I spent a good portion of yesterday on the rigid heddle loom, measuring the warp and warping the loom. I am indebted to the information contained in Betty Linn Davenport’s invaluable book “Hands on Rigid Heddle Weaving“, without which I would probably still trying to get the patterned gauze sample on the loom. The key piece of information I learned during this process is that when tying on, the heddle has to be in…
It immediately became clear, upon graphing the gauze weave draft, that the rigid heddle loom was going to impose its own limitations upon this effort. Not having any direct experience with weaving with a rigid heddle, that had not occurred to me until that point. Each line in the paper pattern at right represents 4 warp threads. My rigid heddle is 10 ends per inch and is 21 inches wide, giving me a maximum warp…
I’ve a friend who studies the Scythian and Pazyryk cultures and she introduced me to a book from an Abegg-Stiftung exhibit in 2001 called “Fabulous Creatures from the Desert Sands“. The book details woolen textiles from the tombs of Shanpula in Xinjiang, China. Textiles range from gorgeous polychrome horizontal tapestries, to pile rugs, to wide, multi-strand flat braids used as flounces on skirts to embroidered textiles and my current obsession, hand-manipulated lace cloth. I’ve been studying…
I am so pleased to have completed the weaving of the Rus kaftan cloth warp. Started back in April, this cloth posed unexpected challenges and new learning opportunities. The finished woven length is 11 and 2/3 yards. I had hoped to make 12 yards even, but that was not to be as one of the sheds became too narrow to throw even my low profie shuttle through it. Through out the weaving, I consistantly struggled…
Found a great stash of amateur photos from the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg of the “Moshchevaya Balka: A Monument to the North Caucasian Silk Road”. These photos appear to have been taken by a russian historical reenactor. You can look at the pictures here. Enjoy!
I have completed weaving eight yards of the madder warp/brown weft combination. That is enough, I feel, to make the Rus kaftan. The rest of the warp is being woven with a higher contrast light brown/old gold weft. I have set a goal to have finish this project on the loom by the end of the year. This project has been quite challenging and not very fun as evidenced by the many months it…
Its been a few weeks since I last posted. I was at the part of the project that wasn’t terribly exciting. I finished threading the loom. That took about 6 days of working a few hours each evening. Then came time to beam the warp. Oh. Em. Gee, guys. What a pain! It took me and my helpers (four of them!) about eight hours over three days to beam this thirteen yard warp. Remember…
To find and read all the entries for this project, you can go here. In the last week, I’ve made some important decisions to the plan for weaving the Rus Kaftan cloth and made quite a bit of actual progress on moving the project forward. The first thing I decided to do was to make the warp narrower and longer. This decision was predicated on the desire to reduce loom waste and to make it a…
This week, we started making wooden trenchers based on ones in the Oseberg grave finds. I don’t have a lot of information on the extant trenches like size and the type of wood from which they are made. We are just going off this one picture I was able to find. In the wood shop, we had some nice 5/4 X 9 inch fir boards that were bought for a different project and never used.…
Started measuring the warp threads for the Rus kaftan point diamond twill cloth today. I am 1/3 of the way done, as I took long breaks to teach a friend some beginning lampworking techniques and to brainstorm viking age food options for some upcoming reenactor events. I’ve decided to weave at a 37 inch width rather than the full width of my reed. I hope it will reduce the time needed for threading and also…
