cross

For more ideas on this process, please cross reference the thread, "Transfer the cross (to anyplace!) http://weavolution.com/forum/weaving/tra...

The situation — I wound too much warp for 1/2 of the project width, so some of the warp has to be removed before threading. It has to be a "surgical" removal to conserve the intended pattern repeat, so I can't just take off one side. And the pattern I am threading does not produce tabby, so threading the loom and then creating a shed to insert the second set of lease sticks won't work either. 

I have lease sticks in behind the castle. The loom is beamed, but not threaded yet. I have the warp under tension via water weights in front. 

I would like to remove select areas of the warp in the back, reducing the overall width of the warp. My thought was to pull out those sections, insert the cross into them, and then let them hang off the back of the loom while I weave off the desired warp that remains. This way, I have a second set of warps with their own lease sticks that I can reintroduce for sampling when I finish this short warp. I posted this query on the thread referenced above. Thanks to several Weavo member postings, I pursued their ideas as follows:

The solution — I used the white, flexible plastic strapping tape that comes wrapped about TV, computer, and office paper boxes. Following one of the original lease stick paths, I used this flexible tool to segment out the warp I wanted to keep. (* I should have selected the warp I wanted to remove!) I slid a rigid metal lease stick along the same path & called that A. I went to the other "original" lease stick and only focused on the selected groups from A, picking up their counterparts with the plastic strapping tape. Once completed, I slid in a metal lease stick to replace the plastic, and called that A also. I did not join the two sticks, but slid them out to the perimeter of my working area, which was very small on the back of a Voyager. The original lease sticks stayed in place. I have 4 lease sticks in the warp at this point.

Now that the cross is transferred to my desired warp A, I still had to disentangle the original lease sticks. They cannot just be pulled out, because I need the cross in place on the warp (B) I will be removing. So I had to repeat the process with the warps I wanted to remove, segmenting them out with the strapping tape, inserting a metal lease stick and labeling them. I kept checking to make sure I wasn't snagging an incorrect warp. Having the warp under good tension helped, but was not a perfect solution. You need a balance of tension, but being able to flip the lease sticks on edge to make a mini-shed and manipulte the warps up or down as needed.

With 6 lease sticks in the warp, (defining Warp A, Warp B, and the original lease sticks), I did a final check to make sure the layers were separate before sliding out the original sticks. There were a few errant warps, but I can recapture those to their appropriate layer.

Next time — I should have pulled the warp I wanted to eliminate to the TOP, not left it on the bottom.

Follow up — It was a pain to lift Warp B to the top, and when I did, I should have put it at the very back of the loom, not by the castle. 

I used an ironing board as a staging area for this process with the table loom, so I could adjust the height as needed. High for beaming with the water weights, lower down for this tedious process.

I sincerely hope that by posting, no one (myself included!) will have to go through these kind of gymnastics if you make the same kind of mistake warping!