Skip to main content

Making a warp

I spent today in the loomshed.  Things have been hectic over the last few weeks and I have hardly had a chance to go near the loom.  However yesterday with some assistance from a friend I got a few little repairs done on the loom and so I am ready to get weaving again.
First job (long overdue) was to do a general clean and tidy.  Once that was done I sorted out some yarns and started making a new warp.
This particular warp will be used to weave some dark blue tweed for Paul Taggart.  Paul is an artist that I have been working with over the last year or so.  His current project is writing and illustrating a book called The Elphen Chronicles which will be something of a collector's item.  It will be a very lavish book, for which Paul has painted magnificent large oil paintings along with lots of line and wash vingettes and watercolour paintings.  His partner Eileen is filming every stage of this and the book will be available first as a video book.
My involvement is in making various textile items that will serve as props and/or merchandise that will go with the book.  I have made Paul a waistcoat which he wears while reading from the book for the video and I am currently designing a slipcover for the book - silk with lots of embroidery that references Pauls illustrations.  I also wove a short length of tweed for them which I used to make a variety of small gift objects at Christmas time.  This proved so popular that they asked me to weave a much longer piece of tweed.
Here is a video of me preparing the warp.    https://vimeo.com/280007230
I am winding 24 strands of wool yarn around the stakes to give a total length of 60 metres.  This has to be done 29 times to give a total of 696 ends.
the warp bank - 24 cones of yarn










separating the ends to make the X that keeps all the threads in order









finsihed warp - now needs to be chained and beamed









 Luck on my side!  Just enough yarn on these cones to complete the job without having any joins.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Guide to Commissioning a Liturgical Stole

This post is aimed at those who may never have purchased a stole before.  Perhaps you are preparing for ordination or maybe you are commissioning a stole as a gift.   There are so many possibilities for a stole that it is difficult for some people to know where to begin.   Here I try to guide you through the process and ask you to consider many different things so that you can arrive at the right decision when it comes to making that purchase or placing an order. The stole is an ecclesiastical vestment worn by ordained clergy in most western Christian traditions during church services. The wearing of stoles goes back to the very earliest times of the Church and references Jewish traditions as described in The Old Testament.   "And thou shalt make holy garments for Aaron thy brother for glory and for beauty" (Exodus 28:2).  It is a long, narrow strip of cloth, usually embellished in some way and is normally in the specified colour for the liturgical ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Designing vestments and paraments

 Last spring I had a visit to my studio by an Episcopalian priest from Minnesota in the USA.  We spent a lovely couple of hours looking at photographs of things I have made, fabrics that I use and discussing various making processes.  He was impressed with what he saw and left promising that he would be in touch when he had discussed possibilities with people back home. I was surprised and delighted when he got in touch a couple of months later to ask if I would be willing to travel to Minnesota (at their expense) and visit their church - St Martin by the Lake, meet the congregation and come up with design proposals to make two sets of vestments and paraments. In October I packed my suitcase with sketch pads, paints and pencils and got a flight to Minneapolis.   I was blessed with stunning autumn weather and the trees put on a magnificent display of reds and golds. Whenever I am asked to make paraments and vestments for a particular location I always try to have...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Hilton of Cadboll Pictish Stone - a design for a stole

Here in the north of Scotland, we have been in a covid lockdown for a month.  We have been told by the government to work from home if we can, so as I had lots of design work to do and no urgency on any of the making, I brought the computer home - good excuse because it's warmer here than in my workshop! The only interaction I have had with the rest of humanity has been through the medium of Zoom - for conversations with family, for church services and the occasional face-to-face with a client. A couple of weeks ago one such meeting took place and my client has commissioned me to design and make her ordination stole.   In the past she had worked on the Hilton of Cadboll project which was a "millenium project" - part archaeological excavations and part having stone mason Barry Grove carve a replica of this famous Pictish stone. The original stands on display in the National Museum of Scotland.  The "new" one is not so new now.  Looking for my photographs of the r...
Post a Comment
Read more