Learning to Weave - Part 1 - Planning the Project

Ok, maybe not so much teaching you how to weave but watching me learn to weave. So I apologise for inaccuracies I will do my best Following my  mistakes and triumphs. I have the dream loom so what now?! There are guild classes but they are too expensive for me right now. My spinning place does them, but when I am supposed to be at uni. So I am doing a bit of self-directed learning with the ability to ask my spinning/weaving people each weekend.

So I set myself the task of following the NSW Handweavers and Spinners Guild Certificate in Handweaving (CHW) guidelines. They have several levels running for Basic to Master and have the first two levels requirements available on their site. The hope is that after I get through it all I will have something good enough to submit to get my first certificate.

So the first weave is a colour gamp......
GAMP....
GaMp?

When in doubt google, except for medical conditions.

After searching I discovered Gamps in weaving were
"a woven piece of fabric that illustrates what happens when different weave structures, yarns/fibers, colour etc,., intersect."
Thank you Knit Flix

www.weavingtoday.com

A colour gamp looks at the interaction of colour. These can be down in many weave patterns, but thankfully the CHW is just looking for a simple Tabby (meow) plain weave. Also, they have limited the colours to Red, Orange, Green, Blue, Violet, and Yellow each measuring 6.5cm on the reed.

So I picked up these colours from Petlins in a 22/2 Cottolin....
More weird words and numbers.
Cottolin was easy it is a mix of 60% cotton and 40% linen. I picked this over the 100% cotton as there was more variety in colour at the time.
22/2 - this is where it got confusing. This number reflects yarn sizes and involved maths....

The second or lowest number (as sometimes it is written 2/22) reflects the number of plies.
Ok easy.
The other number is the yards in a pound are equal to 11 hanks of 840 yards....
Not so easy...
What I got is bigger numbers tend to = thinner yarns. As cotton has a different weight to linen etc a 22/2 cottolin is not the same size as a 22/2 cotton. In fact, an 8/2 cotton seems to be the equivalent size.

I gave that up after highschool

So now I know the size of my yarn I need to figure out what the sett will be.....

Set point match?

A sett/set is the number of ends per inch (EPI). This is important and to figure this out you also need to know what the desired fabric you want to make is. The higher the sett for you yarn the stiffer, but the lower may make a very open loose weave that looks bad.

This is where I got caught out the most. There is no standard  to work from. After much searching the sett for a 22/2 cottolin ranged from 16 EPI-30EPI. That is a lot of difference. After much researching and talking to more talented people I decided that for a balanced weave I would need a 20EPI.

Inches...but I work in CM I need 6.5CM! So after playing with conversion I am settling for 52 ends per colour to get my 6.5cm. Inches didn't perfectly balance into my cm so I added a couple of extra ends.

I also had the choice between my 12dpi (dents per inch) or 8dpi reed. SO I have picked the 12 and will have to sley. Is I couldn't simply put one yarn through each dent I had to figure out a substitution through this lovely chart.

So I to get the required epi of 20 I would need to sley my 12dpi reed following this pattern: 1-2-2 (repeat till insane). Simple as mud right!

So hopefully the hard part is over now and I just have to warp, weave and finish.....

How I feel!

 Now onto making my warp!

moments later he left teeth marks on it

*I have tried to translate the weaving language, but if something didn't make sense go to this lovely set of weaving terms. I will start up my own page of terms as I learn them too!

Posted in: Weaving 101