red/chartreuse and turquoise/orange). I'm guessing the weft is a bronze color, which is again a sort of "mediator" among the four, in a medium value and a fairly unsaturated hue.

I don't always practice what I preach, however, which is urging weavers to choose colors out of their comfort zone, understanding that the weft can make such a difference. What happens when I don't follow my own advice?

A fabric like this, which has an attractive pattern (in Echo on 16 shafts) -- but one that is hard to see because the colors are too close in hue and value. The warp colors are royal blue and aqua and the weft is black, if I recall correctly.

Nice, in my opinion, but no cigar

Right now I'm planning an inaugural piece for my new (to me) 32-shaft Megado. I've designed a 32-shaft extended-parallel-threading pattern in two warp colors.

Detail of 32-shaft pattern in Jin

You can't tell, but the warp colors in this drawdown are royal blue and aqua -- the same colors I used for the not-as-successful piece in the prior photo. The weft is a red/orange color, a complement to the warp colors, which makes it work. 

I originally planned to go with these two colors for my warp.

These are what you call "analogous colors," meaning that they are near each other on the color wheel. And yes, they will work for an Echo design -- but I'm thinking that, based on my recent experience, they won't create an exciting design, even when woven with a complementary color in the warp. It's a safe choice, you might say.

So I decided to take my own advice and make my warp-color choices by thinking out of the crayon box. And here's what I'm using.

Colors of a sunset, way out of my comfort zone...

I will keep you apprised, hopefully in my next blog post. Thanks for reading!

More Explorations in Extended Parallel Threadings

Pictured here: a 12-shaft design woven on an Echo threading in 20/2 silk. I call this design "Burano" because it has a lacy look, reminding me of the lace-makers on the island off of Venice. 

So let's walk through the steps in creating this design and weaving the different samples in Echo, Jin, Shadow Weave, Rep and Double Weave. (This is exactly what we do in my workshop, "One Warp, Many Structures: An Exploration of Extended Parallel Threading." I must really like the process, because I keep repeating the format on my own, at home....)

First, how to create the design itself? I think I found the original pattern, a twill pattern with elements of a Crackle threading, on Handweaving.net. Can't remember, exactly, because it could also have been on Pinterest. Both are great places to scan weaving drafts for ideas. Here's what the original draft looks like.

Intricate, symmetrical, appealing -- reminds me of a butterfly! I starting playing on Fiberworks, expanding the design to 12 shafts using an extended parallel threading. And this is one of the designs I came up with: an Echo tieup on an advancing and descending twill treadling.

Following one of my other workshops -- "Paint Two, Beam One" -- I hand-painted two warps of 20/2 silk. The first was in a range of blues and the second in purples and rose colors, but I decided I needed more color, so I added two more painted warps in complementary colors, creating four stripes bordered on both sides by two ends of black. And here's how it wove up. 

This sample is the same pattern as in the first photo of this blog post. I used a bronze-colored weft in 20/2 cotton, because the gold tones really warm up the overall tones of the warp. And then I proceeded to weave up samples in Echo, Jin, Shadow Weave, Rep and Double Weave, varying my tieups, treadlings and weft yarns, all on the same extended parallel threading.

I am so grateful to my weaving teachers, particularly Bonnie Inouye and Marian Stubenitsky. I first learned about the potential of extended parallel threadings through a workshop taught by Bonnie, "Opposites Attract," in which she explores the potential of Echo threadings to achieve a broad range of structures. And I also continue to learn from Marian Stubenitsky's definitive work, Weaving with Echo and Iris, in which she took Echo designs and ran with them, showing countless possibilities for variations on 4 to 32 shafts.

Here's how my Jin sample wove up, offering yet another example of why I love Jin so much:

And here's how the threading works with Shadow Weave, shown here in a detail:

As for Rep (below): Well, not so great, but I think it was partly owing to my choice of wefts, where I alternated 20/2 cotton (thin weft) and black rayon chenille (thick weft). I think this sample would have been better if I changed my sett, making it much denser, and chose something thicker and less textured than the chenille for the thicker weft. Nevertheless, I see some potential here!

