Funky town.....

I've been in kind of a funk lately - not exactly sure why, can't pinpoint one thing, it's a combination of things, you don't want me to start listing them, but in the end one major issue I have to think about is where I want to go with selling fiber/handwovens. I do want to continue selling my handwovens as I've done for well over 20 years, the roving, maybe, maybe not, I need to strive to get off the roller coaster of feeling like I need to always beat my sales from the year before. I'm not excited about dyeing hundreds of pounds of roving this summer, will start soon but scaling down the production.....if I'm not enjoying it I shouldn't be doing it. And do I really want to do any festivals or just stick with online selling....maybe not after this year, it's fun to meet other fiber folks but it's exhausting and do I really enjoy it?  Will continue to give it thought.  In the meantime the funk is lifting and I enjoyed my day.

 

So, today I got back to that warp that's been on the Macomber forever. It's the supplemental scarf warp where after the first scarf the ribbon started shredding. I pulled the ribbon out and replaced it with a space-dyed bamboo. Not totally happy with this warp but they'll be pretty scarves once finished.

Also today I did the dreaded photography work of taking pictures of 5 scarves to get listed in my etsy shop. It takes a lot of picture taking to get 5 decent pictures of each scarf, and it's not my strong suit. Now comes all the editing, hopefully I'll start getting them listed tomorrow.

more supplementary warp.....

Today I decided instead of putting a warp on the AVL I wanted to weave another set of supplementary warp scarves...in tencel again, with a variegated ribbon. Not as much ribbon as I would have liked, those little balls really don't have much yardage on them, especially when it's a warp  for 4 scarves. I've picked out the weft for 3 of the scarves, thinking on the 4th one still. Trying to weave with colors I might not usually pick, after all I sell these and not everyone wants to wear only the colors I wear......like chartreuse and yellow. As I'm weaving I'm giving thought to one more supplementary warp but maybe this time with the ground fabric in a twill.....will give it thought.....

more scarves

wish the camera could catch the sheen of the tencel.....

.....and the sparkle of the novelty rayon supplementary warp....

....I'm sure there's a way, I'm just not a good photographer.....

Supplementary warp

Sharon asked what supplemental warp is. I quickly looked in the indexes of a couple weaving books but didn't see a definition right off the bat so I tired of that and thought I'd give my own. Supplemental warp is a warp end that is in addition/supplement to a ground fabric. If the supplemental warp ends were cut out a viable fabric would be left, plain weave in this case. If you're familiar with overshot you can think of that as a supplemental weft - the pattern threads in overshot are in supplement to the plain weave weft ground fabric.

The above diagram shows the draft I'm using for my current scarf warp. I threaded the plain weave sections for however many ends as I wanted, then when I wanted to put in a supplemental warp I threaded those threads (novelty rayon in this case) on either harnesses 3 or 4. You don't have to use both 3 & 4 supplemental warp ends, you could just use 3 - using both gives you supplemental warps that raise at different times.

Then I treadle randomly repeating the different sections how ever many times as I'd like. I like the changes in the lengths of the supplemental warp but you may choose to weave the same over and over to have it consistent.

Going beyond this you can pretty much use any kind of weave structure for your ground fabric - twills are especially nice. You can also have as many different supplemental warps on different harnesses as you like to have them lift at different times. You are only restricted by the number of harnesses you have on your loom.

Back to overshot - if you know anything about turning drafts, if you turn overshot your pattern threads become supplemental warps.

Oh, I almost forgot. Sometimes as your weaving progresses your supplemental warp ends may become looser in tension than your plain weave sections because they're floating more, less intertwining, so there is less take-up in them. I haven't found this a problem with my 12 yard warps but if it becomes a problem all you need to do is slip a dowel between those ends and the rest of the warp and let it hang off the back of the loom with a little weight on each end. Or if you have a double back beam you will beam the ground warp and supplemental warps on separate beams.

Ok, so did this sound confusing? I'm probably not so good at explaining in print. If you're interested just give it a try using the above draft, experiment with it.

Scarves on the macomber today.....

....the cross.....tencel and novelty rayon for a supplemental warp.....

 ....12 yards on the warping board......

.....the first scarf.....weft auditions already made for the next three.....