Woven by Carol Buchmiller
I’ve always liked Strickler #460 for its mid-century vibe, and I’ve also been intrigued by the notion of supplemental warps. For this sample, I decided to combine the two.
Strickler #460 (left) ; Woven Sample (right)
I used the Fiberworks Turn Draft command to create the drawdown, then tweaked the tie-up and treadling. I wound the ground cloth warp and supplemental warps separately, beamed the ground cloth, and hung the supplemental warps off the back beam. Following the guidelines in Deb Essen’s excellent book, Easy Weaving with Supplemental Warps, I threaded the ground cloth on shafts 4 and 5 and the pattern on shafts 1, 2, and 3.
Author’s Loom
Right away I ran into trouble tensioning the 12-end supplemental warp bouts. I ended up using a raddle on the back of the loom to keep them in position, and weighted them with unused half-pound cones of 8/2 cotton, which was the only item I had enough of to make them all the same weight.
During weaving I also ran into trouble with the density of the warp. Threads and shafts caught on each other and showed through the ground cloth. I switched to a multi-treadle tieup, with ground cloth on treadles A and B (the leftmost treadles in the tieup) and pattern on treadles 1 through 4. I was then able to lift the ground cloth and pattern shafts independently.
I also used a pickup stick to pack the pattern warp so it didn’t catch quite so badly and show through the ground cloth. So, the treadling sequence was B, 4, pack warp, throw shuttle, beat; then A, 4, pack warp, throw shuttle, beat; and so on.
This was an interesting exercise. It occurred to me as I was struggling with those teeny-weeny supplemental warp bouts that perhaps I could have tried beaming ground and pattern warps together to see if there was actually a problem that required supplementary warps to solve. Next time!
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Structure: Turned Monk’s Belt
Pattern source: Strickler, A Weaver’s Book of 8-Shaft Patterns #460 p124, turned and modified to reduce warp float length
Technical reference: Essen, Deb, Easy Weaving with Supplemental Warps
Loom: 8-shaft Schacht Mighty Wolf, 5 shafts used
Yarn: Brassard 8/2 matte cotton, 3360 ypp
Sett: Ground cloth 24 epi, sleyed 3 per dent in an 8-dent reed. Supplemental warp sleyed 3 per dent over ground cloth for net of 48 epi.
Finishing: Hand washed warm, towel dried damp, pressed dry.
Bio:
Carol Buchmiller is a longtime knitter who started weaving in 2016 in an attempt to use up her yarn stash. She enjoys experimenting with structures, color, and fibers, and trying to replicate old family textiles.
