I decided to weave something reasonably simple and yet fun – a series of face cloths, headbands and bookmarks as gifts and for selling at the local Christmas Market in November/December.
As I want to weave a variety of items on a single warp, I will wind a black warp in 16/2 mercerised cotton. I looked back at the face cloths, headbands and bookmarks I have woven in the past and also my sample collection. Based on these samples, I decided to start this warp sett at 24epi with the 16/2 mercerised cotton. I’m not sure which colours I will use for the weft as yet, but it will be 10/2 cotton.
The threading is taken from p39 Strickler “A Weaver’s Book of 8-shaft Patterns” – it’s an elaborate point twill. A single pattern repeat has 70 ends, I will use 4 threading repeats – so 280 ends + 1 for symmetry + 1 each side as float = 283 ends.
None of these pieces will have a long fringe. I will leave ~2cm gap between pieces and will hemstitch the ends of each piece as I weave.
First I will weave the face cloths. These will be initially be treadled with a progressively more slanted straight draw (#169 on p39 of Strickler’s book – I call it “Earthquake?”). These will have black borders at each end. I am planning to weave 15-20 (depends on the pattern repeats) and will allow 6m of warp. I will also weave some with TAW treadling (#168 on p39 of Strickler’s book)
Once I have completed the face cloths, I will remove 6 of the warp ends from each side (face cloth border, 1 end is left as a float) and reduce the width of the warp by half (I will remove the end at the other edge from its heddle to create the 2nd float). This will be done by removing the face cloths, unwinding the warp from the back beam, chaining half of the warp and removing this half from the loom. The half still on the loom will be rebeamed and the ends of the chained half will be tied to the ends of the beamed half. This second warp length will them be beamed, tied to the front apron rod and weaving begun again. I have done this before (see my blog entry on 2 Dec 2021 – Warp 17 – Samples for sett reference).
Headbands will be treadled either using Earthquake? or TAW. I will weave 4 of them (rayon rainbow coloured weft stripes for me, plain teal for a friend and two others). These will each use about 45cm of warp, but I will only need to wind 1m of warp for these as I am splitting the original warp in half
Bookmarks will be treadled using Earthquake?, TAW or smaller point twills. I will weave about 10 of these (1 for a friend) and they will be about 5cm long, I will allow 40cm of the original warp for these.
Total warp length to be wound is 8.5m.
In summary the warp is to be 16/2 black mercerised cotton, 283 ends, 8.5m long, initially sett at 24epi.
