Leigh's Fiber Journal: waffle weave

Showing posts with label waffle weave. Show all posts

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Waffle Weave Dishtowels Done

These are the towels for the Towel Exchange.

Waffley close-up for Peg (see comments)

The particulars:
4 shaft waffle weave
yarn - 10/2 unmercerized cotton
sett - 30 epi
stripe pattern - upc barcode
shrinkage - about 24%
finished size - 18 by 24 inches

My sett is a little tighter than the 24 epi that many handweavers use for waffle weave in 10/2 cotton. My sample was done at 30 epi however, and when I asked my DH if he thought the fabric was too thick for dishtowels, he responded with a definite no. He liked their thick, thirsty feel, so I left the sett as it was.

I finished hemming them yesterday afternoon. After looking all the suggestions you all shared last March (see Hemming Handwoven Fabrics), I decided to serge the fabric and then hand hem. I like my serger for this, as it cuts and binds the edges at the same time. It was easy to fold under and hem.

My only concern about the hems is that they are a little thick. However, no one seems to have any luck using plain weave weave for the hems, as the plain weave doesn't draw in enough. My other option would have been to use a finer cotton or sewing thread as weft, in waffle weave. But I have neither; not in cotton anyway and I didn't want shrinkage (or non-shrinkage) issues! If these were for myself, I would have been willing to experiment, but not for a towel exchange.

I still have to make up 20 project sheets, but they aren't due until November, so I have time for that. We will exchange two towels each, and then receive project sheets (with fabric samples) from all participants. Hopefully I won't procrastinate on those either!

Friday, August 29, 2008

Barcode Waffle Weave Off The Loom

By Leigh

My waffle weave fabric is finally off the loom, washed, dried, and ready to be cut and sewn into towels.

I used 10/2 unmercerized cotton, sett is 30 epi. That weaves up into a nice thirsty feeling fabric. You may recall that this is for a towel exchange withing the Western North Carolina Fiber/Handweavers Guild. You may also recall that I got the stripe pattern .....

Leigh's interpretation of the barcode below.

Barcode for the Western NC Fibers/Handweavers Guild

.... from a barcode of the Guild's initials. I think it translated quite well.

The finished towel size for the exchange is to be 18 by 24 inches. I figured the width in the loom based on my sample, which had a draw-in and shrinkage of about 30%. After weaving a bit on the towels, I recalculated, and was worried that the finished fabric would be too narrow. That's when I came up with a way to widen the warp on the loom (that post here.) OK. That slowed me down a bit until the added warp sticks were firmly wound onto the cloth beam.

Ironically, the wet finished cloth now off the loom measures 19 inches in width. The original 10 inches that I wove on this warp (the one I thought would be too narrow), is 18 inches! So I had it right the first time.

So. I'm just going to chalk this one up to "lessons learned." :)

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Barcode Waffle Weave Update

By Leigh

Let's see. In the last episode of my waffle weave adventure (before my little detour after finding some of my blog posts stolen), I had figured out a way to both correct my waffle weave threading as well as widen it. The warp I added for width has been pretty successful, though not without some problems.

What I have had trouble with has been a curving fell. "Fell", for you non-weavers, is the leading edge of the cloth on the loom; the line of fabric made by the last weft thread. It needs to be perfectly straight, or the weft won't beat in properly. Sometimes it curves upward at the selvedges, so that your weaving looks like it's smiling at you. This is the case if the warp at the edges is too loose, or if the weft is pulled too hard through the shed so as to cause unnecessary draw-in.

Initially, I assumed it had to do with the amount of water in my milk jug weights. However, even after adjusting the amount of water and taking care with the weft didn't completely correct this problem.

In analyzing the problem, I realized that the sticks I added to tie the extra warp to (photo here), are not supported by the front apron strings. I suspect that that may be the problem, because those sticks still flex somewhat under the weight of the warp tension.

