Thursday, January 26, 2017

Why I love my warping trapeze. Ready to weave!

I am so grateful for my warping trapeze today! (It is just two 2x4s with a copper pipe through the top, that I tie onto the sides of the loom.) If you'll recall my last post, I was really concerned that I'd have a whole bunch of tangles to deal with when I was beaming the warp this time around. I had had to do some rearranging of threads at the reed, as well as pulling some threads out of the design altogether. (I had miscalculated how many of each color yarn I needed, and redesigned on the fly when I was measuring warp chains.)

But, though I took some extra time to make sure to move yarn around to where it needed to be, having that long length up and down for the yarn to adjust itself, and having the constant weight on the threads to keep them from wiggling? Totally did the trick. I was bracing myself for a much bigger mess, and this went on with little trouble after all. Wheee!

And so now the warp is all nicely in place on the loom, and the header is woven. After a couple of weeks of work, I'm ready to 'start' weaving. Here we go!


5 comments:

  1. I popped over to your blog because I remember you had some great pictures about dyeing a warp. I have so far only dyed skeins, which I used as weft.......but decided it was time to try dyeing a warp. While I was checking that out, I skipped back and happened apron your post about your shoulder. Which interested me a lot, as I have just stupidly caused myself a whole bunch of pain. I was threading the heddles across 36", leaning over the back beam of my Schacht......which I realized now caused me to raise my arms ever so slightly, squeezing my shoulder blades together for too long. I have had an excruciating pain between my shoulder blades for a couple of days, with tingling like electrical shocks all across my upper back. I liked your comment about giving up pleasing all those people who wanted baby wraps, in exchange for taking care of your health. Spot on.

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    1. Take care of yourself! I am still having twinges from over doing it. I just finished up a weaving project, but I had to take it in little steps, and really watch my posture.

      And, oddly enough, I just took a commission for another baby wrap. It is hard to resist a returning customer who is having another wee one, and who regrets letting your work pass on to another mother. But I'm doing this on my schedule, and not pushing quite so much.

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  2. My husband can make me a trapeze so wonder if you could tell me how long the pieces of timber are?? Many thanks

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  3. I dress the loom from front to back-- sitting at the front, by hand I pull threads through the reed toward the heddles, then through the heddles toward the back, then at the back, I pulled threads toward the back beam and tie onto the rod. Then I wind onto the back beam. I have very limited space in my studio for pulling out the length of the warp and keeping tension while winding on. Is the warping trapeze you made the kind that would make sense for the style of loom dressing I do? Do you attach the trapeze just when you're ready for winding on, or do you just leave it attached? Thanks!

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    1. I usually dress the loom front to back too, and added the only trapeze when I need it. Actually, now that I'm in a new studio I just hung the bar from the ceiling, and leave it there on a permanent basis.

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