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.
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).
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.
