I’ve been watching teaching videos from Jane Stafford textiles. The first season was was all about laying solid foundations of weaving technique.
I decided to proceed with one of the samples from the second season – a colour and weave gamp – and to use techniques learned from Season 1 while winding the warp, dressing the loom etc. As I am working from a pattern draft with full instructions, I don’t need to do any planning of my own.
The sample I am embarking on uses 5/2 mercerised cotton in white, black and light green. It involves warping with multiple ends in your hand. All knots encountered in the yarn are “moved” to an end peg so that there are no knots in the warp threads. I will end up with a piece of fabric with 49 squares, each with a different pattern of light and dark.
This is the type of thing I will end up with
The fabric uses a plain weave structure. There are 348 warp ends, spread over 55cm; that’s 16epi (recommended by Ashford for a firm plain weave) in an 8 dent reed (sleyed 2 per dent). I will beat the weft to produce 16ppi. Once I have completed the first few pieces as described in the draft, I will change the epi and ppi (to 14, 12, 10) to see what difference that makes to the drape of the fabric
Last night I wound a 6m warp using the sequence of multiple ends described in the pattern draft:
48 Dark/Light (D/L) alternating – warping with 2 ends in your hand
4 Light green
44 Dark,Dark/Light, Light (DD/LL) – warping with 4 ends in your hand
4 Light green
45 DD/L – warping with 3 ends in your hand
4 Light green
48 DDDD/LLLL – warping with 2 ends in your hand
4 Light green
44 DDD/L – warping with 4 ends in your hand
4 Light green
45 DD/LLL – Warping with 5 ends in your hand
4 Light green
50 D/L/DD/L – warping with 5 ends in your hand
This means using a separate cone of yarn for each end. As you change colours, you cut the previous thread/s at an end peg and tie the new one/s on to the cut end. This means that changing from Light green to DDD/L you tie 4 ends to the single light green end etc. so that all warp threads end up as a single unit. There are multiple threads at the cross, but Jane’s method of dressing the loom deals with this. Winding the warp is certainly faster when done this way – for example, there are only 10 wraps of the warping mill to get the 50 ends of D/L/DD/L when you warp with 5 ends in your hand as opposed to 50 with a single end in your hand.
I reviewed Guild video Season 1, Episode 1.3 “Making a warp with multiple ends” before winding the warp.
Warp all wound 
The cross, showing multiple ends/direction change