I am interested in making a tablecloth for my dining room table. My table is 56" wide so that means doubleweave.  I would like to plan a design with an oval design leaving plain weave in the middle and repeat the oval design on the edges of the tablecloth. I will only have 10 shafts available to me. I recognize that I will have to cut some waste to make the tablecloth oval on the bottom. Possible or impossible with my limitations?

Comments

Sun, 11/30/2014 - 20:33

Bonnie Inouye (not verified)

You could weave a large piece with oval-shaped designs. I don't understand how you imagine the whole piece. You could make oval designs on a big rectangle, or you could make a big cloth with one large oval in the center or one on each side of the center. But if you want an oval design as a border, repeated and evenly spaced around an oval-cut cloth, then you should apply the designs after the cloth is finished to the size and shape you wish. You could block print or silk screen the designs or embroider them.

If you want a large oval design and only have 4 or 5 shafts for each layer, the design will look pixelated or blocky and not with smooth curves. Small designs will look smoother.

You could weave a simpler design for the tablecloth and ovals on napkins. Or make a table runner using all 10 shafts and use it down the center of the table.

Bonnie Inouye

Tue, 12/02/2014 - 20:52

ReedGuy

Do you really need to cut the corners. Merc 10/2 cotton will form nice to a curve on an oval table. Never understood why people want such wide tables. Up here in old farm houses the tables aren't even 48" wide. I have 100 + year old table and it's only 38" wide, 6 feet long. ;)

Tue, 12/02/2014 - 12:42

Frecklefacedfrannie

Never thought about why I have a wide table...... Liked the look of it and didn't think about the width. However, I can seat 12 comfortably with food in the middle and it sure serves its purpose.   I have made placemats but the idea for a tablecloth has been in my head for about 2 years. I gave it up and made the placemats, but go back again and again to the idea of a tablecloth.... So I am attacking doubleweave, planning 2 blankets doing doubleweave just so I can make this darn tablecloth.

I will look at and plan small designs.  Any structure that you would recommend? It will probably be a year or so in the planning as I have to feel I am good enough at doubleweave before I will do this.  

Tue, 12/02/2014 - 13:23

sandra.eberhar…

The reason people who routinely sit many people have as wide a table as possible is that you can have dishes in the middle, available to most of the table without every person having to pass the dish to get it to the end.  It just works better.

Tue, 12/02/2014 - 13:29

sandra.eberhar…

Strickler's book, 8 Shaft Pattrns has an Atwater-Bronson lace pattern on page 184 that is a series of square borders.  With two more shafts, you may be able to roung this out.  Or maybe an enlargment of a round overshot pattern element, with extra picks to make it oval? 

Wed, 12/03/2014 - 08:23

ReedGuy

You still have to pass dishes unless someone can reach 4 feet or more. I made that comment simply because we just never see a wide table up north here. And not very desireable because of size. It makes for heavy furniture and takes extra room old houses never had. The reason was they were cut up a lot by partitioning to conserve heat, made for a  lot of small rooms even the dining room. A 14' (foot) wide room was a big one. The culture is just a bit different in the cold north.  My uncle was a big collector of dishes. Had big feeds. These dishes were usually large (physically) Ironstone dishes like Friendly Village and Vista or Spode Billingsly Rose soup terrains and covered dishes. Usually 8 place setting at the table, but he had enough for 24 in some patterns. Of course there are such things as side board cupboards up here as well to set dishes by the table. Deserts and pies were placed on them also. It was not a feed trough, asking for and passing dishes was just part of protocol along with manners. ;)

But that's just getting away from your project. The trick with doubleweave and being careful on the fold side, often a couple slippery threads are warped at the selvedge to be removed once off the loom. Then also having a good shed so that the layers don't develop a skip, which means in double weave you catch the layer below. I've made table cloths, but never needed to double weave them on a 62" loom.

Learn some design techniques with software or paper and you can try a lot of weaves. It doesn't take forever to pick up on the design process, just practice and a little experience with interlacements and floats. I prefer twills for something like a tablecloth because it holds shape better than plain weave. I would also use merc cotton, linen will not drape well around a curve.

Good luck with your table cloth. :)

Wed, 12/03/2014 - 01:32

sandra.eberhar…

Sorry, if you have to do this double weave, you don't have the shafts for the lace borders, unless you do only one border.  You might be able to weave a canvas weave oval border and do some hemstiching on that.

Wed, 12/03/2014 - 01:55

Sara von Tresckow

Traditionally, tablecloths were woven in two (or three)panels. While double width double weave is appropriate for blankets and some other objects, the precision and fineness that a nice tablecloth demand won't be easy to achieve. The fact that each warp goes to the center and back to the edge leaves a space in the center that will always be visible, less so if planned into a stripe or other element intended as camoflage. The issue of maintaining an even beat will be exacerbated - remember that the two layers do not wrap around the breast and cloth beams exactly the same way. In a wool blanket that will be fulled later, some of this imperfect beat will simply disapper - not so with a tablecloth. Your design wishes will be much easier to accommodate if you do panels - you then have considerably more blocks available for the total design.

There are many treatments for the seaming - in the center or, in the case of three panels, at the sides of the table. You can crochet lace, butt the edges, use attractive ribbon or decorative tape. One of my favorite tablecloths is in three panels with hand crochet lace (from an antique shop) joining them - right and left of center on the table, leaving room for a candle holder of centerpiece between them.

My favorite for tablecloths is half linen - a 10/2 mercerized cotton warp with an 8/1 or 12/1 linen weft - this fabric drapes well, even around curves.

Wed, 12/03/2014 - 09:15

ReedGuy

You could always just call it the fold line. It will need folding when stored, of course it will not disappear when ironed. There are techniqes that can be learned to minimize the blemish. But splicing panels is not perfect either, trying to match design elements that cross the fold. Evenness of beat between two panels that can match design on each panel will be a challenge as well. You can not pull and stretch at the seems to match the splice line, it will wrinkle. If there is a border pattern in the weave and one panel has been woven longer than the other because of imperfections in beating, that isn't good either.

Wed, 12/03/2014 - 14:34

Sara von Tresckow

Yes, one needs skill to beat panels evenly, but the chance of getting a good result improves when this diddling about with "double wide double weave" is left out of the picture.

Honestly, if this were such a good way to weave, there wouldn't be so many stained glass windows in medieval churches showing two man looms as the way to make wide cloth in a single piece. Double weave and tubular weaving was known long before - the hidden underlayer and uneven rolling of the two layers probably were major factors in avoiding the double wide double weave option. Broadcloth production was greatly improved by the invention of the fly shuttle.

The dwdw method also involves a more open sett than normal because of the need to separate layers. I've done a lot of tablecloths, blankets and coverlets in panels and never obsessed with beat - and have never had a miserable result.

Wed, 12/03/2014 - 14:55

ReedGuy

Bottom line is, it really boils down to what one has to work with and their skills. Sometimes you just have to decide whether you want to invest the time and money into something that might not work to your satisfaction or move on to something else and just forget it. Myself,  I have no need for exta wide table cloths, so my loom can weave all the 48" cloth I need without the notion of double wide doubleweave at all.

Thu, 12/04/2014 - 21:49

ReedGuy

This old archived article from Master Weaver is a good read on double wide double weave.

http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/periodicals/zmw_07.pdf

It talks about the challenges, and mostly what Sara wrote about in here.