Lilibet's Debut

I wasn't too sure of what to weave for my new Louet Spring's first warp. I have come up with a name for her, 'Lilibet'. I was thinking 'towels' as I have sold all but one of from my last batch and I like to have some on hand at all times. They are great gifts as well as good sale items. But which pattern? I reviewed some of my magazines for inspiration and then moved to some of my cd collections. I found a sweet little heart pattern from a Complex Weavers collation. Laurie Autio's 10 shaft point twill threading with an easy treadling run. All the pattern is in the tie up. You will have to bear with me as I'm still learning how to take a draft and import to here. ( any advise, please share!) Worse case scenario, I'll photograph the paper copy and edit in here later!

So I got busy winding my warp. The warp is 2/8 cotton, planned sett is 24 epi and here's the warp under way:

Blogger really doesn't show the true colours. Hope they fix that one day! It's a soft neutral beige with three ends of a deep pink, then 2 salmon pink, three in a melon yellow, and reversed from there. I took my warp bouts, 4 of them all beautifully 'crochet chained' to the loom and inserted the apron rod through and secured to the back beam. Then as per Jane's warping demonstration, which I kept handy to review from time to time, I beamed the 10 yard warp. I used brown paper and tugged at it to tighten the roll and strummed the warp at the raddle every turn. I kept releasing warp and pulling to tighten from the front and then pull the paper roll down. It must be the best beamed warp I have ever done! Tight, smooth and flat. Wow!

I then got ready to thread the loom which in this case is a simple 10 shaft point twill. The heddles were *very* tight and hard to move so it took time to do. This should be less so next time as they stretch a bit. They say texsolv doesn't stretch, but it does.

Note the nice and tidy 24 one inch bouts across the lease sticks. More on this soon. Now here's the finished view from the front with the front breast beam off for access

I'm using an Ashford spinners chair as it's sufficiently low enough. The treadles don't part to slip the feet in though so I had to sit farther back.

Here's the warp roll and my floating selvedges in place. I couldn't quite get that paper on straight! Next time perhaps. It took 2 full rolls of best post office brown wrap, but I think it could be thicker. Tugging downwards on the paper needs thicker stuff.

Now I tied up the treadles, put on the breast beam and tied on the warp! Last detail is the new floating breast beam adjustment.

Here you can see the front legs are out of alignment due to the tension on the warp. I must go down and shorten the texsolv cord attached to the front legs on both sides. This means when I set the tension, all I must do when I advance the warp is to use the front lever to 'pull' the legs back into position and my tension is exactly where it was before the warp was moved. I'm new to this system and will be learning as I go! But here's a closer look at the adjustments:

Before....then tighten....

So back to those 24 bouts.... When I wound the warp I was thinking "24 epi" and so when I counted 24 of my colourful stripes, I thought I was done. I had my 24 inch wide warp ready to go. Well, imagine my surprise when it didn't work that way at the loom when I was sleying. My colour repeat was based on an 18 thread repeat, not 24. Oops. A big 6 inch oops.....

So right now I'm trying 20 epi so it's 21.6 inches in the reed. A bit open I know but my last false damask towels are sett at 20 epi and work, so??? Worse case scenario, I'll resley to 22 epi and try that. But if these towels are narrower, then they'll also be shorter in length. I might get another towel off as a result! Trying to make lemonade here!

Also life intrudes on the weaving time. Between dental appointments and a shaggy, over heating 'indoor' dog, I had to stop my loom set up to settle these other details! Here's one job done:

Before: ( he knows what's coming! That table only comes out for one reason!)

And after (which couldn't come soon enough for either him or me):Have you ever seen such a pathetic face? We're still not on speaking terms yet.