Fiber work – Gloria Gutierrez

Spring 2021 – Week 10 Summary

Content Warning: brief mention of sexual assault

The last eight and a half months have lead to this moment: the moment I finished my project. I finished the last bit of sewing on Monday and immediately fulled it. Fulling a fabric after you’ve finished weaving it is quite important. At the very least, a handwoven textile should be finished by soaking it in hot soapy water; if you want the textile to be a bit sturdier, you full it. The simplest way to full (and the only way I have experience with) is to do the steps for creating felt without going so far as to actually create felt: you soak the textile in hot soapy water and agitate the heck out of it.

I made my life a bit harder at this step by not buying a bucket or large container in which I could do the fulling. I also didn’t want to fill up my bath tub because that would use more water than I needed. Luckily, my fiance and I had just bought the day before a new rubbish bin for the kitchen that we hadn’t used yet. So, I placed it in the bathtub and fulled my himation inside. It worked like a charm! And it was definitely a workout; I forget the wool can absorb nearly half its weight in water, so fulling became an arm workout. Once I finished fulling, I hung it up to dry above my bathtub using hangers to hold it up.

The next day the himation was fully dry and there was only one step left: to cut off the little tails of weft I left in while leaving. Now that the himation was fulled and definitely not going to fall apart anytime soon, it was safe to trim those tails. And then…I was finished. Three quarters of fiber work and this is the result:

I’m not great at admitting when I’ve done something cool or impressive, but even I have to admit: this is impressive. I also felt the need to model the himation to demonstrate how it would have been worn (and perhaps to show off, I will not lie).

All that was left after this was to present to the Terroir/Merroir program, write my Academic Statement and self-evaluation, and catch up on all of the weekly summaries I forgot to keep doing. Writing this post is one of the last things I’ll do as an undergraduate student.

This school year has been wild. I’ve spent a good time alone because of the pandemic. I made a garment by hand completely from scratch (well, nearly as I bought the warp yarn). Many tears were shed: from frustration, anxiety, pain. There was a good amount of pain. I bled several times from the combs, scalded myself a couple of times while dyeing, and used my body to the breaking point while spinning and weaving. I have a completely different perspective on clothing now. If I was paid minimum wage for every hour I spent on my himation, the dollar amount would be $3,264.31. The concept of Slow Fashion has never been clearer to me and I think I will visibly flinch when I walk by stores such as H&M and Forever 21, with their $5 shirts and $30 dresses. That cost is asinine and speaks volumes about the lives of the people who actually made those clothes. The story is there for anyone who cares enough to listen.

Something I wish I had done this quarter was read. I bought a great book for the quarter titled Spinning Fates and the Song of the Loom: The Use of Textiles, Clothing, and Cloth Production as Metaphor, Symbol, and Narrative Device in Greek and Latin Literature. I had wanted to incorporate this book into my learning after reading, “Women’s Work: Spinning and Weaving in the Greek Home”. I was struck by an idea the author brings up:

“…or is the production of textiles merely a literary topos, which serves mainly to remind us that Greek men conceived of women as spiders who trapped unlucky men in their webs? …The study of textiles in Classical Greece is a complex tangling of two realities: physical reality, where flesh and blood women transform wool and flax into tunics and blankets, and psychic reality, where metaphorical women spin out the lives of men, and the Fates (always women) cut the threads to kill men, and where Circe traps helpless men in her complicated webs.”

Part of why spinning and weaving were assigned to women in ancient Greece was to “keep an eye on them” – to control them. Women were seen as liminal and therefore dangerous. In essence, a bunch of patriarchal garbage. But anyone who takes a deep dive into Greek mythology (and I have, I’ve been obsessed since I was a child) will notice that spinning and weaving are used in clever and dangerous ways by various feminine entities. There is, of course, Arachne, whose weaving skills were so renowned that Athena herself challenged Arachne to a test of skill; Arachne’s dangerous defiance of the gods transformed her into a spider, so she may weave forevermore. Medea kills the new wife of Jason, who Jason set aside Medea for, with something she weaved. Herakles dies from a poisonous garment his wife, Deianara, gave him; she thought the poison was a love potion that would keep Herakles from straying. Even Penelope, the patient wife of Odysseus and seen as the perfect example of how a woman should be, kept her suitors away by undoing the shroud she was weaving for her father-in-law; Penelope declared she would choose a suitor once she was done with the shroud, but would undo most of her day’s work to deceive the suitors. And the feared Moirae, the Fates, who all – human and god – were at the mercy of, were depicted with a spindle. Clotho spun a person’s destiny, Lachesis measured the length, and Atropos cut the thread.

