I Never Sample …. Again

Posted on October 31, 2018 by iowaweaver | 2 Comments

Yep, I did it again. I sampled. Sorry not sorry.

Ahem, let me explain. In Marian Stubenitsky’s book Weaving with Echo and Iris there is a Turned Taqueté project of sorts using cotton chenille and 8/2 cotton together in the warp, and cotton in the weft (see page 199 -200). This is as close to a real project as Ms. Stubenitsky ever gets, since her book is more of a reference work than a how-to, but I was very curious how to make the mixed warp work with my now go-to weave structure.

My drawdown isn’t an exact copy from the book. If I had used her draft, I would have had 4-thread floats, and those are too long for rayon chenille. The chenille for the project in the book is cotton, which doesn’t pose as much of a worming risk. I took the zig zag profile draft, letting Fiberworks do its magic, and I produced a drawdown with floats no longer than 3 threads.

I own an over-supply of 1450 ypp rayon chenille, and finding ways to use it is kind of critical. The thing is, I needed to find a warp to pair with the chenille that is similar in weight and fiber. I eliminated 5/2 (too thin) and 3/2 (too thick). According to my handy Master Yarn Chart, somewhere in the world there is 4/2 cotton, and at 1680 ypp I thought that might work. But I really wanted rayon, so I asked Google if there was any 4/2 rayon in the universe, and I actually found some on eBay.

I took a flier on that 4/2 rayon, found that it was just what I needed, and painted the skeins in a colorway I use for 8/2 Tencel in my Etsy shop called Summer Melon. I paired Summer Melon with 1450 ypp gray rayon chenille and wound my warp. And yes, I added extra length for sampling. I sett it at 20 epi, and then started searching through my stash for a likely weft. I was going for thinner weft than I have ever previously used in Turned Taqueté. For drape. Because thinner weft is very often recommended for Turned Taqueté, and because I have stubbornly ignored said recommendations.

Here are my first efforts:

In the top sample I used 20/2 cotton in aqua for weft. I knew that was going to be wildly inappropriate, but I just needed a clear contrast for my next efforts. The next weft is some old dye-experiment 16/2 soysilk in a rust red. I felt that 16/2 was a size that was getting closer, but still no cigar. My gut feeling was that 8/2 rayon was really going to be the one, so I ordered some and dyed it oxblood red.

As you can see, the motifs are in better proportion. But here’s the part that I think is really significant with this mixed warp. Turned Taqueté depends on color contrasts for designs to appear in the weaving, and we have that here. In addition, there is texture contrast, which adds a whole new dimension to the structure.

After a gentle soak in Eucalon, I air dried, and the drape is very silky. Shrinkage after washing was pretty consistent for all three samples: a whopping 25%. The scarf warp that is left on the loom may be on the short side after it is all done, but I have all the information I need for future projects.

I think this is it!

More Towels … with a New Twist

Posted on December 16, 2017 by iowaweaver | 3 Comments

So I wove up a batch of my Circles Turned Taquete towels recently. It kind of went in fits and starts. My notes tell me I began in October. I had ordered a beautiful palette of cotton yarn in what I called “Beachy” colors, and I was, like, game on. But change was in store…

Change #1. This is 8/2 unmercerized cotton and it was a brave new world of warping and weaving for me. Previously, all my cotton dishtowels have been woven with 10/2 mercerized cotton. But I had come to think that 8/2 unmercerized cotton was really a better choice for towels. It’s easy to find, comes on smaller cones so you can order more colors, and the weaving community seems to have come to a consensus on its appropriateness for the end result. I was a little twitchy about unmercerized vs. mercerized though. Mercerization is a process that renders it more willing to accept dye, improves color and sheen, but renders it less absorbent. Unmercerized cotton colors are perhaps less bright, but the cotton itself is soft and more absorbent, making it ultimately the better choice for hand towels or all sorts.

Change #2. I picked a group of eight colors and wound my warp. This is a new size of cotton, so I had to choose a different sett for my warp. I chose 24 epi (after checking around the interwebs for a bit to see what others were doing ;-)), which meant that I needed to order a new reed! OMG! I haven’t order a new reed. Ever. But It had to be done. So that pushed my timetable back a ways.

But, once I got going, it was smooth sailing. 8/2 cotton wound on the loom like a dream, and was really easy to weave off. I wove four towels in the circles design and two towels in my checked variation.

Here’s a photo of the two different varieties still on the loom:

And here’s a group portrait of all six after they were washed, and hemmed, and ready for their closeup:

I’m ordering more greens for another batch of towels, probably in a design that doesn’t involve so many dots. Everyone needs variety!

A Little Something Extra (but not quite enough)

Posted on July 7, 2017 by iowaweaver | 2 Comments

I’ve had a dishtowel warp on the loom for months. Oh wait, was it only April? That’s not that long…. sigh.

I wound enough warp for six towels, the most I’ve planned for, ever, because I’m not exactly a production weaver. More like a see-where-my-whims-take-me weaver. But, my pattern seems to be that my measuring/estimating skills are not quite up there with the professionals. That last towel turned out to be a placemat. But I love it anyway…. 😉

Truth is, just about all, OK all, of my dishtowel warps have just enough left over for a small mat. My collection is growing.

