#failed warp

Anatomy of a bad warp, a weaving fail! (part 1)

Like most things that go bad, they start off looking really good and beautiful, but somewhere along the way the heartache begins.

The photo above shows a hopelessly damaged warp with multiple broken threads (clearly visible) and entire 1 inch section already cut out of the raddle--see the empty slot on the left between the pink and teal sections.  The next section is rust, and that is the jam of threads you see over the raddle.

Here’s how the warp began its life.  Nice, eh?

Oh so neat, orderly and pretty. Not a hint of trouble.  This is just 1/3 of the full warp as it must be wound in 3 6 inch sections at 24 epi.  

I always have some tangle issues when winding on a new warp, but all of my other fibers to date could handle a bit of combing and detangling.  The unmercerized cotton and cottolin could not, but I wouldn’t know that for several more hours...

What I didn’t realize was the fibers of this yarn were pretty clingy and were thus binding up as I wound on.  So, instead of stopping and assessing the situation, I just added more torque to the winding to push the yarn through.  

Oops, do not do that!

Eventually it would go no further and breakage occurred. Lots of breakage.

By the time I cut out one full section of the warp hoping to just skip it or tie on new yarn out the back, I was already doomed, but still hoping I could salvage the rest of the warp.  As soon as a second section also broke, I knew it was useless.

I also noticed that the yarn was easily break apart in my hand just a light tug. I’d worn it out trying to detangle it.

Rather than waste more time on a lost cause, I tossed out the yarn completely and had to start over, but this time i would not repeat the same mistakes.

Fortunately, this story does have a happy ending, and I’ll tell you all about in the next post!

Until then, Happy Weaving!

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