This motif seems to exist outside of ancient Greek mythology. I didn’t have much time to explore this, but off the top of my head I know that Valkyries, the battle maidens of Odin who carried off fallen warriors to Valhalla, have an association with weaving. Though, their example is gruesome: they weave with the entrails of dead men and their loom weights are severed heads. Spinning and weaving are not safe activities. There is power to be found in these crafts, in so-called “women’s” work.

Weaving is an act of defiance, which I feel is best illustrated by the ancient Greek story of Philomena. Philomena was the sister of Procne, who was married to Tereus, king of Thrace. Tereus lusted after Philomena and, not caring that she was his wife’s sister and taking full advantage of the power that he had and she didn’t, raped her. Tereus goes even further and cuts out Philomena’s tongue so she can’t tell anyone what happened. So what does Philomena do? She weaves her story, her trauma, and pain into a tapestry. She shows this to her sister, and Procne avenges her by killing her own son with Tereus and tricking him into eating their son .

Tereus tried to take away Philomena’s voice and power. But Philomena used that dangerous skill of weaving in order to reclaim her power. She remained defiant of the society that oppressed her and condoned her trauma. The consequences to Tereus are devastating. In a society that would not allow women a voice, the women of ancient Greece, at least in the myths, used the skills that they had to their advantage. They told their story through fiber arts.

And so is the case for me in my himation. Yes, it looks like a long blue, red, and yellow piece of fabric that will keep me warm when the winter months come upon us again, but it’s so much more than that. My himation tells the story of my final year at Evergreen; it is the culmination of 15 years of working towards my BA degree. Fibers of loneliness, isolation, and fear spun along with wool speak of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is soaked in the tears shed due to the physical and mental anguish I experienced while doing this work. It is dyed using knowledge I sought out to connect with my ancestors, so they, too, are in my himation. Intertwined among the warp and weft are all of my thoughts, feelings, and memories that came up while creating it. Finishing it is my expression of defiance – defiance in the face of those who did not believe in me and didn’t support me. My himation is the story of myself.

Spring 2021 – Week 9 Summary

The middle panel was finished very early on this week. I didn’t have much blue yarn left; I think the panel only took 12 to 14 hours to weave and hemstitch. It was somewhat of a surreal moment when I cut the middle panel off the loom. As I was doing so, I acknowledged the fact that the weaving is over. This activity that I had prepared for over the span of two quarters was now done. The weaving went by so fast that it was surprising to finish!

The completed middle panel before I cut it off the loom. If you look closely, you can see the other end of the panel underneath the warp threads. There was no way I could have woven two more panels and I’m so glad I didn’t decide to be stubborn and try.

Now it was time to sew the panels together and hem the edges. Before I started I watched a few videos on YouTube to see if there was any recommended way of hemming handwoven textiles, but all of the videos used sewing machines, which I do not have. I found an historic sewing channel that had so many great videos on hand sewing that I almost became distracted. But, sewing is a skill that I will focus on another day. In the meantime, I hemmed the edges using what was left of my weft yarn and secured the ends by inconspicuously weaving them into the fabric. There isn’t a single knot in my himation, which for some reason I’m proud of. I can’t explain why. Maybe all of the hours sitting alone in my craft room have finally gotten to me.

First I hemmed what I decided would be the outside edges, then sewed the middle panel to each large panel. I did one large panel at a time, sewing the panels together, then hemming the edges. I was really glad I had hemstitched everything, because I was a bit rough in handling the fabric; it became rather unwieldy as the pieces came together. Sewing also took longer than I thought – it took over 15 hours. One day I’ll accurately estimate the amount of time I need to do something…but that moment was not while hemming.

On the back of the *himation* I would place my needle in every 3-4 warp threads (left picture). Once I was on the front side of the *himation* I would place my needle over only one warp thread from where the needle emerged (right picture); I did so to make the stitches in the front nearly invisible.

