I am ready to start weaving the kaftan cloth. I am excited to see the pattern emerge and to see if the reality was going to match my vision. I always weave a few picks in the header with toilet paper to set the distance between the threads. Then I wove several repeats of the pattern with commercially dyed yarn so as to not waste any of the hand dyed thread. The yarn was slightly…
Because this project is on a fairly tight timeline, I am lucky enough to have several friends volunteer to help me out with the time consuming aspects of preparing the loom for weaving. Here is a gallery of photos to enjoy showing some of the steps involved in dressing the loom for the kaftan cloth.
Now that I know the sett of the kaftan cloth based on my sampling, in order to start winding the warp and to figure out how much dyed yarn the project will require, its time to recalculate my yarn needs. To see my previous estimate, go here. I’ve chosen wool as the fiber for the Kaftan fabric, and the yarn I have selected is a 20/2 lace weight worsted wool made by Jaggerspun called Maine…
Since I last posted, I did several samples for the kaftan cloth and I think I’ve settled on a sett. (Hur, hur. Weaving humor at its finest.) The winner is at the top in the picture at right. Its a pretty balanced weave. 30 ends per inch. From the bottom – the samples: 24 ends per inch, single weft with a solid beat. In the middle, same epi, but with a doubled weft. above that…
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The first step in preparing the yarn for dyeing is to wind it off the cones and into skeins. Dear friends gifted me with a skein winder making this whole process much easier. I divided the one pound cones into four skeins of roughly the same size. This was purely guess factor on my part. I could have gotten much closer to 1/4 pound skeins if I had set the cone on a scale. Don’t…
The last few days have been more about life and less about projects. I am chafing at the disruptions. I finally downloaded some free weaving software so I can draft without graph paper. The program I’m using is called WeaveDesign. It’s an easy program to use and has made fiddling with the draft for the fabric of the magyar kaftan much easier. I’ve settled on an 8 shaft draft in order to get the look…
Last night, a friend brought her big brain over to my house and applied it to translating the German text in Die Graber der Moscevaja Balka edited by Anna A. lerusalimskaja . It was too much to translate all at once. She said she will give me the next part later. Here is what she has given me so far as it relates to the inspiration fabric for the Magyar kaftan: Pg 152 #155 Man’s Kaftan…
Kaftan fabric weave I believe I landed on a point twill draft for the fabric for the magyar kaftan I will be creating. It is not a reconstruction of a period draft, rather it is a design that approximates the look and feel of an extant piece within the constraints of my abilities and the limitations of my equipment.
