fdd Rainy Days

October 1, 2013

Opalyn:


The fall rains have come early and with an intensity that I've rarely seen in the five years I've been at Windward. For a brief period of time yesterday afternoon it seemed that the storm had past but it was back or another had moved in by nightfall. Living this closely to the land we quickly learn what has to get done no matter the weather and what can be slotted in between storms.

Take yesterday for example, we would have gone on a walk except that the rainfall was particularly intense so we lit a fire and mostly worked on our computers. Several of us donned rain gear to go feed the animals and milk the goats even with the rain. In the afternoon, the skies cleared so we mixed and poured some concrete then changed out the shade cloth for the winter plastic on one of our greenhouse/animal structures. The work went quickly but by the time we finished it was raining again so most of us headed indoors to work on other projects or read.

My Inkle Loom.

I decided to read an interesting book on Inkle Weaving by Helene Bress. As a member of the Northwest Regional Spinners Association, I have access to the their Library and while it does not have any books on ply-splitting which is my current area of focus, it did have this one that caught my eye. I checked it out and with some free time because of the rain, I dove into reading more about inkling.

Bands I made last winter - both on the same warp.

Inkle weaving produces designs that are warp faced which means that the weft or horizontal threads do not show - only the warp or vertical threads show. Also most designs are done in plain weave. And yet, Helene Bress claims that a trillion, trillion different patterns can be made on an Inkle with just three colors and 50 warp threads. That got me excited and as I looked through the design information, I found sections of belts that I really like!

The band I made last winter used a variegated thread and I didn't like the effect so I gathered the solid colors I had on hand and decided to use just three colors. Selecting dark gold, dark turquoise, and what might be called seafoam, I started designing.

The colors I selected.

Looking at the completed bands in my reference book, I picked out several design features then referred to the drafts. Weaving drafts are similar to the threading draft used for a larger loom. A draft gives the color and location of each thread, whether the thread goes through a heddle or not, and tells how many threads are used in the design.

A sample draft and the original draft for my belt.

After lunch, Monica and I got started warping my Inkle loom. Things went quickly as we moved through the draft, warping the loom.

The first few threads have been warped.

We soon got the hang of it and finished warping the first section of dark turquoise. Then we switched to gold and so on until we neared the middle of the belt--that's when we decided to make an adjustment. Nothing big, just changing the number of threads in the center before starting the second half which was laid out in reverse in order to create a symmetrical design.

Getting up to Warp Speed! The Inkle is warped and we are just about ready to weave.

But lets back up to the middle again. About 2/3 of the way across the width we ran out of the seafoam thread and had to readjust. We decided to skip a section of the draft then continue with the gold and turquoise edging. This way the middle of the band would be unique and the edges would be symmetrical.

But wait, as we neared the end we ran out of the dark turquoise and had to make another adjustment. This is what is known as designing on the fly - and I really like what we came up with.

Here the "up shed" is open.

Inkle weaving is most often done in "plain weave." This is a weave structure where the weft thread goes over one warp thread then under the next all the way across and the next row is just the opposite. Because we have heddles we can switch between the "up shed" and the "down shed" moving all the open threads either up or down while the threads in the heddles remain stationary.

Here the "down shed" is open.

The process of warping went quickly and smoothly and in under an hour we had finished warping and started weaving. As a reference, it took several days to warp my table loom with 396 threads.

An idea of what is to come.

We decided to weave in several objects so we could get an idea of the colors and how the finished design would look. It also gave us an opportunity to straighten out any thread that was crossed.

Weaving has begun.

Weaving tends to be a winter project - at least for me. Once the weather cleared, we headed outside, poured more concrete and got another structure ready for the winter.

Happy Weaving!