I trimmed the warp ends as I hemmed, and tucked them in so they wouldn’t be visible.

Spring 2021 – Week 8 Summary

I had good news and bad news this week. First, the good news: I finished the first two panels! The tension issues never really went away, but I persevered and made it through the second panel. It was terribly satisfying to unroll the panels off of the front beam and cut them off the loom. I bought new scissors specially for fabric so I wouldn’t make a mess when cutting them off.

I should have recorded cutting the warp threads in the first photo. So. Satisfying. It was also very satisfying to unwind all of the fabric off the loom.

The bad news: these are the only large panels I will weave. As I neared the end of the second panel, I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to have enough weft yarn to do another panel, let alone two. I’m somewhat perplexed on how this happened, but going forward whatever calculation I do to determine the amount of weft and warp, I’m going to double it to make sure I have enough. Looking at the panels, I can see that the sett I wove at is not the one I used in my calculations; I used a 12 wpi (wraps per inch) for calculating the weft, but in practice it was more like 15-17. But, if the panels actually had only 12 weft threads per inch, the fabric would have been like gauze and not a balanced weave at all. Like I said, I’m still technically a beginner. It’s a lesson learned.

Disaster or not, I still created a large amount of cloth. I’m somewhat amazed at myself.

So my chiton will now be a himation. A himation is a long rectangular piece of fabric that was worn in different ways, depending on the gender of the person. Men, starting in the 6th century, would wear a himation as their main garment and women would wear one whenever they wore a chiton. It would have been strange to wear a chiton without a himation. The himation was usually made of wool and there were proper and improper ways to wear it, especially for men. Women might wear a himation as a veil, use it as a baby carrier, and was even used by dancers .

I had some blue weft left, so I decided to warp the loom again and weave the rest of the blue yarn into a smaller panel to sew between the other two larger panels. I didn’t want to sew the two panels together as-is, since there would have been two sets of stripes in the middle with only one set on the ends; I felt it would look better stylistically to have a blue panel to break up the stripes. So I cleaned up the loom of scrap yarn and proceeded to warp it again. Sadly, the warping process was no faster even though it was my second time doing it. This time though, I took off a part of the front of the loom (the bottom part that holds the reed) so I could reach the heddles easier and not sit in a very awkward position. It was a piece that isn’t really meant to come off, but I was inspired by the memory of the terrible back-ache I had the first time I dressed the loom.

Once I finished dressing the loom, I wound up the rest of the blue yarn onto bobbins and began weaving. It was evident very quickly that I had made the right call – I didn’t finish the middle panel this week, but I could tell that I would have been upset had I attempted to weave the other two panels as originally planned.

Spring 2021 – Week 7 Summary

I still had tension issues this week. As I mentioned in the previous week’s post, the tension would work itself out whenever I advanced the warp. What I forgot to mention is that sometimes advancing the warp would bring back the tension issues. When this happened, there wasn’t much I could do to fix the problem until I wove enough to advance the warp again; as you may imagine, this slowed down my progress a bit.

It took a lot of work and effort, but the issues with the tension don’t really show up in the weaving. You can sort of see in a few places how the weft threads aren’t in a straight line, but only if you zoom and know to look for it.

Times like this makes me wish I was surrounded by more people who know how to weave. While I admit that I’m quite good at the craft, the fact of the matter is that I’m still a beginner. This is only the sixth time I’ve woven anything and the first time ever ever used a floor loom, and this project is by the largest thing I’ve woven by a long shot. When something goes wrong, I can consult books for very general advice, but I don’t have many people I can turn to for advice or suggestions on how I could do better next time. I have one good friend who has been weaving for much longer than me and luckily I was able to send her photos of what was going on with my weft. But, I like having multiple sources for information. I feel that it’s somewhat similar to writing a research paper; I wouldn’t use only one source for information and part of that is because multiple perspectives are helpful in understanding a topic. Having multiple perspectives on my tension problem may have helped me to figure out a better solution that just advancing the front beam.

