I've crossed a weaving milestone! I made my first ever repair heddle. I'd come to the end of my threading and had a warp thread leftover that I shouldn't have. I found the skipped shaft smack in the middle and set myself to fixing it, slowly backtracking and correcting until I got to the spot. And then... I did an Internet search. Bless you, all you experienced weavers who share your knowledge. Voila - I had MADE A HEDDLE.
@weaving @fiberarts #weaving #weaver #handweaving #warp #heddle
@faziarizvi @weaving @fiberarts I've been there! After I started weaving one of my most recent projects, a few inches in I realized that I needed floating selvedges so I had to undo my work, measure out two new warp threads and hang them off the back of the loom!
@faziarizvi @kyle For a couple of weaving projects, I’ve logged my time spent on various tasks, and warping does seem to be roughly half of it. Especially because I tend towards striped warps and medium-complexity threadings.
@faziarizvi @weaving @fiberarts I started timing my projects earlier this year and for many projects the setup took more time than the actual weaving! I may stop timing though as I noticed it added a subconscious level of stress as though I were racing a clock, removing some of the meditative relaxation.
I have slowly moved from tolerating to somewhat enjoying the setup process even though it doesn't have the instant visual gratification of the actual weaving.
@kyle @faziarizvi @weaving @fiberarts The setup does take a lot of time, but I have come to enjoy the whole process.
I have also timed myself during the different phases. I found it very helpful so I could anticipate how long future projects were going to take.
@kyle @faziarizvi @weaving @fiberarts Why would you have to take out anything in order to add floating selvage threads?
@Dteaj @faziarizvi @weaving @fiberarts In my case I had already started weaving a few inches, so I had to undo the work I had already done to incorporate the floating selvedges.
@kyle @faziarizvi @weaving @fiberarts you could just eat those couple of inches and add the selvages when you noticed. Unless you had a fringe already embedded, where unweaving might be necessary. If you measured your warp to really tight specifications in terms of length, that’s a problem in itself.
@kyle @faziarizvi @weaving @fiberarts Also, it’s a good idea to weave 4-6” as a sample to save for your records. This fiddling to get selvages right or any other adjustments could be part of such a sample.
@Dteaj @faziarizvi @weaving @fiberarts This was part of the issue--I was using up warp thread leftover from another project, so between that and the need for fringe I didn't have many inches to spare for this particular project (and barely enough extra warp yarn for the floating selvedges!)
I prefer having extra warp when I can spare it, because in addition to samples at the beginning, I like the ability to experiment at the end of a project. This project wouldn't allow it.
@kyle @faziarizvi @weaving @fiberarts fair enough, but boy, would that make me nervous.
@Dteaj Thank you!
@kyle @weaving @fiberarts Oof! It’s a lot of work to backtrack and redo, but it’s worth it in the end. I fear I might need to create some floating selvedges for this one too - luckily I’m at the start of it and just sampling, so no work yet to unravel. Sometimes I think most of weaving is getting set up to weave!