Hi all,
With the end of my wedding-dress project in sight (I'm trying to complete it by Feb 15), I'm contemplating a project that mixes elastic and regular yarns in the warp for a collapse weave. The only thing is that the lycra yarn is (of course) stretchy!
My thought was to wind the lycra yarn onto my warping wheel through a tension box, i.e. under tension (to stretch it out as much as possible), and then wind it onto the sectional beam under tension as well (via the warping wheel's brake). I want it to collapse as much as possible when it comes off the loom. The regular yarn would be wound on under no tension but would go on the warp under the same tension as the lycra yarn.
My question is, do I need two warp beams to keep the yarns properly tensioned during weaving? I'm guessing yes, and was thinking of doing it by hanging the regular yarn in chains off the back end of the loom and weighting each chain separately, while the lycra is wound onto the warp beam. Do I need to do this? and if I do, how many chains should I make?
I am probably going to do 1" stripes of elastic and regular yarns, alternating, on a 20" warp. I'd rather not have to unchain and manually "advance" 10 separate chains of the regular yarns every 18", but I'll do it if necessary. The warp for this one will only be about 3.5 yards long so it wouldn't be that many advances.
This will be my first attempt at weaving with fingering weight yarn! I've never woven with a yarn that heavy. After the superfine yarns for the wedding-dress, this will be instant gratification!!!
Tien