And then I wove up a double-weave sample, which I also like very much:

Just one more, this one in another variation of Echo:

Subtle, yes, but still I like it -- particularly the way the diamond shapes change in both size and color throughout the stripes.

Weaving at home and teaching weaving on Zoom have both given me great comfort this past year. And we all need comfort, even as we are painfully aware of how others lack food, shelter, health care and health itself. This year has given us hardship and hope in equal doses. Friends and loved ones are farther away and closer in our hearts. May you and yours enjoy the blessings of this season of light, however you may celebrate, and may you take comfort in every way you can in the year to come!

 

Gebrochene, Echo and Jin with Fiberworks: Putting 'The Earl' Through His Paces

Ah, the old Weaver's magazine... such an endless source of inspiration! Recently, I was looking at an issue from 1997 and came upon a story by Marjie Thompson about the source of the above draft, "The Earl's Canvas." (Thanks to Thompson for sharing it with me.) She had given a talk to our guild about this years ago and I never forgot the beautiful silk scarf she wove. 

The pattern was discovered in a portrait of John Erskine, second Earl of Mar in Scotland, in the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh. Painted in 1626 by Adam de Colone, it features a Jacobean noble with a lace ruff and badge of office. 

What's interesting to weavers, however, isn't the painting itself, but rather the canvas it's painted on. According to Thompson, a museum curator analyzed the pattern in the 1970s and found that it's actually a 14-shaft Gebrochene design that was probably an old tablecloth. 

And what is Gebrochene (pronounced in German "geBROKena")? Literally it means "broken," but to weavers it's basically M's and W's. According to Thompson:

"It's a twill interlacement with an elaborate threading and treadling and a twill tieup. Usually both warp and weft are the same yarn, historically linen. Gebrochene tablecloths are pictured in medieval art and Gebrochene drafts are found in... books from the early 17th century. Patterns can be quite elaborate; one design by Jacob Angstadt shows over 900 ends in one repeat."

At last we get to the point of this blog post, which is: This beautiful draft can easily be translated into an Echo threading. And a Jin design. And Shadow Weave and Rep and Double Weave, all through the magic of Fiberworks.

You start by reducing the "The Earl" threading to 8 shafts (because not everyone has a 16-shaft loom). Next, under the Treadling dropdown menu, select "Weave as drawn in" and then make the treadling tromp as writ. Then select "Draft" and "Thickness" and click on "Exactly as drawn."

Next, using the Warp dropdown menu, click on "Parallel Repeat." In the box that opens, select "Extended Parallel," "Shafts shift by 4" and "Also duplicate colors and spacing." Then click "Apply." (And then "Close.")

Next, still in the Warp dropdown menu, click on "Fill Warp Colors." In the space that says "Single Color A," scroll down and select "AB." Then click "Replace." (Because this is just an exercise, I've simply gone along with the pre-selected colors in boxes A and B in the "Fill Warp Colors" box. You can select your own colors by using your cursor to drag colors from the "Colors" column that appears when you click on "Fill Warp Color.")

Hard to see in the above image, but if you look closely you can find blue and aqua in the boxes above the threading, indicating the colors of the warp threads below.

Next, create a 4/4 ascending twill tieup, which is a classic Echo tieup. The elementary way to do this is to draw it in by clicking on the boxes you want -- but to do it faster, you can just fill in the tieup for the first treadle and then click on the "Tieup" dropdown menu, select "Twill Repeat" and then "Step Up," "Step by 1," "Treadles per group 1" and "Apply."

Yes, it's Echo and yes, the Earl pattern is identifiable -- but it has long floats. (A good rule of thumb, according to Bonnie Inouye, is that floats in Echo should be no longer than 5. This is where the "Float Search" function on the "Tool" dropdown menu in Fiberworks comes in handy.)

