Sunday, March 28, 2010

Weaving woes

I don't weave as often as I used to. One reason for this is simply that I am not under the same pressure to produce that I felt while in school. Another big reason is that I have developed a tendency to weave a large amount of cloth for multiple pieces at once, as opposed to weaving the cloth for each piece individually. Because of this, my familiarity with the routine has lessened.

Recently, I have noticed a change in my cloth. I am not sure when it came about- when I began working exclusively on my smaller loom, when I took a break to move my studio across the country, when I switched yarn brands- who knows. What I do know is that my cloth is not as dense as it used to be.

I used to produce a very tight, dense weave which was most pleasant to work with. At some point, my standard cloth became looser. Flimsier. The weft no longer squeezes in securely to the warp. This cloth is not so pleasant to work with.

My problem is that, not knowing why this change has occurred, I don't know how to fix it. I use the same EPI, same reed, same yarn size as I did when I was making the tighter cloth. I am hoping that the reason for this looser cloth is not the loom itself, for that's a pretty difficult element to change. My fingers are crossed that there is an easy-to-fix reason, like tension, or the way I have been tying up the treadles. I rather wish I could pop back to school, ask a couple questions, get some advice. Since I can't, I'll just have to keep trying to figure it out, and hope I don't end up with too much of this looser, less-satisfying stuff.

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