End of the Dummy warp...or is it?

The knots came up over the back beam on the last of the scarf warps...I am pleased.

Knots over the back beam and approaching the heddles

So this is the fourth scarf warp woven.  I still have to wash the scarves, label them, hem the rugs, and package everything to ship to the buyer, and I want to finish it before I leave on vacation on Thursday.  The chances of doing that are about 50/50 mostly because my "free" day that I thought I could work on them is now taken by a trip to Ogden to help Mom and a trip to Perry to pick up some things for the Pioneer Craft House. There is always something happening and I need to put more time in my weaving if I want to continue doing these commissions.

The month of August has been fun and busy.  The end of July had me trying to fit the people into the rug class.  The computer did not cut off at the maximum seven students, I ended up with ten students and was worried how we could get that many looms available.  I emptied three floor looms, fixed the brake on the AVL and hoped that the new Gilmore did not have any problems (I had not had time to test weave on either of these looms before the class).  We are now in the fourth week of the class and it seems to be working well.  The students need to weave six different rug samples with six different types of warps and then we will do six different rug finishes.  Once I got the looms arranged, the students are busy doing the work and I just need to bounce from one loom to another to make sure the students understand the structure that they are working on.

It's fun to have this many looms going at once.

I also went to see a quilt show in Brigham City.  The show has some very beautiful art quilts from artists from all around the world.

Beautiful hand applique quilt from Egypt

A quilt done with lots of thread painting

Here's a detail of her thread painting

My favorite was a Japanese garden

A detail of the machine applique on my favorite piece

We had a great time at the show and although I have not considered doing much quilting, my sister and my Mom both have done some great work.  I was just awestruck by the work, the craft and the design on these quilts.  There is a lot of new techniques that my sister had not explored when she was doing quilts and it was fun to discuss quilts with her.


My weaving continued on the dummy warp.  I put the first of the long scarve warps on the loom and again was not able to count the warp right.

I have some real concerns about my counting skills

I put on a hounds-tooth twill and wove two scarves on it. I like the black and white together.  The black is a blend of alpaca and silk and has a bit of a sheen to it.

I think both of the designs are great.

I finally got the correct count on the last scarf warp.  I wove another two scarves on this warp and I am pleased that the weaving is done for this yarn, but as I said I still have some work to do to finish them.

Yeah, my counting skills returned.

I used my ply splitting to join the weft yarns in the scarves.  It seemed to make a more invisible join.

Here is the last of the bobbin split and tucked.

When I get to the end of the bobbin thread, I split the ply and weave one ply in and leave the other ply hanging out.  I like it when it runs out in the middle of the piece.  I think that is a better place to make the join.  On the edge, there may be some weakness in the selvedge where you join.

The new weft end is split and laid into the shed

The new bobbin thread is split the same and I overlap a ply from the new bobbin over the ply from the old bobbin, the extra two plys just hang out.

I weave up several picks to lock the ends in.

After cutting, there is no thicker weft showing.

This method of splitting the ply works great on thicker yarns.  You have less density in the overlap section so that there is very little difference in the weave.  The finer the yarn the less you would need this technique.  There is a point of diminishing returns with this technique.  It takes longer to do than to just overlapping the yarns, but it makes me happier to see the results when I do my joins this way, so I continue to do it on some of the thicker yarns.

Simple point twill.

Now that the last warp is off, I'm looking at the dummy and wondering if there is some more yarns that I can use to make some scarves for me to sale.  I would like to do some more pinwheel designs.  Once the rugs are hemmed, I can look for some yarn.