The more I work on my chiton, the more I’m convinced that fiber crafts are truly a group activity. Earlier in the year, I read in the book Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years by E.J.W. Barber that part of the reason spinning and weaving were considered so-called “women’s” work is that you don’t need to be paying 100% of your attention on what you’re doing, and that it’s easy to suddenly stop if necessary. Both of these factors are useful if you were watching children or cooking family meals at the same time, which were also considered “women’s” work. In ancient Greece, all women in the household would have participated in fiber-related activities ; hence I think it’s safe to assume that spinning and weaving were in essence group activities, and I imagine this scenario can be found in many cultures. And I feel even safer assuming that women didn’t spin and weave in silence. They probably chatted, gossiped, vented – the things we do when we’re with a group of close friends today.

All of these months of spinning and weaving alone have been difficult. It’s hard to do a lot in one sitting when all you have for company is your own thoughts. Repetitive tasks are always go buy faster if you’re doing something else, especially if the other task is enjoyable. I’ve listened to various podcasts, trying to find one that I can lose my mind in while I work. I started with My Favorite Murder, which worked for a while but increasingly the first 30-45 minutes would be the two hosts doing small talk. I hate small talk. So I tried one I used to listen to, Welcome to Nightvale, but I found I kept losing track of the story whenever I need to focus more on the task at hand. I tried some academic podcasts about folklore and mythology, but it didn’t really engage my mind enough; if anything, it felt like time slowed down. The one that has worked the best was Random Number Generator Horror Podcast No. Nine, which is hosted by two friends: one who loves horror and one who is quite squeamish. They pick a horror movie each week and talk about it. I like horror, but I’m easily scared so I related to both hosts, and I find myself sometimes making comments about something they said. It’s like having two friends in the room with me to keep me company while I spin and weave. This is the main reason why I feel that fiber arts are best as a group activity.

I also started working on my Academic Statement this week. I’ve been dreading this, I have to admit. I’m supposed to discuss 15 years of college in 750 words or less. It feels impossible. I started off by taking one of the academic advisor’s advice and sorting all of my classes and credits into categories: social sciences, math and physical sciences, and arts and humanities. This…sort of helped. I have most of my credits in arts and humanities, but there’s a good amount of the other two categories on my transcript as well. I decided to freewrite about the Academic Statement (which I published as a post on here) and type whatever thoughts and feelings I had about my undergraduate career. It turns out I have a lot and the freewrite helped to make connections among my various experiences.

I wanted to share what the Area of Emphasis worksheet looked like after I filled it out. Some of my TESC credits were hard to categorize, but as you can see I’ve taken a LOT of classes in a variety of subjects.

Spring 2021 – Week 6 Summary

Weaving goes so much faster than spinning. I had already woven about 42 inches of the first panel when the previous week ended. I kept track of how much I had woven by attaching a soft tape measure on the side and moving it along as I wound the panel onto the front beam. It was crucial that I kept track as I went along because I’m weaving two panels in one warp; if it was just one panel, all I would have had to do is measure the stripes, weave until I neared the end of the warp, and finish by weaving the second set of stripes. It’s important that the panels each measure as close to 56.5 inches as possible. That way, when I sew them all together the stripes will align easily.

My progress after a week of weaving. You can also see here more clearly how I was using the soft tape measure.

I finished the first panel early in the week. Whenever I start and finish a panel, I hemstitch the edges (something I forgot to mention in last week’s summary). Hemstitching is a way to finish a handwoven textile. If you leave a tail that’s about three or four width’s worth of yarn on the very first pick/row you weave, you can use that as your sewing thread. It’s a way of securing the weft and warp by tying small groups of warp threads together; hemstitching assures that the textile won’t start to unravel when it’s taking off the loom. It isn’t necessary, especially in this case as I plan to hem the edges once the panels are done, but I also know that I am quite clumsy at times and I felt safer hemstitching than not.

Here is a close-up of my hemstitching. It’s a bit easier to see what I meant by saying it’s like tying small groups of warp together.

Weaving the second panel was not as easy as weaving the first – I ran into tension issues. The longer the warp, the easier it is to mess up the tension when winding on the warp. With a shorter warp, if the tension isn’t 100% perfect it probably won’t hurt too much. But when it’s a long warp, every little area of wound-on warp that isn’t evenly tensioned builds up. After the first inch or so, my warp started to misbehave. It’s hard to describe, but when I would beat in a row of weft, the weft didn’t lie flat on the warp. The warp had very small hills and valleys that caused the weft to bubble, and made it impossible to forcefully beat the weft in, which I was doing only for the stripes in order for the edges to be a little sturdier. The tension corrected when I advanced the warp and wound on to the front beam, but it would periodically go wonky again. It was frustrating to say the least.

