Getting Ready To Throw The Shuttle

I am tensioned, treadles tied up and have the header woven. I think I am ready to get busy on weaving some fustian cloth. The warp is 8/2 cotton and the weft will be 10/2 linen.

Errors Start Early

Being on a deadline is not a good thing when you only weave for the fun of it! But a deadline I have.

I must get this loom warped and ready for my pre-conference workshop with Nadine Sanders at Midwest Weavers June 17th. Well, I must say that this is one error I have never done before: I forgot to go through the reed first! This is my new 12 shaft Leclerc table loom and I am not all that familiar with it -yet.




I  very carefully made sure I had gone through the correct heddle. I just forgot to go through the reed first!



I am denting 2-1 in a 12 dent reed.

Finished the Heddles For Fustian

It took a while, but I now have all 720 threads of this fustian project through the reed and the heddles. Now I will need to tie onto the back and "warp-er on".

A good thing about writing your own blog, you can make up words and the word-police do not really care. This warp is 32 inches in the reed, so I think I will use my raddle to help get a nice smooth warp onto the back beam.

More Fustian Information

I found this interesting information in "The Shuttle-Craft Book of American Hand-Weaving, (copyright 1928) regarding 'fustian'. I am about half way through the heddles. I am threading front to back.

In 1683 a certain "Master Ezekiel Rogers established at Rowley, not far from Ipswich, Massachusetts, the first textile factory on American soil...... the output of the Rowley industry was in the main cloth for clothing----- fustian, sometimes called thick-sett, which appears to have been the fabric we call corduroy..."

"a book published in Philadelphia about 1850, has this to say: Fustian cloths have ribs or cords running the full length of the piece, the floats of the wefts are cut in the middle of each rib. Fustian cloths are made into clothing for overlookers, weavers and mill operatives".

Your new vocabulary words for the week:

1. thick-sett

2. corduroy

3. overlookers

I have been known to look over something, so I must have been an overlooker when doing it!

The draft I have does not look like corduroy, so "fustian" must be a word for a category of woven fabrics and not a weave structure. I am beginning to believe that this is a catch all name for a heavy fabric.

Fustian continues...

Fustian became, in the 18th century, a well-developed fabric in Northern Europe where it was woven on a linen warp and a cotton weft using many different threading's. I am using cotton as warp and will be using linen as weft.

Tying Up the Treadles for Fustian

I miss-counted yesterday.............. I am short 14 heddles!!!

For this draft, I do not have enough heddles on shaft four, so I will use some heddles on shaft five to take up the slack. I have 166 heddles on shaft four right now, but I need 180 for this project. So there are 14 heddles  I am short on shaft four. I will get them from shaft five. (or any of the other shafts I am not using for this project)

 

To begin, I will thread those highlighted in yellow onto heddles that are on shaft five on the first repeat. The next repeat I will just read the draft as usual. Then when I get to the other side when I have run out of heddles on shaft four, I will go back to shaft five and use the seven heddles from that shaft.

Then when I tie everything to the treadles, I just tie shafts four and five together as if they were the same. Which they are!

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I am threading Front to Back. But this will work the other way too. Just remember what two shafts you might need to combine together.

Slow Progress on Fustian Cloth

The nice thing about weaving for the fun of it, is ...............that you can be fast, or slow.

 

I seem to be taking working on weaving some 10 yards of fustian cloth - slow. I do have about half the warp through the reed.

I have enough heddles on all the shafts except for shaft four. That  one I am 12 threads short. Instead of rearranging and sliding and all that 'jazz', I will use 12 heddles from shaft 5 and tie them up 'as if' they were really on shaft four.

John Hargrove - Fustian cloth

I did a little research and found some interesting info. about this fustian cloth I am going to weave. The draft I am using is one I got when I took a class at John C. Campbell Folk School. Again, thanks to Barbara Miller and Pam Howard - teachers of the most excellent kind!

Front to Back

The slaying of the reed has begun. I most always dress my loom front-to-back. I have gone the other way a time or two, but to much thinking involved with that.

Winding Progress

A little bit of this, a little bit of that..... that's what I have been doing. Some knitting, some reading, some winding, some driving in the country. But 'Steady Eddie' gets the job done! And I have been making progress on winding this 720 ends of Fustian cloth.

I plan on wefting it with 10/2 natural linen. I really like that word 'wefting'. I think it describes what you do. (I think that is a Dr. Bateman word.)  I had a discussion the other day with a weaver, and we decided if you wanted to learn to weave you would need to "learn the language" to know what was going on.

Prep Work for FUSTIAN

Fustain: "a term which includes a variety of heavy woven cotton fabrics, chiefly prepared for men's wear." The Encyclopaedia Britannica 1910

fustian:  "a hard-wearing fabric of cotton mixed with flax or wool with a slight nap." www.thefreedictionary.com/fustian

I keep winding the warp for fustian and will prep the loom. I have entered the info into my weaving software and it will tell me how many heddles I need on each shaft. So when I get tired of standing at the warping board, I can go count heddles.

I will also get from my weaving software a drawndown of what my draft will look like. It helps me check for errors.

Fustain Cloth

While playing with Baby, my new loom, I need to get something on one of the other looms. So I am winding warp for some Fustain cloth. According to my notes, this type of cloth was made with cotton and linen. It was a thick twilled fabric with a short nap. I will put on cotton for the warp and use line for the weft. It will take me a while, I want a wide warp.

I have woven this before, at a class I took at John C Campbell Folk School. A couple of wonderful people, Barbara Miller and Pam Howard conducted the class. Wonderful memories and a big jump on my weaving knowledge.

Some threading errors due to operator error. (some samples are just that way).
This is my washed and unwashed samples.