String Theory (or the Weaving Warrior's Quest)

by Buff

Weaving is an ancient and wonderful art form, and I love doing it.  What I do not love, however, is everything that leads up to the pleasure of throwing the shuttle and watching the fabric come into existence in your hands.  Like a warrior's quest, there are a lot of obstacles and dragons to overcome (read "warping the loom") before reaching the promised land of actual weaving. 

"Warping" is the general term for setting up the loom. The lengthwise yarns are the warp and the crosswise yarns are called "weft" or "woof" or "filling."  

First, there's some math; I am awful at math, but this is pretty simple if you remember your "times" tables.  It's like a school homework question: I want to weave five scarves, each one 10" wide by 52" long.  The "sett" (how closely the yarns are crowded together) will be 20 "epi" (ends – or yarns – per inch).  How much yarn do I need?  You also need to add in fudge factors for loom waste, as you can't weave every inch, and shrinkage when washed.  

You decide on 208 ends at 10 yards long. Here's where string management comes in.  Think about cutting 208 strings each 10 yards long.  Then think about having neat parallel strings instead of something a bird could nest in. 

Not to worry – there are ways to keep the warp under control.  But you have to be tough and vigilant; give those strings an inch and they will take 10 yards.  They are always looking for ways to slither away or knot themselves up.  The solution is to keep them under tension at all times. 

You start by winding the yarn onto a warping board.  You can see one in the first photo below, the wooden thing in the foreground with dowels sticking out as pegs.  As you wind your 10 yards, you must make a "cross" in at least one end.  Yarn number one goes over this peg and under that one; yarn number two does the opposite.  Each yarn is held in its own place by crossing over each other.  Heaven help you if you lose the cross.  Your lovely series of stripes is now a pile of multi-colored yarns. (I know from painful experience.)

When done winding, you put "choke ties" (I said you had to be tough) at various places along the warp, and you put "lease sticks" (two flat sticks held together by shoe laces through the holes in the ends) into the cross to hold it in place.   Only then can you release the tension, and chain the warp, using your hand like a big crochet hook.  

Next is winding the warp onto the "back beam" of the loom.  You fasten the lease sticks behind the "harnesses."  These are the frames which hold the "heddles" through which you thread the yarns. More about them later.  

You slide the looped end of the warp through a stick at the back beam, and start carefully winding the whole 10 yards onto the beam.  Still rebellious, the yarns stick and try to knot together, and if you don't pay attention, you'll find you are breaking threads as they pass through the lease stick cross.  

So as you pay out the warp, you have to neaten up the threads before they get to the lease sticks.  It's helpful at this point to have a couple of extra hands, because the best way to wind on is with tension.  It's hard to straighten the threads and hold them under tension at the front of the loom while you're winding at the back of the loom.  Lacking extra hands, you might want to recruit a friend.  Do not ask your significant other, however.  This leads to questions like "Are you sure this is the right way to do this?" and tools flung across the room and general domestic discord.   

When you have wound most of the yarn, it's time to "thread" the loom in one of the many configurations. Remember the harnesses? They hold the heddles, which are vertical metal or nylon pieces with an eye in the middle. When you weave, you will be raising and lowering the harnesses to create the pattern. The more harnesses you have, the more pattern you can create, but the more painful it is to reach the back ones; one of my looms has 16 harnesses and it's a good thing I have long arms. 

Here you discover that patience is a virtue.  Each yarn has to go through one heddle eye, in the correct order, without skipping any or putting two into one heddle.  This step takes approximately forever, even without making any mistakes.  Photo two shows the threaded loom.

That done, each yarn has to go through a "dent" in the proper-sized "reed."  The metal reed consists of narrow slots (dents) and controls the sett of the fabric.  In my scarves, sett at 20 epi, I use a 10-dent reed and put two yarns into each dent. Thicker yarns would need a reed with larger dents.  The reed is held in the "beater" which you use when weaving to beat in the thread you've just thrown.  

Of course, as you are "sleying" (I often feel like slaying the warp, but "sleying" is the term used for pulling the yarns through the reed -- don't ask me who made up this jargon) you find a mistake in the threading and have to re-thread every yarn past the error.  

We're almost there!  You tie up the sleyed threads to another stick on the front beam (also called "cloth beam," as that's where the fabric will roll up), take out the lease sticks, and adjust the tension.  I frequently have tension problems (in all senses of the word) and work to get it just right (I'm much better now that I've been weaving for some 35 years). 

Whew! Spread the warp by weaving in few rows of rags or toilet paper and you're ready to go.  The third photo shows the loom ready for weaving.  The yarns, now firmly under tension, are tamed at last (well, until you throw the shuttle clumsily and break them, but that's another story).  Now you can weave, which is soothing and meditative, and have the thrill of watching a beautiful fabric emerge from loose threads.  You have reached the promised land. 

(Believe it or not, some people really enjoy warping.  I was thinking of hiring a fellow weaving guild member to warp for me, but she moved.) 

Notwithstanding the foregoing, weaving is wonderful; please contact me if you want to know about the Woodland Weavers' and Spinners' Guild, which takes in a large area on both sides of the Delaware River, including Sullivan County, NY and Wayne County, PA.  We meet at the Damascus, PA community center.