table runner

This is a gift for my daughter. I wanted to do a dornick's twill for the challenge. My daughter liked the pattern (from Mastering Weave Structures), and chose the colors. I had some trouble at first with mis-treadling (and subsequent unweaving). Changed the tieup so I could alternate my feet, and it went smoothly after that. Took me some time to get the rhythm, but thoroughly enjoyed doing this project, my first post rag-rug project. I am very deliberately not showing the two treadling errors that I missed. My daughter says that they are just proof that it is hand-woven! I am pleased with the evenness of the selvages, though there is some unevenness in the beat, though not overly noticable. Will try to post pic when it is finished an on her table.

Finished length reflects 5 inches for hems (1/2" turned under, 2" hems) in addition to takeup and shrinkage after washing. I chose hems instead of fringe to make laundering easier for my daughter. The hems are basted in; I will sew them using cotton embroidery floss slightly darker than the warp, allowing just a dot to show on the face of the runner. I used some orange to hold the web in place while I zigzaged the ends, and like the effect so much that next one (narrow runner for her sideboard) will have an orange band and fringe.

The table runner on my dining table badly needed replacement.  In Ann Sutton's book "The Structure of Weaving" I found just the right technique to use up all these small amounts of woolen yarns in the various colours from my stash. Warp and Weft are identical in material: The off-white is a very thick quality whereas the coloured yarns are thin. I made a slight change to Ann's design as I used 4 threads of the thick yarn instead of 2 (for details see the draft section of Weavolution). I used a 40:10 reed, the thick yarn in every opening. The thin yarn was sleyed together with the thick.

I wanted to sample the length of my warp and check for shrinkage, draw-in and take-up for future projects.  I am planning on using this as an example for my rigid heddle classes.  I also wanted to check how much loom waste I had with the Harp rigid heddle loom.  I was pleased that my loom waste was about 16" and not the 24" I have expected and allowed for.  In the future, I will probably calculate my warp length with 18-20" for loom waste.

I used all the small pieces of 3/2 yarn sitting around from the end or almost end of a cone, the yarn cut off when winding a warp and finding a slub in spots where the yarn was joined.  If I have a long piece left from cutting out the slub from the middle of a warp, I keep it and use it for tying warps or some other part of the project that requires a small piece of yarn.  I used these "thrums" as weft in the table runner and love the way the weft stripes turned out.