Technical Weaving Thread: Practices to Catch/Prevent Mistakes
Weaving takes patience and attention to detail, at least if you want fabric that matches your plans. Mistakes are inevitable and you either accept them in the work or possibly spend hours correcting them.
All it takes is a distraction to lose where you were. Ideally you catch mistakes as soon as possible so there's less work to undo/redo. In this thread I'll describe some of my practices that help me catch errors.
Technical Weaving Thread: Practices to Catch/Prevent Mistakes
1. Measuring Warp
When measuring warp I literally say the count over and over as a mantra as I run a thread the length of the warping board.
I always use a counting thread so I don't have to count the full number of warp threads, only smaller values (typically 10 or 12). This also means when I inevitably get distracted and lose count, I only count the warp threads on the outside of the counting thread.
Technical Weaving Thread: Practices to Catch/Prevent Mistakes
2. Maintaining the Cross
Lease sticks maintain your cross while dressing the loom to prevent counting mistakes when threading, but many instructions have you remove them after threading, I (like some Scandinavian weavers) leave them on to the end of the project.
This saved me in this project when I notice threading mistakes after I start to weave, and when a warp thread was missing entirely.
Technical Weaving Thread: Practices to Catch/Prevent Mistakes
@kyle my original project book had me do a group of 10 threads on the cross - is it normal to cross single threads?
I suspect that may solve the thread order problems I’ve just been battling!
Technical Weaving Thread: Practices to Catch/Prevent Mistakes
@Kymberly I *count* by 10/12 but most of my books suggest *crossing* single threads and I do. I use a warping paddle to save time when measuring hundreds of threads, and in that case I cross after however many threads are in the paddle. If you look closely at my picture of the lease sticks, you will see I'm crossing every 2 threads because I measured the yellow and brown threads on the warping board at the same time.
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