{"id":5300,"date":"2014-06-03T19:35:40","date_gmt":"2014-06-04T00:35:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/?p=5300"},"modified":"2014-06-03T19:35:40","modified_gmt":"2014-06-04T00:35:40","slug":"8-shaft-silk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/2014\/06\/8-shaft-silk\/","title":{"rendered":"8 Shaft Silk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although I don’t weave them all that often for my scarves & shawls, I do love a complex twill weaving pattern. I modified the gebrochene<\/a> pattern I wove last year.<\/p>\n

\"modified<\/a><\/p>\n

Except last year I wove it in 20\/2 silk; this year I’m using 30\/2 silk. My post from last year incorrectly said the 20\/2 was about 8,000 yards per pound (ypp)- it’s really about 4,500 ypp. The 30\/2 silk I’m using this year is 7,500 ypp. <\/p>\n

I got the silk beamed, heddles & reed threaded, tied on to the front apron. I wove and hemmed the front edge – only 1 reed-threading error, so not bad to fix. Then I wove the first pattern with my weft – POO!! About 1\/2 the warp was threaded wrong! I had to unweave the 4″ and start again.<\/p>\n

Rethreading was worse than threading. Why? My loom wasn’t all ‘unfolded’ the way it is when I’m threading. Unless I unthreaded the correct half of the reed, I had to work around it. Next time I’ll unthread the reed – I’m sure it’d be both quicker and easier than what I did.<\/p>\n

Anyway, finally got it all back, threaded correctly, and started weaving again. Here it is after weaving a few patterns motifs. As always, I’m not happy with the color.<\/p>\n

\"modified<\/a><\/p>\n

Now let me talk about the weft for a minute. A few years ago I bought some tram silk. I tried weaving with it<\/a>…not overly successfully. Not an experience I was eager to repeat. Sandra Rude<\/a> posted about working with tram last month, and I was encouraged to try again, this time using it only as weft. <\/p>\n

I knew for my gebrochene to look right, I had to use a weft that’s roughly the same size as the warp. But I don’t own a McMorran balance – a tool that determines the ypp of yarns. I remembered seeing directions for making one online somewhere, and googled a bit till I found these instructions<\/a>. I made one with a bamboo skewer and some yarn and it worked like a charm.<\/p>\n

I found out that my ruby tram silk is roughly 30,000 ypp. It takes 4 feet of this to balance 1 foot of 30\/2 silk. How would I cope with this? I don’t spin, and had asked one of my guild-mates to spin some up for me, but he said it wasn’t worth it. I tried getting it machine spun at the Fiber Factory, but it was too fine for their equipment.<\/p>\n

Still, Sandra inspired me. <\/p>\n

So, using a modifier a friend made me, I wound some of the silk onto 4 of the cardboard cones from the 8\/2 babywrap cotton. Then I stood all 4 cones up and wound a bobbin from them, careful to wind slowly and with even tension of all 4 threads. It isn’t ideal – a twist in it would be better – but it works. And I just love the sheen of the tram.<\/p>\n

Here you can see both the top and bottom of the pattern.<\/p>\n

\"modified<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m going to use another of the trams for the second scarf on this warp. When I have time, I’d like to weave some shawls out of this pattern. But maybe in 20\/2. But then I can’t use my tram. Decisions, decisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although I don’t weave them all that often for my scarves & shawls, I do love a complex twill weaving pattern. I modified the gebrochene pattern I wove last year.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Except last year I wove it in 20\/2 silk; this year I’m using 30\/2 silk. My post from last year incorrectly said the 20\/2 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[227,253,381],"class_list":["post-5300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weaving","tag-handwoven-scarves","tag-macomber","tag-silk","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5300"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5305,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5300\/revisions\/5305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondwindjewelry.com\/jewelry-weaving-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}