My solution was to add a second set of sticks in the tabby sheds......

Sticks added to help correct my fell problem.

Here's a close-up, in which you can really see the problem with the fell. See the upward curve of the bottom cloth? As a beginning weaver I had this problem a lot. Oftentimes it was simply uneven tension in the warp, especially if I didn't wind it under an even tension for its entire length.

The other problem I've had to learn to correct is excessive draw-in. This appears to be related to either the shuttle itself or how I throw it. For finer warp threads like the 10/2 I'm using, I use boat shuttles. My favorite (because it holds the most yarn) is my 13.5 inch Gilmore shuttle. It holds six inch bobbins, which are almost too snug a fit in the shuttle, though they still rotate freely. With all my boat shuttles, I find that I must take care with the amount of weft pulled from the bobbin before I throw the shuttle. If enough isn't pulled out, there is a tendency for the selvedges to pull in too much.

All this means that I need to pay attention to what I'm doing, which is probably a good thing anyway. However, even taking care to correct these two things, I was still having the problem. So far, my added sticks seem to be working, and I don't have anymore curves to deal with. Hopefully that will remain to be the case! I'll let you know how well it actually works.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Light Bulb Moments with Waffle Weave

By Leigh

OK. So the waffle weave sampler turned out pretty well except for the bleeding red yarn. With the information it gave me, I pressed on to the barcode inspired dishtowels with confidence.

However, after several inches of weaving, I was puzzled when my selvedges looked like the photo on the left. Even though I am using a floating selvedge warp thread, I was having a problem catching the outermost warp thread (which is not the floating warp). What was the problem? This hadn't happened on my sampler.

I rechecked my threading, but everything was fine there. No mistakes in the point twill threading. I decided to take another look at waffle weave in Mary Black's Key to Weaving. It didn't take long to diagnose my problem.

Yes, I had threaded in a point twill, but I had started at the center of my loom and threaded going outward. Due to the number of ends I had, my threading ended on shaft four, like this.....

The other selvedge was the same way, so that the threading started and ended on shaft four.

What it's supposed to look like is this ......

Threading is supposed to start and end on shaft one. It would seem inconsequential, but because of waffle weave's tie-up and treadling, it's not!

That was light bulb moment number one. Light bulb moment number two came while trying to decide how to correct the threading. I didn't know if it would be better to add or subtract some warp to have it start on the first shaft. To decide, I decided to recheck my project width math.

From sampling, I had learned to expect about a 30% loss in width after washing and drying. To determine the width of my warp, I had taken my project width (18 inches) and added 30%. From that calculation I measured 702 warp ends, which measured 23.5 inches in the reed.

This time, I subtracted 30% from the width in the reed (23.5), and was surprised when the result wasn't 18 inches, but about 16.5. Well, duh. 30% of 18 is not the same as 30% of 23.5. 30% of 18 is about 5.4, while 30% of 23.5 is 7. Light bulb moment number two was in realizing that how I calculated draw-in and shrinkage made a big difference in the final width of my project.

My challenge then, was to add enough extra warp for my finished project to be 18 inches, while starting and ending the threading on shaft number one.

There may have been an easier way to do this, but here's what I came up with:

What I did was to use Peggy Osterkamp's 2-Stick Header, and tie my additional warp on to it. You can either click on the above photo to enlarge it a little, or there's a close-up below.

I weighted the two bouts of warp in the back with half gallon milk jugs filled with water. I was able to experiment with the amount of water in each jug until I got a straight, even fell.

This does widen the borders quite a bit, but who in the world (besides my readers :) is gonna know that I didn't plan it this way in the first place.

Next time I would use a stouter stick to tie the warp onto, although hopefully there won't be a next time. And perhaps someone has a better idea? Two enlightening flashes of understanding are enough for me in one day. I'm rather worn out from it all.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Waffle Weave Sampler

By Leigh

Well, I'm certainly glad that I did a sample for this waffle weave project. For more reasons than one. You can probably spot one reason right off the bat.