If you look at the red section, you can see where the weft is packed tightly together and the row where my tension problems began. The rows are noticeably farther apart because the uneven tension won’t let me beat the weft in as much as I would like. In the top row, because the warp is no longer lying flat, the weft bubbles and is quite messy looking. This is why tension is so important.

Spring 2021 – Week 5 Summary

Week five, along with the rest of the weeks of the quarter, was spent weaving most of the time. This week started off a bit slow. I had planned to create a pattern in the yellow stripe by using supplementary weft. I think I mentioned supplementary weft before, but to refresh the reader’s memory: it is a secondary weft thread that is used along with main weft to create patterns. My plan was to weave in a pick (a row of weft) of yellow yarn, and then by lifting specific warp threads weave in a pattern of purple yarn.

What I thought would be a mostly simple process turned out to be much more complicated than I had hoped. In the places that the purple thread was above warp threads, the yellow thread was behind the purple thread and, in theory, should be hidden. This was not the case. I soon realized that I should have used a thicker yarn for the purple weft in order for it to stand out. I spent four hours trying to make the pattern work before I gave up. I’m quite stubborn and if it wasn’t for the fact that I had limited time to finish the textile, I probably would have spent another four hours trying to discover a way to weave in a pattern that showed up. Instead, I had to give up the idea. I’m tempted to embroider the design after the chiton is finished and off the loom using the purple yarn, but we’ll see.

I spent four hours weaving, un-weaving, and re-weaving the same four rows of weft. The fourth row was usually when I would see that my current method wasn’t working.

Once I decided to stop trying to make the pattern work and just weave, the weaving came along quite quickly. Weaving is a much faster activity than spinning, and for whatever reason I found it to be easier on my body than spinning. This isn’t to say weaving is easy – I’m still constantly moving and stepping on pedals to lift the shaft, which aren’t light. It is a little easier on my back, though, as I’m not hunching as much. Weaving forces me to sit up straight, actually. So, that’s an upside to weaving as well.

I forgot to mention that before the great Pattern Crisis, I had to decide what tool I wanted to use to weave in my weft. One uses a shuttle to do this, but there’s a few different types. One type is a stick shuttle, that looks more or less like you think it would: it’s a long flat stick with notches on the ends. A weaver passes a stick shuttle through the shed (the shed is the space between raised and non-raised warp threads) in order to weave in a pick of weft. Another type of shuttle is a boat shuttle, which is a piece of rectangular hollowed out wood (though I suppose it could be made out of other materials). Instead of passing the shuttle through the shed, you throw it and it glides across the non-raised warp threads; the ability to do so easily is helped by the fact that a boat shuttle is pointed on the ends for aerodynamic reasons (I’m assuming because I can’t think of another reason why a boat shuttle is designed this way).

A boat shuttle. After using this, I’m not sure if I can ever go back to stick shuttles (you can see a stick shuttle in the previous photo!)

I had only ever used a stick shuttle before, but I knew that using a boat shuttle would probably make my life easier. With a stick shuttle, every time I ran out of weft, I’d have to stop and wind more on by hand. A boat shuttle uses bobbins that you winds yarn on using with a bobbin winder. Bobbin winders come in many types and I went with the cheapest option, which is an attachment for a power drill. I bought 10 extra bobbins and loaded them up with weft before I started weaving. It only took about 30 minutes to do 10 bobbins, so even when I inevitably used them up, it didn’t take much time to fill them up again. It’s quite nice, and I imagine that generations of weavers would have loved having that option – winding onto stick shuttles is kind of a pain.

Here’s what winding yarn onto a bobbin looks like. All I have to do is hold down the power button the the drill and and yarn is quickly placed neatly onto the bobbin. I have to admit, it was kind of fun.

Spring 2021 – Week 4 Summary

Ah, this is the week that I dressed the floor loom. I’ve never used a floor loom before – it’s quite a bit more complicated to use than my rigid heddle loom. There were many steps; I’ll do my best to explain what I did to get the loom ready to weave.

