While I haven’t finished my post on fitting my daughter’s Eura dress I thought I should get this post out while it’s still fresh in my mind! I also have an update coming along about the upgrade to my donut hat as well which I had discussed before but was missing a curved needle to finish.
Loom from Egill’s Woodstuffs
It’s been a while since I got my loom warped and actually have done some weaving. A couple of weeks ago I found a forgotten goldenrod hangerock or Norse apron dress that was partially finished. I thought I may finish it in time for the coronation of Kenric and Avelina here in the East Kindgom of the SCA. It’s happening this Saturday. True to form I couldn’t just hem it and call it done. NO. I got the brilliant idea to wave some trim and add stitching to make it a little more finished looking. So out came my wonderful loom. Did I mention it’s amazing? It does about 15 FEET or 5 YARDS of inkle woven trim (give or take a bit). I got it from one of my favorite vendors: Egill’s Woodstuffs. You can find him on the Book of Faces too. It’s solid and works beautifully. Not to mention Egill is super reliable when it comes to standing behind his products.
8/2 Jaggerspun Main Line Wool F
So I decided to weave and in wool no less. I fiddled a bit with the pattern I wanted but in the end I used a simple design. A good place to play with this is the Pattern Generator located at the Carolingian Realm. It’s a simple plain weave generator and allows you play with colors and produces a swatch and threading diagram for you. Very handy actually. So I decided that with the wool that I had from White Wolf and Phoenix is a 2/8 (2 ply of size 8) Jaggerspun Main Line that 25 threads would be enough for a half inch band. Thanks to the pattern generator I was able to come up with a blocks and ladder sort of arrangement that I like using the approximation of colors I had on hand.
Swatch rendering from the Pattern Generator
Inkle weaving is blocks and lines for the most part. Using the threading diagram provided by the pattern generator I warped the loom. The threading diagram is rather plain but as long as you take care to remember which ones to heddle it’s not a problem. Depending on what you are using as a loom it can add varying difficulty to your warping. If you look at mine at the top of the page the first goes over the top and the other goes under it. The ones that go over are the ones that get heddled in my case.
Threading Diagram provided by the Pattern Generator at Carolingian Realm.
Then, to begin weaving and to leave out the knots and things, I use a small piece of cardboard or, in this case, a business card.
Several passes of the shuttle with the business card spacer.
After about six or seven passes with my shuttle I remove the card and proceed as normal. The one thing I had forgotten about weaving with wool is just how “sticky” wool can be, especially this variety. I am being cautious about how tight I pull my tension bar and how hard I’m packing each shed but over all it’s going well and I’m moving right along.
A thought just occured to me….If I have time after I finish this maybe I’ll do a short run of something wider to put on the center panel of my over dress below the braided stitch that I used to hem the top edge. For Saturday….sure, I can do that!
The current progress:
Current progress…about 2 feet.