I've been doing doubleweave scarves. They are quite narrow, approximately five inches wide. 8/2 Tencel for warp, 60/2 silk for weft. My tension is perfect, the fell line is super-straight, my selvages are fine. The weft goes in at the proper angle. I take the scarves off the loom and the selvages lay flat. But after washing and drying I get a curly effect on the edges. What could be causing this? It's highly variable - some scarves are somewhat flat, some have a lot of curl.

Comments

Sun, 07/19/2015 - 15:52

Weavin Steven

I should add that I wash in cold water in the washing machine and tumble-dry on low for about 30 minutes. I take them out while still just a bit damp and press both sides fairly firmly. 

Also, the scarves are sett at 30 epi but as it's doubleweave, that really means 60 epi. The exception are the selvages, those are sett at 15 epi doubled to 30 epi. I use a 15-dent reed, so that means I have 4 threads per slot for the body of the scarf and 2 threads for the selvages. I also use a floating selvage of 1 thread.

Sun, 07/19/2015 - 16:39

kerstinfroberg

What are your structures? Esp uneven twills tend to do just that, in my experience. (which is why Swedish dräll/turned twill or satin items tend to have several "opposite" narrow borders - this way the edges want to curl up and down and up and down)

Mon, 07/20/2015 - 02:40

Steve Singery

The reason my teacher (Deborah Chandler - from her book) emphasized adding length to basic weft calculations is that the weft goes over and under the warp.  Because you have double the epi for the body of the scarves than epi for selvages, you must have a greater length of weft per inch in the body and less length of weft per inch in the selvage part, each pick.  (Not sure how wide the selvage part is.)  During washing/ fulling, movement of web would not be the same for the two parts.  Waviness would show up at edges because there is less resistance to displacement there.  Anyway, that's my take on the problem.

 

Edit:  I assumed you are weaving doubleweave from side to side.  I only have experience with four shaft weaving and don't know how to weave doubleweave otherwise.  If you have cleverly figured out how to doubleweave the middle only, then your weft should be all the same length across each section of each pick and the abovementioned possibility is irrelevant.

Sun, 07/19/2015 - 21:13

Weavin Steven

I leave plenty of weft to go across, just enough to not draw in the edges. Which why this is a puzzle for such a narrow piece. 

The structure is plain weave, not twill. 1, 2, 3, 2 for one side to show, 1, 4, 3, 4 for the other side.

Mon, 07/20/2015 - 01:30

Weavin Steven

I looked for an answer outside of this forum and believe I found the answer here (under 1 a):

http://www.texnim.8k.com/defects.htm

It makes sense as when the weft turns to go the other direction I may be laying down just enough extra weft that it will cause a curly selvage. And since it's a doubleweave it can be hard to see the weft at the selvages while weaving.