linen

The nubby fiber is impossible to tie in a knot at the fringes. I then sewed the ends on the sewing machine to secure and hand twisted the fringe. 

I had found a super bargain of both cotton and linen and felt so rich I decided to weave tablecloths again. Total ends 2200. This first one matches the china I have inherited from my grandparents.

The original draft was for 12 S/T but as I only have 10 I reduced it from 2 blocks of 3/1 twill and one of plain weave to two 2/1 twills and a basket weave block. I am still satisfied with the result :-)

This project is documented from its very beginning, when the yarn is still mostly fibre!

The weather has turned hot and humid, and I've been thinking of lightweight linen.  Spinning flax is a great warm-weather activity.  The fibre isn't cling-y, and the yarn is smoothest when it's "wet-spun"; so if you're using a spindle, you get to spin standing up (maximum airflow on all sides), and you get to splash around a bit in water -- win-win!  So last night as I dabbled my fingers on the moist sponge, getting ready to dampen the thread, I admired the texture of the cop building up on the spindle shaft... and the evening breeze whispered, "Leno."

I have some very nice natural-coloured linen "voile" (a commercial
fabric, very lightweight) that will make an excellent sweltery-weather
top or jacket -- but I haven't done anything with it because it needed
some kind of trim, or structure, or design element to give it interest.  A leno band woven from handspun linen singles would be just the ticket!

Stay tuned.  This isn't a project that will be woven and finished in a day. ;-)

26 July 2011 -- Last week I wound the linen singles off the spindle (264 yards!  I'd thought it would be just 150 or so!), then thought about what I wanted to do in terms of warp dressing.  Being spun from flax roving instead of nice, long line flax, I worried that the warp yarns would fray and fuzz with handling and hoped a warp dressing would keep that bad behaviour to a minimum.  I finally decided to pre-soak the warp in a dressing made from flax seeds, and did so:  after the threads were fully saturated with dressing, I squeezed out the excess and hung the skein to dry.

The dressed yarn was still fairly smooth, but very stiff!  The stiffness went away as I re-skeined the yarn and warped the loom yesterday.  But... this singles yarn fuzzes and frays with handling, just as I'd feared.  The problem is in the original fibre rather than in the yarn itself:  the fibres in flax roving are short and brittle.  Even with plenty of twist, the yarn is more fragile than, say, a similar singles spun from something cooperative like silk, or a singles spun from flax line. In the new photo above showing the view from the back of the loom, you can clearly see the fuzzing (and a knot in one of the warp threads!).  It's not totally unexpected, but it's disappointing.

In the future, I'll reserve yarns spun from this roving for use in the weft -- and when I want a linen singles for warp, it will be spun from line!

But for now -- the leno looks nice. :-)  I'm weaving slowly, keeping the sheds very small and beating by pressing wefts into place with a smooth beveled stick.  It's actually pleasant weaving.  It's just not the *smooth* pleasantness I'd imagined.

20 August 2011 -- Still weaving!  Between the last post and this one, I ran out of weft, spun up another spindle-ful, used it -- then spun a bobbin-ful on the spinning wheel (the yarns match, and I'm now focussed on the weaving, so why not?).

The pattern has evolved.  In the first few inches of warp, I experimented with various forms of leno (there's a wealth of ways to cross those threads!); but patterns that pull the warps far from their original paths also put strain on the yarns.  I had more warp repairs in that first section than I care to admit!  So... the patterning has now settled into a regular repeat that I like very much:  a pretty little section of regularly spaced leno, a band of weft-faced plainweave, a pretty little section of Brook's Bouquet (offset to get that nice weft deflection between rows), then another band of weft-faced plainweave.  I think the band will look very nice when it's done.

My original vision featured smooth yarns, not fuzzy ones -- but as I go along, I'm becoming fond of the yarn texture.  It doesn't detract from the structure, and it adds a quirky informality that suits me better than a completely elegant lace.

While weaving I've learned something very important:  low warp tension is essential for warp-deflecting manipulations like the ones used in the Brook's bouquet, especially if the warp threads are fragile.  I'm actually weaving at three different tensions in this band -- one for the Bouquets, one for the leno, and a third for the plainweave.  I'm keeping the sheds small, separating the warp layers by barely more than a centimeter, just enough to pass the stick shuttle.  To minimize abrasion, I "beat" with the beveled edge of my pickup stick.  It works:  my warps break infrequently now.  Without having to stop as often for warp repairs, the weaving is a joy that I look forward to.

And so we weave on. :-)

23 October 2011 -- It's finished!!  When I cut it off the loom and unrolled it from the cloth beam, it took my breath away.  First, it was much more consistent than I'd imagined (when you see only a small section at a time, you tend to focus on what are actually tiny details).  Second, it was much longer than I'd thought:  almost 3 meters long!  That's plenty to take care of any jacket I might want to trim, and maybe a skirt as well...

All the time I've been weaving, I've been thinking about the way I want to use this band.  I'd originally thought to use it as trim on lightweight linen cloth -- but now I think it would be nicer as an insert, so the light could play through it (and the breeze could pass through as well).  The weather has turned autumnal, so I have the entire dark season to think about next year's warm-weather jacket.  But I'm pleased with the way this summer project worked out!

Happy weaver.