This warp was threaded in my Circles draft for Turned Taquete. I alternated natural color 10/2 cotton with different color stripes of 10/2 cotton from the stash. The idea was to use up some cones, and I did that. I threaded 32 epi.

Here are a couple of shots of the group:

As you can see I produced dishtowels with the original circles treadling and dishtowels with the checked treadling. I used the 10/2 natural cotton as weft for two of the towels. Then I switched to checks.

As in this drawdown:

I alternated natural and brown on one. On the second I rotated natural, tea rose and camelia.

Then I went back to circles and wove one with all mauve. The short number six was woven with all camelia.

Quite a cheerful bunch, I think. Next up, I will get them photographed and in my etsy shop. It’s a good thing, because I am currently all out of dishtowels and I need to stock up!

Cheers!

Turned Taquete Circles into Checks (oh my!)

Posted on April 13, 2017 by iowaweaver | 3 Comments

You’ve seen this:

And I’ve been weaving circles, quite a lot of them in fact. I have the treadling down cold. All I have to do is press a treadle and I know where I am in the sequence. To date I’ve woven three warps of circle scarfs.

Black and white:

Gray and reds:

And now, gray and greens:

As you know, one of my recurrent themes is trying to find different designs on a threading, making it do double, triple, quadruple duty if I can. So, toward the end of the third warp I started asking myself what else I could weave on the same threading, besides circles. Heck, maybe even the same tie-up so I wouldn’t have to crawl around on the floor. Something that folks like and want.

And just like that, I thought of checks. Sort of the yang to the yin of the circles thing. So I sat down with the weaving software and played with the treadling and came up with this little gem:

Here it is in a different colorway:

So, a dish towel warp could do extra duty and also save the weaver from simple boredom, or, worst case, falling asleep at the loom ;-). I think this design would be fun as bright and colorful placemats as well.

FYI, for those with only four harnesses, there is a nice little draft on handweaving.net for four harness Turned Taquete checks. Shared by Bonnie Inouye, it is # 61535. As for the circles, you’re still gonna need eight.

Circle Scarves in Living Color [Red]

Posted on March 14, 2017 by iowaweaver | 1 Comment

So, I finally finished the first warp of rayon chenille Turned Taquete scarves in my color stripes circle design. I wove two, each with a slightly different gray weft. Then I wove a little end-of-warp piece with a dusty red weft called Geranium and made it into a cowl for me.

Here are the pics for one scarf that is now in my Etsy shop:

I am amazed at how far I have come since I started this project. The results has definitely been worth it!

The next warp is going on the loom now. The neutral is the same gray, but the stripes are in greens, and the width is one stripe wider, up from 7″ in the reed to 9″.

Here is a quick iPhone photo:

Because the word needs all the circles we can give it. 🙂

Jitterbug Turned Taquete – It’s not just for 8 harnesses!

Posted on February 18, 2017 by iowaweaver | 1 Comment

About two years ago I blogged about taking an overshot pattern called Jitterbug and converting it to an 8 harness Turned Taquete weaving draft. You can read all about that here. I don’t know why my mind wandered back to that, but I started wondering about how it would work on 4 harnesses. In her article “Turned Taquete: an Introduction” (*see below), Bonnie Inouye describes how it can be done by interleaving a four harness overshot threading with a second threading on opposites. I did not try this method, but I did decide to explore another method.

In her book Weaving with Echo and Iris Marian Stubenitsky suggests some ways to substitute blocks of four harnesses, each arranged in a different order, for the threading blocks in a design line. This means that each block will be switched for a four-thread sequence. Here is the substitution formula from page 71:

For Harness 1 we will substitute 1324

For Harness 2 we will substitute 3124

For Harness 3 we will substitute 3142

For Harness 4 we will substitute 1342

Other sequences of substitution in her book had issues. One could only be used on a rising design line, not descending. Another ended up with many double threads that needed to be deleted. This method had no problems and only the caveat that this threading rubric does not work with iridescent effects (four colors per block), but only with two alternating colors per block.

Off I went. First I re-wrote the design line to the minimum (keeping in mind that it would be expanded by 4x):

FYI– this is what it looks like with two repeats of the threading and treadling:

This is one repeat of the threading draft after four-thread substitutions are made:

And this is one repeat of the threading draft with the tie-up and one repeat of the treadling draft, which includes tabby on alternating picks:

The longest floats are 4 threads according to Fiberworks, which should be fine for most close sets. So, lest you four harness weavers should feel left out of the Turned Taquete craze, this is a perfectly serviceable technique to join in the fun. Enjoy!

*The complete article can be found here: Complex Weavers Journal, June 2014, pp 36-40.

De-Stashing (again)

Posted on February 2, 2017 by iowaweaver | 1 Comment

I finished the black and white Turned Taquete Circles scarfs, and this is the one that I am keeping. It’s on the short side, and I haven’t ruled out whether to turn it into a cowl. A seam would shorten it even more, and it’s currently holding at 35″ not counting fringe.