First – I had to get the loom into my craft room. For the past six months it’s been waiting patiently in my front room for the day I would be ready to use it. I had originally planned to use it in the front room, but my partner and I realized this would have made our lives very complicated. Moving the loom wasn’t easy. For starters, it’s probably about 100 pounds. Also, we learned that it was just a bit too wide to fit through the door frame, so I had to figure out how to remove the pedals in order for the loom to fit. Once it was in the craft room, it needed a bit of cleaning and maintenance. The brake on the back beam is quite rusted and wouldn’t move, but luckily the oil I use for my spinning wheel helped loosen the brake and allowed me to rotate the back beam. I also had to reorganize the heddles, as they weren’t evenly divided up among the four shafts and some were damaged. Organizing the heddles meant removing the shafts, which took me a bit to figure out how to do so. Right – I had no manual to the loom and the online instructions the company that produces this particular loom gives look and read like the were created in the 1970s or ’80s. It was interesting having to figure out how to use the loom all on my own, to say the least. I got there in the end, though!

This is the back of the loom. Before I can wind the warp onto the back beam, it’s good to make sure the warp is spread evenly out. The piece of wood with nails in it is called a raddle. The space between two nails is one inch, so I can easily put my groups of 15 warp threads between each space. This helps to keep the tension even.

Once the loom was ready, I had my partner help wind the warp onto the back beam. This is a very important and crucial step, as not only does this start the process of dressing the loom, but it also requires that the warp winds on to the back beam at an even tension. Uneven tension can and will cause issues as you weave – I unfortunately have first-hand experience. My partner rotated the back beam for me while I held onto the warp. Once the warp was on the back beam, the next step was to thread the heddles. Even though I’m doing plain weave (weft goes over one warp thread, then goes under one warp thread, rinse and repeat), I’m using all four shaft in order to distribute the weight – if I had 165 heddles and warp threads going through one shaft, it might make raising the shaft a bit difficult or require more effort for me when I step on the peddles. I threaded the warp threads where the first thread went through a heddle on shaft one, the second thread through a heddle on shaft two, etc.

It may be hard to see, but the numerous slender metal things are the heddles. There is a small opening in the middle of each one into which I thread a single strand of warp. The sticks help to preserve the criss-cross I made that keeps all of the threads separate and in order.

A close-up of the warp being threaded through the heddles. You can see much easier the opening in the heddle that I mentioned. Every 15 threads I half-tied up in case I had a bout of clumsiness – I honestly would have cried if I had accidentally pulled all the warp strings out.

All 330 threads of warp threaded through the heddles.

This. Took. Hours. It was tedious and painful because I had to sit awkwardly at the loom, leaning over and hunching at the same time. Just this part took nearly six hours, and once I threaded all 330 warp strings in the heddles I had to thread the warp again, this time through the reed; this part is usually called sleighing the reed.

The reed is what all of the warp threads are sticking out of in this photo. It’s called sleighing the reed because the part of the loom that holds the reed is called the sleigh. It may be hard to tell but the reed sort of looks like a very large, very fine comb.

Sleighing didn’t take as long, but it was still about another three hours. Once I finished that, I could finally tie the warp threads onto the front beam, which sounds simple, but can also cause tension problems if not done well. All in all, it took me about three days to get the loom ready to weave.

The loom tied onto the front beam – the loom is now dressed and ready for me to weave!

I have to admit, I was pretty proud of myself. I also can see why, long ago, weaving was a group activity. I would have had a much harder time with some of the steps if I didn’t have my partner to help me. Threading the heddles and sleighing the reed would have gone much quicker if I had someone else doing it, too. If this had been a group activity, we could have taken turns threading the heddles, which would have lead to nobody being in much pain because we could rest. Instead I ached for days. I could have taken my time, I suppose, but I’m also on a time limit to finish my chiton. Now that I’ve dressed a floor loom, hopefully when I have to do it again later this quarter it will go faster.

Spring 2021 – Week 3 Summary

Week three was the week I wound my warps. I did a couple of other things, like finish the last bit of ball-winding, but I mostly worked on the warps. I had decided last quarter to do two warps and weave two separate panels on each one for a total of four panels. This meant that, after taking into account shrinkage and yarn waste, that each warp is 161 inches long. The warps used more yarn than originally calculated as well; the yarn I bought was finer than I wanted, so I increased the sett from 12 epi (ends per inch) to 15 epi. For each panel to be about 22 inches wide, I need 330 ends (threads).

