Teaching an Old Lamb New Tricks: Tales of Bad Selvedges

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There are two things you may or may not know about me:

1. I pride myself on good selvedges
2. I always beat with a closed shed

Along comes a project that changed everything.  I have been happily charged with weaving the shawls for the attendants in my son's wedding. These are shawls I have woven many times before (see photo on the left), using the exact same yarn I have used before.  

​It should have been a no-brainer.  Apparently not!
 
I wound a 20 yard warp for 6 nice long shawls in stripes of light gray and silver 8/2 tencel.  Each shawl was to be woven in a modified Bronson weave using a charcoal gray weft.  I decided to weave several different treadlings so that the shawls for each young lady would be a little different.
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Right from the start, there was trouble.  The silver tencel began to break - sometimes at the back beam, sometimes behind the heddles, sometimes it was a thread near the selvedge, sometimes about 6 inches in from the selvedge.  Before I knew it, I had about 10 repair threads hanging from the back of the loom and I was sure that I had a bad batch of tencel.  The light gray tencel was behaving just fine.  The repair threads behaved better except that one of the 3 threads near the right selvedge continued to break about every 6 to 10 inches.  Needless to say:

1. The right selvedge was suffering (a lot),
2. I would have a lot of repairs to do,
3. Weaving was going very slowly,
4. And I was getting really frustrated!

This mess is what the back of the loom looked like after a dozen or so broken threads had been repaired.

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Tip!

​Repairing broken threads: 
1. Attach the repair thread to the woven cloth
2. Hang it off the back of the loom

​First wrap the broken thread back around a T-pin in a figure 8. (left)
 
​After threading the repair thread properly through the heddle and reed, wrap it around the same t-pin and secure it around the pin with a figure 8. (right)

This is how I hang and weight my repair end at the back of the loom: a thread keeper, a ring and a heavy washer

​HOWEVER, If I just let it hang, it will spin and the yarn will unply itself (not good). So I secure the hanging thread keeper and weight to the loom by tying it loosely to the loom with shoelaces as shown on the right.

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​The saga continues:
 
I cut Shawl #1 off the loom and retied the warp to make sure I had perfect tension before beginning the next shawl. 
 
The selvedges in Shawl #2 were somewhat better, but I continued to have broken threads along the right selvedge as well as in two sections in the center of the shawl.  By the time I cut the shawl off the loom, I had about 20 repairs to make, and more than a dozen of them were along the right hand selvedge.  And I can assure you I do not enjoy making repairs in the finished cloth - especially along the selvedge edge!
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Before starting Shawl #3, I had two light bulb moments:

1. My friend Sue suggested that I add a strand of 10/2 pearl to each side of the warp to strengthen the selvedges.  I happened to have some pearl cotton in colors that matched the 2 edge colors pretty well so I could "buddy up" one strand of pearl cotton with one warp thread.  I simply threaded a strand of 10/2 pearl through the same heddle and dent with the outermost warp thread on each side of the shawl and hung it off the back of the loom with a weight - just as I do with my repair threads.
2. I decided to try to reduce draw-in even more (even though I was already weaving with a temple) by beating with my shed open.  That took a little getting used to because I have beating on a closed shed for almost 30 years!

Tips!

​I was shocked at how much this helped!  The selvedges were great and I did not have a single selvedge thread break for the entire 95" length of the shawl.  

I still had threads break in the other two trouble areas of the shawl, confirming my belief that this batch of silver yarn was probably defective, under-plied in sections, or otherwise weakened for some reason.  But just to be able to solve the problem on the selvedge was a huge relief!

Nice selvedge! :-)

Three shawls down, three to go…
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