When I read this evening that the theme is
strings, it only took a few moments for the thought to come to my mind. "Weaving is kind of
stringing threads together to make a fabric". Okay, it's been nearly 2 years now since I last used my spinning wheel or my loom, but I still have them and hope that one day I will have both time and inspiration so I can get back on track and get back to spinning and weaving.
In 2005, Mom wanted to take her 5 adult children on a cruise to Alaska. We all said "yes" so the trip was on. We had 6 weeks from time it was decided to time we left. In that time, I planned out the 'ruanna' I was going to weave, the colors I would use (by going to my supplier and playing with all the spools of yarns and such she has until I came up with 3 colors that worked well together), how wide the stripes would be, how many threads I needed and how long they each needed to be. There is a lot to planning a weaving project.
So, once you have your yarns/threads/
strings, and know how long and how many, the next step is to measure them all out. To do this, the easiest thing is to use a warping board. Here, I have all the strands measured out on my warping board.
One thing I learned with this one was not to measure so many threads at one time. Notice how, with so many one, some of the posts are closer together at the top than they are at the bottom? This is not good, it affects the length of them, making some shorter than they are supposed to be. Ahhhh, live and learn, haha.
You take some
strings and tie these all together before you remove the 'chain' from the warping board. Okay, there are more steps, but I'm just giving an over view, not trying to give you a real good lesson here, lol.
You tie the chain to the front of the loom, cut, and then "
string" all those threads (hundreds of them), one at a time through the reed in the beater bar, then through the heddles (no, I don't expect you to know what they are. Maybe I'll show it all one day, but too much to explain right now). If you 'biggy' this photo, you can see how the warp threads go through the reed.
Warp = the threads that are strung onto and more or less tied to the loom.
Weft = the treads that are woven side to side through the warp.
Header Cord = the yellow/orange heavy cord you see in this photo is header cord. You must weave it through the weft before you start weaving the fabric. Notice how it brings the threads together from how they are tied on to the fabric beam (front beam)... to how they are close together to be woven into the fabric.
It all gets tied on to the warp beam then all rolled on. This is the back of the loom. Remember those heddles I mentioned, if you 'biggy' this one, you can see them... the little wire things that each have a loop in the that each of the warp threads/strings are treaded through.
This one shows you the loom completely warped, and the header cord woven into it.
First you weave a sample to be sure it will weave up the way you planned. In this case I made an extra large sample so I could use it to make a small bag/purse to match the ruanna. Then I wove in some more header cord. I had to weave in enough to allow for finishing off the end of the sample as well as enough to make fringes on the ruanna. You put header cord between anything that you will be cutting apart when you take it off the loom.
This is Lynda goofing around as she models the finished ruanna for me. I wanted photos so I could post it to my blog. All these photos in this post are also on an old blog of mine. I'm glad I have them there as I have somehow managed to loose a lot of my photographs (viruses and such on old computer), so I was able to get them back rather than loosing them completely.
Each of those fringes you see is made of 6 threads twisted together, and each one has 2 seed beads twisted into it.
As my sister M drove Mom sat in the front and visited her, and I sat in the back twisting fringes... all the way down to the lower mainland of BC to my sister Anne's. The next morning, I washed it and ironed it dry just before we left for the cruise ship. That's how close I cut it, haha.
Please remember to leave me a comment... don't
string me along
Also, if you are playing Photo Hunters today, please leave a link to your post on Mr. Linky in the last post, just below this one. Thank you.
Okay... so maybe there's not much hope for the future of our family.