My rigid heddle loom can convert into a warping board by turning it over and inserting pegs into it. A warping board allows you to wind your warp in one long continuous strand, keeps it neat and tidy, and helps to easily keep track of how much yarn you’ve wound on. It’s oddly very simple and very complicated at the same time. Since the warping board is just pegs, you can decide on what configuration your warp winds around. Then you wind. Simple, right? Except that you have to make a sort of criss-cross in two places: in one place you cross in groups of whatever the number of threads per inch is, for example, since I’m weaving with 15 ends per inch I went around and wound on 15 times for 15 threads, then crossed with another 15 threads, and repeated this until I was done. The other cross is composed of crossing every thread in order to keep the warp thread in order; it’s important to do this otherwise you’ll probably create a Gordian knot. In my case, I had 330 threads to keep track of when I was winding each of my warps.

My warping board!The red strand woven around the pegs isn’t part of the warp itself, but helped to determine in what order I should go around the pegs.

Warping also took a bit of time to do because, as it turns out, 330 threads is a lot of threads. I also had to do it twice since I need to weave four panels; by weaving two panels on one warp I can reduce the amount of yarn waste. Winding a warp is very tedious, and a bit boring, and for me anxiety-inducing. I tend to recount things several times because I have a tendency to stop concentrating on counting even if I’m counting out loud. There have definitely been times where whatever I counted is completely incorrect (you’d think counting out three cups of flour wouldn’t be a problem, but I have in fact lost count doing such a thing. My brain is odd.) So, I probably made winding my warps take longer than it needed (spoiler alert: I still messed up – I had two extra warp strings on the first warp. See what I mean?)

The warp still being wound versus completely finished and ready to be taken off the warping board. You can see the criss-crosses that I mentioned in the second photo; the criss-cross in the front is of every strand crossing the previous one, which keeps the warp strings neat and in order.

Spring 2021 – Week 2 Summary

So, I fell behind on my weekly posts already. To be honest, I didn’t do a lot in week 2. Well, nothing interesting. I was still quite exhausted from the first week; I really cannot emphasize how physical dyeing large quantities of yarn can be. I took it easy this week, mostly because I needed to. While I enjoy what I do and I want to do it all the time, my body just can’t keep up. Oh, the joy of being in my 30s and realizing my body doesn’t bounce back like it used to. I imagine that people who were/are dyers by trade must be sore quite often.

This isn’t to say I didn’t do anything – I did. The first thing was overdyeing my yarn dyed with madder and the yarn dyed with woad that I set aside for the inlay pattern. The madder gave the yarn a very nice pinkish orange color, but I wanted it redder, so I used cochineal to do the job. I truly enjoy working with cochineal. Not only does it give an amazing array of colors, it was important to my ancestors, which is a connection I hold dear. Now, I know how to make pure red with cochineal, but I decided to process it in a way to give more of a magenta – it’s the easiest color to get, and I figured the madder-dyed yarn already had a warm undertone to it and adding more of that wouldn’t make much of a difference.

And I succeeded! Sort of. It’s a a bit of a subtle difference, but it’s there. I left the yarn overnight in the cochineal bath in order for the yarn to soak up as much pigment as possible, which it did with the inlay yarn but not so much the madder-dyed yarn. I have a feeling that if I mordanted the yarn again it would soak of more of the cochineal, but I didn’t really want to keep subjecting the yarn to high temperatures. Also, while the color wasn’t quite what I wanted originally, I’ve grown to quite like it.

The other major thing I did was wind ALL of the yarn into balls. This…took a while. For some reason, the warp yarn felted a bit when I was dyeing it with woad. I honestly don’t know why – the woad bath wasn’t heated nor did I agitate the yarn at all. I had to separate the strands of yarn from each other before I could wind it up. I also decided at the last minute to buy a yarn swift. A yarn swift holds a skein of yarn and spins. Without it, I would have had to ask my partner to help me by holding the skeins while I wound it. The yarn swift was a bit pricey, but worth every cent. I thought winding the yarn into balls would be a quick task, but it really wasn’t. I feel like that right there is the theme of this whole project: I thought x would take a certain amount of time, but actually takes a great deal more of time than I thought.