Next step, alter the tiedown by breaking it up so that the floats aren't as long. Here's an example.

The motifs are still a bit squashed, right? There are ways to fix that -- one of them being to change the treadling.

Another way to alter the "flattened" Echo draft is to add tabby to the tieup, changing the structure to Jin.

You can alter the Jin design a bit by changing the tieup to create what Bonnie Inouye describes as "decorated Jin" -- changing it from a 4/4 tieup to a 4/2/1/1 tieup (plus tabby, of course).

Now that's a design befitting an Earl, don't you think? At the risk of losing readers, I will show you a few more designs. Here's how the Earl looks as Double Weave (both front and back views).

And here's a Rep version:

And then there's Shadow Weave -- although I'm not sure I like it so much.

So there you have it: "The Earl" as interpreted for extended parallel threadings, 400 years after it was used as the canvas for a nobleman's portrait. 

Thanks for reading!

[For further study: Eva Stossel is a blogger and peerless weaver who wrote about this subject on her blog and in the Complex Weavers Journal in 2012. You can read her blog post by clicking here.] 

Finally... a Design I Like!

In a way, the design is hard to see, isn't it? That's been the problem. This is a 16-shaft Echo pattern on a 60/2/2 silk/ramie warp that I dyed in two color palettes. (I really love doing this: You paint two warps in complementary colorways and then beam them together on the loom. For this Echo piece, I threaded the warps A/B/A/B, etc., so that the pattern and the colors create a lot of dynamic shifts.)

I was really excited as I completed this design, which I call "North Star" in honor of the newspaper edited by Frederick Douglass when he lived here in Rochester, NY, in the mid-19th century. Rochester was a stop on the Underground Railroad and the North Star itself was a beacon for slaves fleeing to the northern states and Canada. It's a beautiful and tragic symbol of hope in dark times. And meaningful, too, at this point in our history.

And so, after lots of experimenting on Fiberworks, I settled on a Jin (Turned Taqueté) design. I'm posting it here in black and white -- because it's really hard to see the pattern in color, the values are so soft.

I really loved the design -- but when I wove it up I could hardly see it. Here are two samples, using a 20/2 cotton weft in olive green (bottom of photo) followed by a sample using a weft of teal blue (top of photo).

The back of the fabric (still on the loom) gives you a slightly better representation of the colors.

Close, yes, but still not exactly what I was going for. This happens all the time to me: I work and work to create a design I like in Fiberworks, but I have to keep in mind that it won't necessarily translate well on the loom. There's a lot of tweaking involved: sett, beat, the grist of the weft yarn, the color of the weft yarn, which treadling and tieup to use.... 

So many options! Does this happen to you? Sometimes I wonder if I'm just chasing a carrot in front of my nose, always seeking that perfect design. Don Quixote would understand....

But onward. Keeping in mind what I say when I teach -- that Jin can soften a design, making it look like it has a sprinkling of dusting powder over it -- I decided to try the Echo version of this threading, avoiding the tabby tie-downs in the Jin treadling, which can obscure the pattern. 

Here's what the Echo drawdown looks like in black and white, again to show you how the motif plays out.

To my eye, this design is stronger and a bit more graphic. And I was much happier with the result. Below is another view of the sample at the beginning of this post, woven with a light aqua weft in 20/2 cotton.

So often with Echo and Jin, the pattern looks bolder when you peer at it from the side, at a low angle, as in this photo. And by the way, I'm really happy weaving on a silk/ramie warp, because it has both a luster (silk) and a grit to it (ramie). Soft cocoons and bristly nettles together. Sort of like the experience of weaving itself ;o)

I hope to have a scarf finished before I teach my next warp-painting class. Oh yes, and I had to order more of the aqua weft yarn....

Thanks for reading!