Monday, February 24, 2025

Runner Rug: Glimakra Warped and Header Reveal

I've been plodding away through the planning, measuring, tying, threading, and tensioning process, all the while wondering if my woven fabric will turn out like the idea in my head. Often it does not! So I was a little excited to finally get the warp on the loom and start weaving the header.


My idea is to use the threading of the Dornik Herringbone Throw Rug to create a design feature on a coordinating runner rug using the same threading. The throw rug was twill, but I noticed something when I did a plain weave header for it.


The runner header reveals that, indeed, my idea works, and also that I will get the somewhat plaid like look  I wanted by using the variegated yarn for both warp and weft. 

Except.


Except this one green stripe that shows the same plain weave under and over pattern. I'm not sure why! I did correct some threading when I worked out where the stripes ought to be and tied on the new warp. But there was no way to catch this until I started weaving. 

What am I going to do about it? Nothing. It's just the one stripe and for my purposes it doesn't matter. I can call it a design feature if anyone notices, which I doubt they will. 

The finished rug will probably have more white than is desirable for a rug, but I got the yarn for the blue, green, and yellow bits to match my quilted bedspread curtains.

I'll have weaving details in my next post.

 
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Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Coordinating Runner on the Dornik Herringbone Threading

Last summer I wove a throw rug for my newly set-up weaving room. As I wove, I entertained myself with a number of "what ifs" with the same threading. Could I use one of those ideas to weave a coordinating runner rug for that room? For example, something I noticed was when I wove the plain weave header, was that periodically I had two warp threads sharing the same over-under path.


This is because of the threading. Where the pattern reverses, the two adjacent warp threads are either both on even shafts (8 and 4) or on odd shafts (1 and 5).


This is usually considered a no-no for twills, but it works with the reverses in the herringbone pattern. What if I threaded these two warp threads in the same color (green) and everything else in the variegated yarn. I should get a rug runner with green stripes!

For the weft, I plan to use the same variegated yarn, which will give the effect of a pseudo plaid. Will it work? I'm fixing to find out.


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Historical Research: American Weaving

One of the projects I have set for myself is to weave my family tree. i.e., samples of the traditional textiles from the cultures of my ancestors. I already have ideas for some of them (list here), but I'm starting with the most recent group, which is American. Trying to figure out distinctly American contributions to the history of weaving has been a bit of a challenge, because search information tends to be trendy rather than historically encompassing.

The time frame for my American heritage is broad, early 1600s to modern day. With that in mind, I've managed to piece together a somewhat approximate timeline of the relevant highlights.

Timeline of American weaving
  • mid-1600s to 1725 - overshot coverlets and plain weave for garments
  • 1725 to 1825 - coverlets in double weave and summer-and-winter
    • white cotton and dark blue wool
  • 1785 - power loom patented
  • 1800s to early-1900s - shift to primarily industrialized weaving 
  • 1916 - Mary Meigs Atwater founded the Shuttle-Craft Guild to preserve and promote American handweaving.
  • 1950 - Marguerite Porter Davison published A Handweaver's Pattern Book, based on the drafts preserved by Weaver Rose and the women of southern Appalachia.

I feel like this information gives me something of a historical dividing line between early and modern American weaving, with the end of early American weaving being due to the industrial revolution and the invention of the power loom. Large textile mills were built and weaving became a commercial enterprise. The result was that, apparently, hand weaving became almost extinct, except for a few dedicated handweavers. The resurgence of American weaving as an honored art and craft is largely due to the efforts of Mary Meigs Atwater.

So, maybe I'm looking at two samples?

Early American Weaving Characteristics
  • Early American weaving had it's roots in Europe, and according to Mary Meigs Atwater's The Shuttle-Craft Book of American Hand-Weaving included Dutch, Mennonite, Scotch, Irish, and English traditions.
  • Uses:
    • fabric for clothing
    • coverlets
  • Yarns:
    • wool weft
    • cotton warp and tabby
    • linen warp and tabby
    • An interesting note from Handwoven Magazine: Pre-Revolution cotton production was forbidden in the British colonies. This was meant to create a monopoly on British-made cotton yarns, but the result was that American weavers began to replace cotton with linen (aka tow, from flax plants).
  • Fabrics
    • linsey-woolsey - linen (tow) warp and wool weft typically woven in plain weave or twill for garments.
  • Colors:
    • natural fiber colors
    • natural dyes. Especially popular were
      • indigo blue
      • madder red
  • Structures 
    • 4-shaft overshot for coverlets
    • plain weave 
    • twill
    • barley corn weave (later called spot Bronson)
    • M's and O's
    • huck
    • summer and winter

Modern American Weaving Characteristics

Trying to identify specific characteristic of modern American weaving is more challenging. At some point, the focus shifted from utilitarian to artistic expression. Not that people stopped weaving useful items, but modern American weaving began to focus on weaving as an art form. In watching episodes of Textiles & Tea (hosted by the Handweavers Guild of America) I see an amazing amount of innovation and creativity. I have no idea if it's possible to weave a sample that represents all that.

Anyway, my plan is to do a first sample in an early American overshot pattern. I actually have an example of such a coverlet, woven by my 4x-great grandmother. (Pictures at that link.)

I'll decide about a modern sample later.

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Monday, February 03, 2025

Weaving My Family Tree: Decisions Made

Our recent cold spell interrupted my weaving plans. It was so cold we closed off my sewing room to conserve heat in the rest of the house. So I couldn't get to my table loom. I finally got my bookmarks done, but I lost weaving momentum and mentally set the crackle pine tree table runner aside for now. I'd like to rethink it anyway. The bookmarks were interesting, but for the tree motif, I think I like 8-shaft summer-and-winter designs better. 

Even though I couldn't get to my loom, I had plenty of time to start thinking about my genealogy weaving project. And I made some decisions on how to approach it (my list of decisions to be made is in this post.) 
  • I want to use the correct fiber types for the time period, but I don't want to spin my own yarns.
  • Ditto for the colors. I want to approximate them but without dyeing my own yarns.
  • I'm not going to worry about period equipment, I'll use what I've got.
  • Size of samples will be standard notebook size. The plan is to weave 3 of each sample, and make 3 notebooks, one for myself and one for each of my kids.

Another decision to be made is sample order in the notebook. I plan to start with the present and work my way back. But there is some overlap of years. For example, my American ancestors date from 1620 to present, while my Irish ancestor arrived in Canada around 1825. My Prussian ancestor arrived in 1783 to fight for the British in the American Revolution. So, overlapping of dates. 

There's no time table for this project, but I suspect it will take quite awhile. I'm starting with research for American weaving, but I'll put all that in a separate post.

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