My yarn swift. I think the picture explains what it is better than I can. As you can see, the swift holds the skein under a bit of tension, and will spin as I wind on the yarn into a ball.

Spring 2021 – Week 1 Summary

The first week of the spring quarter was busy, exhausting, and honestly a lot of fun. I decided to get all of my dyeing done in the first week, and I accomplished that goal, more or less (I had some over-dyeing I did in the second week). The first thing I had to do was measure out my warp. I wasn’t able to spin all of the yarn necessary to weave my chiton, so I went to a yarn shop in Tacoma, Fibers Etc., and bought an entire cone of laceweight yarn – this one is about 30 wraps per inch, which is a bit finer than what I want, but I can work with it. Did I have to buy the entire nearly 3 lb. cone? No. Did I want to sit in the shop for over an hour unwinding what I needed? Also no. It’s not like I won’t find a use for it! I still had to unwind what I needed, but I was able to do that in the comfort of my home.

I had to wind up about 2,500 yards for the warp. Luckily, I didn’t have to worry about running out. I’m not sure I made a dent in the cone.

I also needed to allot some of the weft for the stripes of red and yellow, as they obviously need to be dyed separately. I also decided to weave in a purple pattern in the yellow stripe using supplementary weft/inlay, which I’m going to let Wikipedia define for me: “An extra set of threads are woven into the weft between two regular weft threads to create an ornamental pattern in addition to the ground weave.” I tried to find a pattern online for what I wanted – a Greek key/meander pattern – but I couldn’t find anything. So, I had to figure it out myself and let me tell you, was that challenging. I’ll let the picture speak for itself:

It was difficult creating a pattern that would only be about an inch tall, but that would still be bold enough to be noticeable. Also, I didn’t want the pattern to suddenly be cut off at the edge, so I had to make sure it would fit within the amount of warp strings I plan on having.

Once all of the yarn was measured and sorted, I was now ready to start the dyeing process. First step: scouring. I believe I’ve talked about scouring before when I was starting with my fleece. It’s a good idea to clean yarn before dyeing it, as any dirt and especially oils will prevent the yarn from absorbing the pigments. Once all of the yarn was scoured (which had to be done in two batches – I have so much yarn!), I could then move to mordanting. To mordant fiber means to treat it with a substance that allows the molecules of the pigment to attach to the molecules of the fiber. The best known mordants are metal salts, such as aluminum, iron, and copper. Different mordants will effect the end result in different ways: copper gives more yellow tones, iron “saddens” – dulls the color, and aluminum tends to brighten. There are a couple of options with aluminum and probably the most popular is alum, potassium aluminum sulfate. Alum is also usually considered the safest one to use in your kitchen, which is where most of my dyeing activities take place.

Scouring isn’t the most interesting process, but it’s one of the most important.

Once all of that was done, it was time for the fun part: dyeing! I used madder and cochineal for red, saffron for yellow, woad for blue, and woad with an over-dye of cochineal for purple. I started the process on Wednesday evening by soaking the madder overnight in water. Thursday was actually heating the madder, straining, and barely simmering on the stove with the yarn in the dye bath; I repeated this process with the saffron, minus soaking overnight. Later Thursday evening I started the woad vat. Woad and indigo are dyestuffs that need to be used in conjunction with a fermentation vat in order to dye textiles. I think I might do separate write-ups for woad, madder, and saffron each in order to go more in-depth into what I did for each one.

Friday I attempted to dye my warp yarn with the woad vat, but was only able to do one dip; to obtain deeper colors, it’s usually necessary to do multiple dips in the woad vat. After the first dip, the vat went out of balance I think, as the yarn didn’t get any darker after a second dip; meaning, either the vat became not alkaline enough or too much oxygen was incorporated after the initial dip. So I took the vat inside and reinvigorated it for the next day. Saturday was much more successful, and I was able to finish dyeing the warp, the weft, and the supplementary weft. Sunday I slept all day, because pretty much every muscle in my body ached. I stood a lot in front of the stove, watching the temperature of the pots of yarn and dye. I lifted and carried pots heavy with liquid. I squeezed and washed a lot of yarn. And the yarn is not light, either, especially when wet. But, I really do love natural dyeing. I love how nature gives us so many colors if we know how to unlock her secrets.