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Teaching an Old Lamb New Tricks:  Tales of Bad Selvedges

5/15/2016

2 Comments

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

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

​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!
​
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!

Picture
Nice selvedge! :-)
Picture

Three shawls down, three to go…
​

2 Comments
Weavin Steven link
7/10/2020 07:42:48 pm

Broken threads at selvages are caused by the unraveling of s-spun yarns. This is especially true if using floating selvages, and it's usually the float on the right side. Most weavers are taught to enter the float on top and exit underneath the opposite float. However you will have no breaks in your floats if you enter and exit from the bottom (when going right to left) and then enter and exit from the top when returning the shuttle going from left to right. It takes a few passes of the shuttle to get the hang of this technique but it works like a charm for floating selvages.

Hard to tell if you used floats in your project but thought I'd put this out there just in case.

Reply
Pattie Lamb
7/10/2020 08:25:16 pm

Hi Steven,
You have reminded me that I have not updated my take on selvedges in a long time. This project did NOT use floating selvedges as there was plain weave on the edges. The main flaw here was a batch of bad yarn. By the time I finished the last of the shawls I had no fewer than 40 repair threads hanging off the back.

As it happens, I do handle my floating selvedge the way you suggest (although I go over over going to the left and under under going to the right. I also ALWAYS prevent the floating selvedges from un-plying by tying their bobbins very loosely to each other or a leg of the loom.

So now I will have to write another blog post to cover this tip as well! Thanks for writing - Pattie

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    Pattie Lamb

    I have been happily weaving since my son was born in 1988.

    All pictures on my blog are "zoomable" - just click on them to enlarge.

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