The red bled! And this was in a cold water wash. It would have been very disappointing if I had skipped the sampler and just tried to do the towels.

The other thing I decided I didn't like was the the treadling. Usually, waffle weave is treadled the same as the threading, 1 through 4 and reverse. However, I used the treadling from Mary E. Black's The Key to Weaving. The waffle weave treadling from this book called for treadles 1 through 5 and reverse, which makes the waffles a little taller. I think this makes the warp floats too long however. So for my towels, I will use the more common treadling sequence.

The other important bit of information is the shrinkage. Mine was approximately 29%. This is about what several of you have experienced with your own waffle weaving, so I think that 30% is a safe estimate to use in the future. Lengthwise, the shrinkage was 21%.

Using 10/2 cotton and a sett of 30 epi made a fairly thick fabric. I think this would be suitable for a heavy dishtowel or perhaps as fabric for a lightweight vest.

So there you have it. The bother of sampling justified. I'm just not sure what to do with that cone of red however. This is the second cone of red cotton I've had bleed. Does anyone know if it's possible to salvage a yarn like this? Fortunately I got each for only a couple of dollars somewhere, but still, I hate to think that I have to test all my yarns for colorfastness. *Sigh*

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Waffle Weave

By Leigh

Here is an update on the other fibrey things I'm doing besides dyeing. I have to admit that my enthusiasm for working with wool (knitting my SSC and spinning that Polwarth) is quite diminished in our heat. This is typical for the southeast this time of year, and it doesn't help that our second floor apartment overlooks a blacktop parking lot which intensifies the heat coming from our already hot afternoon sun.

What's on the loom now, is a sample for some waffle weave dishtowels.

It's funny, because when I signed up for a towel exchange with the Western North Carolina Fibers/Handweavers Guild, I immediately thought Susan's waffle weave projects. So that's what I decided to do. Then I visited her blog, only to discover that she had signed up for a different towel exchange, but was planning to do huck weave after reading my posts about that!

I've done waffle weave before, but it's been quite a few years, and that was before I was in my dishtowel phase. Waffle weave isn't a separate structure in it's own right, rather it's all in the treadling. Here is the draft I am using:

The threading here is the traditional point twill, although Helene Bress's The Weaving Book: Patterns & Ideas, (which I understand is to be republished soon), shows waffle weave not only on point twill threadings, but also on Rosepath and broken twill threadings, as well as Huck, Monk's Belt, and Overshot.

The tie-up involves tying two treadles for plain weave, and tying the rest to lift (or sink) three shafts or one. This creates the floats, which you will see in the close up below. The treadling is tromp as writ, which simply means treadling in the same pattern as the threading draft. For my sample, that means treadling one through four and reverse.

If you look closely, you can see that a combination of warp and weft floats create the "waffles."

My sample is utilizing 10/2 cottons in a sett of 30 epi. This sett was from a chart, so I hoped it would be correct, as evidently it is easy to create a weft faced fabric if the sett isn't close enough or if one's beating is too hard. The key is to make it a balanced weave, so that the picks per inch equal the ends per inch. So far so good; the little waffles are turning out nicely.

The exchange is in November, hence the red and green stripes. There is a story behind those stripes, which I won't go into here, but will get on to when I weave the actual towels.

One thing I'm curious about will be the total amount of shrinkage. The warp is 10.5 inches in the reed, but draw-in takes the actual woven fabric to 8.75 inches. Being cotton, I know it will shrink a bit more with washing and drying.

I have several yards on for this sampler, and as I weave I'm amusing myself by thinking about what I can do with it. Potholders perhaps? A scarf? Little bags for little goodies? Any other suggestions?

Twills - The Basics - explains the basic twill threadings
Waffle Weave Sampler - Problem!
Light Bulb Moments with Waffle Weave
Small Bags For Small Gifts

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