Adrienne's Towels- Sleying the Reed

Last night Adrienne came over for the second step in dressing the loom.


To keep these warp threads organized and in order it is essential to tie different colored ties and various points on the warp frame to keep the threads tidy. I generally put two ties about three inches from each dowel rod on a section.




The next matter of vital importance is to keep the integrity of this cross. This is key. It keeps the threads in military formation. Without this cross you will have knots, mess and frustration.
I put a tie around the cross and I also tie the top and bottoms just in case.
At this point I can take the warp off the frame I do this by chaining (like crochet)



This is a chain of orderly warp that has been taken to the loom.

We put a pair of sticks (called lease sticks) on either side of the cross and attached it with tape to the front beam of the loom. We then took a sley hook and started to pull two threads through each dent. This is a 10 dent reed so there will be 20 threads per inch.
When I watched the women in Cambodia sley a reed with fine silk at 60+ threads to the inch I was very humbled.

Adrienne's Towels

I met Adrienne at Gryphon's spin in a couple of months ago. She knits, has learned to spin, and now wants to weave. I now have a weaving student and want to share our adventure weaving Adreienne's Towels.

As you can see from the photo I have a Textile Room (hence the name of my blog) with about a 40 year accumulation of diverse textile related equipment in it. I was taught to weave in the late 70's by an adorable woman in the Appalachian mountains near Asheville, North Carolina. My current loom is a new AVL Home Loom. I traded in my AVL production dobby loom for this as I only want to weave for pleasure these days.

Saturday was our first lesson. Before you can weave you need to have a project in mind. I gave Adrienne the choice between a towel or a scarf (limited choice because that is what we could make from the yarns/threads in my stash). She chose a towel.

Next decision was- What kind of towel? Someone had loaned her an Interweave Press booklet called A Treasury of Towels. The perfect towel pattern was found on page 22 designed by Tom Knisely a teacher at The Manning's.

The design is Rosepath - basically a twill structure. This will give the towel some texture and interest. Provide some challenging threading opportunities and interest while weaving.

The pattern calls for an 8/2 unmercerized cotton and my stash was limited to white, off white and jade. Adrienne chose jade.

The warp is 20 epi (ends per inch). Tom already did the math for us so we know that we need 395 threads. Next question was how long to make the warp? Since we want at least two towels (one for Adrienne and one for me) and the towels according to Tom are 31 inches long ,we decided on a four yard warp. This will give us ample chance to play with our weaving and maybe even get three towels out of the warp depending how much experimenting we do and loom waste there is.

After this intellectual exercise it was off to the warping reel/warping mill. I use this type because it folds flat and is easy to store. Notice the pegs at the very top. The warp threads go over and under the pegs to form a cross. This cross is vital to the process of warping the loom. Diligence at this step prevents frustration and heartache later on (trust me on this one).

Adrienne wound on about half of the 395 warp threads before she had to leave. I will finish the other half and the next lesson in weaving will be scheduled. Soon!