#warp fail

Anatomy of a bad warp, a weaving fail Triumph! (part 2)

Welcome back to my sad tale!  If missed part one, you can read it Here.

After the first warp failed so miserably, I was distraught and upset, but I was also determined to find a better way.  

“How is everyone else dealing with this problem?  Surely, I’m not the only one...” These were thoughts running through my head as I logged into Facebook.

Turning to my friends in one of my weaving groups, I posed the problem and asked for their help.  Over and over two questions came up:

“Is the yarn under tension?”

“Are you using a Trapeze?”

At first I was, “No, the yarn’s not under tension, I’m winding on.”  As more folks started talking about their trapeze and how it kept the yarn tensioned (like it was when it was on the warping board), I decided I needed more research.

Google came up with several helpful links on building a trapeze, making a trapeze and several commercially available trapeze attachments for various looms.

I’ve no room for woodworking or building a huge PVC pipe thing that takes up a ton of room.  However, this video did inspire me and I love how the yarn looked as it was wound on.  My yarn never looked that good:

I definitely had to agree this looked like a much better process than the one I’d been using to warp the loom with.

The Trapeze

The principles behind a trapeze are really simple, you drape the warp up and over a smooth bar, pole, dowel, etc. so that it is hanging and then attach weights of some sort to provide even tension on the warp.  

Tension on the warp without my trying to pull on it or hold it while stooped over the loom turning the crank to wind it onto the back beam.  I loved the sound of that!

A smooth horizontal pole made me think of a closet coat rack.  If I were a coat rack, where would I be sold? Off to the Contain Store I went one lunch break to see what was available.

Voila!

Look at what I found at The Container Store. Double bonus, it was collapsible so that when not in use it wasn’t taking up a bunch of room!  Better than anything I could make and it had locking wheels to keep it still while I was winding on.  Sold!

I brought it home and awaited the next weekend to give it a try.

Saturday came and I wound up a new warp for my towels which took a good chunk of the day.  The warp was beautiful again and this time the middle section was not mixed with white, but with beige since I’d wasted a bunch of white cottolin in the first warp.  Turns out, the stripe is a very nice effect down the center of the warp. 

Lemons, meet lemonade!

Sunday morning, with warp in hand, I began repeating the process from the prior weekend, but this time using the trapeze, some water bottles (one for each of the 3 warp sections) weighted to 1.9 lbs each (Thank you, postal scale) and some S hooks that I already had.

This is how the setup looked when I got the warp onto the loom and ran the remaining warp UNDER the front beam and then up and over the trapeze with the excess warp resting in a crate on the floor.

I could not believe how much easier winding on the warp was now that there was even, steady tension during the whole process.  I could let everything go and review the process at any time from any angle.  I could even walk a way for a while, if I needed to, with no worries.

What an improvement!

The trapeze also let me work on much longer sections of the warp at a time, not just one yard sized section which reduced tangling quite a bit. 

While I did still have some issues with loose threads here and there, I could work them up over the trapeze as they were found and then add additional S hook weights to them while winding.

The whole process was so much smoother and easier than I’d ever imagined before and now I had a warp on my loom ready to go.

How did it turn out?

I’ll let you be the judge of that.  Here’s a sample of the first towel being woven from this warp.

While the disaster was very stressful and disheartening, the resulting growth and learning cycle was well worth the small cost of some ruined yarn.  

Happy Weaving, Everyone!

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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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