#leno weave

I knew going in the Leno would mess with my selvedges, so I’m going to have to keep a close eye on that. I might change it next time and leave out the two end threads as a sort of pseudo floating selvedge and see if that helps.

See my work and lots more at the annual Studio Arts Festival hosted by the Irvine Fine Arts Center in Heritage Park. I'm participating as a member of South Coast Weavers and Spinners Guild. Date: Saturday, June 3, 2017 Time: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Location: 14321 Yale Ave., Irvine (in Heritage Park) Admission and parking: Free

Scarf in leno weave, 100% cotton.  This weekend! See my work at the Irvine Arts Center Holiday Faire.  Friday & Saturday Nov 4-5, 14321 Yale Ave., Irvine, CA. * irvinefinearts.org * My work will be in the South Coast Weavers and Spinners Guild booth in the Fine Arts Center.

I haven't posted in a while; been in a slump during August.  All my focus and anticipation seemed to be directed at the trip to Convergence in Milwaukee (I had a great time!), and I guess it kind of sapped my energy once it was over.  Now that the sun is dropping in the sky and the evening light is coming sooner and sooner, I'm a little sad that the summer has flown by.  I always have such high hopes for productivity for the summer.  I did have fun going through sample after sample adapted from Recueil d'Armures Fantaisies by J. Moiret.  Here's a scan of one of the more intricate weaves.

I've been working through weaving some leno structures from a book published in 1908.  The book is in French, and doesn't have much explanation for the diagrams, so this is my interpretation of the weaves.  The ones pictured here all have two ground (stationary) warp ends for every doup warp end (the end that crosses under the grounds and back).  They are 10/2 cotton set at 18 epi.  Some extraordinary variety is possible on just one or two threadings!

The first in a series of experiments comparing top-mounted doup heddles to bottom-mounted.  This experiment is on my Macomber loom.  The first photo is using the top-mounted doups, the shed where the doup warp end is crossed under the ground (stationary) end.  You can just barely see the crossing going on in the shadows behind the reed.  The lower warp ends have lifted well off the shuttle race and the shed is small compared to what the loom usually produces. The second photo is still the top-mounted, with the shed open where the doup warp is raised on the usual side of the ground, uncrossing the warps.  The shed is larger and the lower warp ends are still on the shuttle race.  But it's not as large as the normal shed on this loom, because the doups are deflecting the upper warp ends a little.  Again looking in the shadows reveals this deflection. In the third photo, I rethreaded the loom using bottom-mounted doups instead.  The crossing shed is much larger than the one using top-mounted, but the lower warps are still lifted off the shuttle race.  I've found that on this loom I can alleviate this by not pushing the treadle all the way down to the floor. The fourth photo is bottom-mounted doups, uncrossing shed.  This shed is the same nice large shed that the loom produces in normal weaving without doup heddles, because the bottom-mounted doups don't interfere at all with this shed.

My summer project is to do some more experimentation with leno and gauze weaves.  One thing I wanted to try is to push the boundary of how light and airy I can go with this structure, so I am trying some very fine silk yarn. I also thought that with all the different angles the yarn takes, it might be a candidate for iridescence.  The real proof will be when I get it off the loom, but I think it is happening: here are photos of the fabric on the loom from two different angles.  One angle is showing the reddish weft more, and the other the blues in the warp.  This fabric is plain gauze, with each pair of warps twisting the same direction at the same time.

The artist-inspired pallette I used a couple posts ago resulted in this double weave and sprang piece. The painting from which I took the colors is "The Pink Cloud" by the neo-impressionist Henri-Edmond Cross.  The scale is really too large for my taste.  The fabric is about a yard high and even bigger in the width.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it.   ...but whatever I decide, I do have a series of coordinating scarves to go with it.