I got a close view of the jacket yardage as I was hard-pressing it (to bring up the shine of the silk warp). I am not amused. There are a LOT of skips in it, which are very visible (to me anyway) and they are through most of the length of the fabric. I still plan to sew the jacket – I’m not about to throw all that work away – but I will definitely NOT be submitting it for jurying when I join the San Francisco weaving guild at the October jurying session. I am quite distinctly displeased, the more so since I don’t know what exactly is causing it. I don’t mind making mistakes if I learn from them, but I don’t understand what’s causing this, and thus, there’s no learning, merely frustration.
I have problems with skips on this loom. I can’t weave more than a pick or two (literally) of plainweave without having one or more threads skip – so I don’t dare weave plainweave patterns. I have no idea what’s causing it. Lady Di doesn’t have a very large shed to begin with (just about enough to get a shuttle through), which doesn’t help, but something is causing skips in random places. Sometimes a single thread will start skipping, sometimes it’s just short skips.
It seems reasonable that it might be a tension issue, but back when I was weaving on the Baby Wolf with the exact same warp yarns I had no trouble at all with plainweave. So I think it’s something with the loom. Darned if I can figure out what, though. I thought it might have been the cable stretching (the one that broke), but now that the cable is fixed, it’s still doing it. So I’m frustrated. I think once I am done with this warp I will thread up with a long cotton warp and see if I can troubleshoot it.
It is also just about time for me to start weaving samples for the study group on Bonnie’s book, so I think I will try to weave off the shawls fairly quickly (after re-sleying to get rid of the gap in the reed) and rethread with a painted warp in blues and greens, sett for twill, and woven with a cream colored weft. Bonnie posted a photo to the study group of a painted-warp jacket made out of the samples woven for her class, and it looks really good! I’m thinking I may try something similar.
Haven’t settled on fibers yet – the options seem to be silk, cotton, linen, tencel, and (weft only) cashmere-silk blend. I’m leaning towards cotton and linen, for a light jacket.
The next few days are going to be sewing and dyeing, though. Not only do I need to choose and dye a color for the next shawls on the brown/tan warp, but I need to dye about two pounds of mohair yarn for a couple friends who recently moved to the Arctic rural India and are living in a largely unheated stone house halfway up a mountain in the middle of winter. And the local shops don’t stock warm yarns, only acrylic. I offered to send them some extra stuff out of my stash, and since I only stock natural colors, I’m going to dye it in dark red and maroon for them (the colors they requested when I asked). That plus dyeing the jacket lining fabric (china silk, I think, but I’ll have to check my remnant colection) should keep me busy for a day or two.
I also want to finish sewing up the muslin for the jacket before sewing up the final version – as displeased as I am with the fabric, I don’t want to waste it either!
So I have my work *ahem* cut out for me.
Having been in your situation many many times with various processes (be they cooking, baking, playing the flute or an enzyme assay), I sympathize with your annoyance/frustration.
I can say that you WILL figure it out. I figure, the level of relief/triumph experienced at that moment is proportional to the integral of time*annoyance. Just think how great you’ll feel when you figure it out!
I struggled for a long time with this kind of problem every time I wove on a 60/2 silk warp. Here are the things I have found help me. Wind very small bouts–1 1/2″ bouts maximum. Small bouts are much easier to wind on with even tension. Use weights when you beam on. This should guarantee that the tension will be even across. Weave with the warp tension practically drum tight. This helps force those way too cuddly silk ends to separate as they ought to and so go where they should. Weave at a slightly looser epi. This way the warp ends won’t be quite as snuggly. Use a temple. The temple is really not for selvedges. It keeps all the warp ends stretched apart widthwise. The final thing I have worked out is this. At the beginning of the weaving, I found that if I looked very closely and carefully, there would be a few warp ends that weren’t quite as tightly strung as the others. I would tighten them up. Weaving another inch, maybe, would reveal another ever so slightly loose end. It takes me maybe about 5″ of weaving to find them and tighten them. Finally, I have a mirror placed on each side of the loom so that I can check to make sure the shed is clear. That is a real life saver. I suspect you will learn that solving this problem will be a process of discovery. The beauty of silk is worth it!