This was the demo warp I set up for the ANWG conference (Association of Northwest Weavers' Guilds) at the start of June. The semi-rigid heddle shown is the medium width (soon to appear on my website), which can produce narrow warp-faced bands, medium warp-dominant bands (like this one), or narrow strips of balanced-weave cloth (about 7 inches wide and 10 epi). As you can see from the photos, I set it up inside the framework of a Schacht Cricket loom. There are two good reasons for doing such a peculiar thing. First, the Cricket frame, with its warp and cloth beams and nice ratchet-and-pawl brakes, lets you gracefully handle and control a long warp (very useful, when you're weaving on something that hangs suspended on the threads!). Second, the Semi-Rigid Heddle lets you do things that aren't as comfortably accomplished with a plastic rigid heddle -- such as weaving with radically mixed warps, or weaving with delicate threads. The Tex-Solv allows you to weave the width you want, without putting strain on the selvedge threads (it surprises even me -- it's very forgiving!).
For this band, I warped with the materials I had on hand -- and as you can see from the photo of the band at the fell line, they were varied! The navy yarn was an 8/2 mercerized cotton from Webs. The glittery fuchsia yarn was actually two yarns wound and threaded together: a fine fuchsia rayon yarn (nice and shiny!), and a super-fine glitzy yarn in fluorescent orange, purchased from Russell Groff's estate. The teal and chartreuse yarns were both #10 crochet cottons (and you'll notice they have a Z twist rather than an S twist). And the variegated yarn, with its array of colours from slate blue to pink to off-white, was an 8/2 mercerized cotton from Webs.
My first band woven in the framework of the Cricket (posted as another project) made me think the Cricket's front-to-back length was a little too short to get a decent shed -- but I did a tidier job of beaming the warp for this one, and all was well. The shed was still fairly small, but it was comfortably big enough for my loaded stick shuttle, and clean enough so there weren't any shedding problems.
So... I like the finished band so much that I now need to make a jacket to go with it. (It looks wonderful on some medium-blue linen fabric I just happen to have in the stash.) It's firm in the hand, but not stiff -- and it's not thick or heavy, so I think it will work nicely as trim around the lower edge of a jacket, or maybe on the sleeves, or as a front placket....
In fact, I like this band so much that I decided to weave more bands like to it, in related colourways! (Hooray, a summer focus!)
The top-view photo above shows the "next" band, which is on the loom right now. Now that I'm home from my travels, I don't have the same yarns I had when I was away -- so this new band is wildly mixed, combining knitting cottons, shiny gossamer ribbons, and a different kind of fuchsia sparkle.
One more thing: this little loom is set up in our living room -- and our 19.5 year old cat has discovered that he loves weaving! I no longer throw the shuttle all alone, not even if I want to. :-)
I love the idea of the tex-solv heddles to address the issue of the different weight yarns. I think somthing like this would fit on my rigid heddle loom too, it is wide and handles a lot of warp.