If I do turn it into a cowl, I’m considering using the technique for seaming used by Sarah Jackson in Handwoven with her Diversified Plain Weave Dancing Circles Scarf that she designed for the Thick and Thin issue (November/December 2016). BTW, my DPW Circles Scarf (Handwoven, May/June 2013) was a resource! And I have another short piece of chenille that I can practice on first, so still mulling that one over.

Meanwhile, I decided to go for color and circles in a big way. I dug into my stash of 1450 ypp rayon chenille and came up with lots of balls of hand dyed chenille leftovers from a multitude of other chenille scarf warps.

I’m using a medium gray for neutral contrast. Here’s the stash after already winding one two-scarf warp:

Here’s the stash after winding two two-scarf warps:

And here’s the stash after winding three two-scarf warps:

That would be six scarfs warped. Then I weighed what was left, and it is still over a pound! Arrrgh!

Circles 3.0: Color and Stripes!

Posted on January 26, 2017 by iowaweaver | 1 Comment

I just finished the first Turned Taquete Circles warp, and I managed to eke out two scarves after all that sampling. One is a bit on the short side, so I guess I’ll save that one for moi. I enjoyed the monochrome project, so different for me, but I found myself plotting how to add color this draft. And lots of it. And fast.

As you can see from this screen shot, the circles are distinctly separate (barely) in the vertical columns, but just a bit overlapping in the horizontal columns. (I’ll have to work on that.) That means that I can change colors vertically, thus adding a whole bunch of interest with very little effort. I’m not sure I would want to change colors in the weft. I rather like weaving with only one color to think about in the shuttle.

Now. Time for a glass of wine.

And we have a winner!

Posted on December 26, 2016 by iowaweaver | 50 Comments

I am not a sampler. But I sampled. And, well, the apocalypse didn’t come. The sky didn’t fall. And it was a good experience. I learned stuff, and I am now ready to weave some Turned Taquete Circles scarves.

I started out with 1450 ypp rayon chenille set at 16 epi. In this photo the bottom sample is woven with 1450 ypp black.

The next photo is the top portion of the same 16 epi sample, but woven with 2000 ypp white. I was playing with the treadling, elongating the middle, anticipating that with the release of tension and wet finishing, that the ovals would shrink to circles.

Then I resleyed to 18 epi. And I wove two samples with the same wefts, 1450 ypp black and 2000 ypp white. Again I elongated the middles of the circles pre-wet finishing.

I don’t have a picture of these post-wet finishing, but, trust me, they didn’t shrink as much as I would have anticipated. They remained pretty much as ovals.

So, then I resleyed to 20 epi and changed my reed to a 10. I was tempted not to do it. I was busy with Christmas prep, and I didn’t have a bunch of time. But. I did it anyway! And lo and behold it was the right thing to do.

So I wove this last sample with the same black and white wefts, this time greatly abbreviating the treadling of the middles of the circles. Keep in mind that the circles became thinner as I resleyed. So the treadling of the middles became shorter and shorter.

This is a photo of the sample post-wet finishing.

And the bottom sample is the winner. Even after wet finishing the shrinkage wasn’t much. I find I prefer the hand of the 1450 ypp rayon weft.

Below you will find the now-revised-yet-again Turned Taquete Cirlces draft.

I optimized the tie-up. Originally, there were nine treadles tied, but two were tied to the same harnesses. That’s two too many for me when I have to crawl around on the floor. So that meant that the treadling sequence had to be revised, which I have done as well.

This is the best yet!

Wif files available upon request.

Circles Draft Scarves: Monochrome

Posted on December 12, 2016 by iowaweaver | 3 Comments

Okay, this is how it’s going to go down. I am warping for a small batch (two) of Turned Taquete Circles Scarves, and using yarn on hand (how else?). I decided to go with rayon chenille because it’s easy. I don’t want to wind a warp that’s 60 epi. Au contraire, I’m starting this at 16 epi and will be sampling from there. This is 1450 ypp chenille, and my normal epi for that is 16. I am prepared to go up to 20, but we’ll see how it goes. I have weft of the same size, and I also have weft that is 2000 ypp, which would probably be recommended for drape.

Shockingly enough, I will sample with both!

This is the draft I’ll be using, including color choices. I decided to go full on monochrome, just black and white. My next warp will have color added. This time, I wanted the most contrast I can get, and besides, I like black and white dots.

In other news, I have a batch of Turned Taquete towels off the loom and ready to finish:

Dishtowels off the loom – group portrait

This warp is my standard dishtowels warp: 10/2 cotton sett at 32 epi. 20 inches wide, and woven as close to 30″ long as possible, not counting hems which are another 1 1/2″ each. I say 10/2 cotton is my standard, but as soon as I use up my 10/2 stock, I think I will be switching to 8/2 cotton.

8/2 cotton seems to be a more standard material for dishtowels these days. Plus it’s somewhat less expensive. Can’t argue with that.

So, here are some close-ups just for fun:

I took these shots with my new iPhone, and I have to say that these photos would stand up to my Nikon SLR any day. Just sayin’…