Technical wool fabric: Conclusion
I am at the end of my project and I’m one small roll of fabric richer!
The last blog post left me deciding to spin two-ply yarn for a bigger sample, so that is what I did. I opted to spin a two-ply of equal thickness as the one ply I had previously used as warp yarn, but in the end my two ply turned out a bit thicker than I intended. This was due to me simply not paying attention to how thin I needed to spin the yarn for the big sample, but I didn’t realize it would be a problem until I started weaving! After making my first picks on the new two-ply sample (I will be calling this “sample 2“ in this text) I realized that I was not going to get the same density in the weave as I had gotten before: Even if I still had eight threads per centimeter the weave came out much sparser. I really liked the tight, closed weave of the previous sample (I will be calling this “sample 1 in this text“) but I was just not going to achieve it with this setup. In the beginning I was really disappointed by this, but then I thought “Oh well, its a part of the process. I might as well weave this sample down now that it’s on the loom.“ And Im glad I did!
Eight wraps of the two-ply yarn used for sample 2, (left) and eight wraps of the one-ply yarn used for sample 1 (right).
The cloth is basically constructed of two layers; the bottom layer is a tabby weave in over coat wool only, and the top layer consists of long floating threads spun from the under coat wool. When tabby has this kind of floating threads on top the technique is called “overshoot“. Here you can see the bottom tabby structure of both sample 1 (left) and sample 2 (right), and the difference in their density.
I won’t lie; weaving this cloth on my Ashford table loom was not optimal. The shed is opened by lifting handles connected to the looms shafts, and the shafts not raised are meant to sink down on their own accord due to their weight. If you have a tightly stretched wool warp on your loom those shafts might not be so keep on sinking down, and at first I couldn’t even open up a clear shed without a lot of struggle. Well, after a while and some fiddling I managed to get an OK shed to open and the weaving went quite well!
This is the warping chart (is that word correct? I’m a bit lost in the terminology, especially when it comes to writing about weaving in English) for sample 2. There are handles connected to each shaft on my loom and with this chart I can weave a plain tabby by alternating between raising shaft 1+4, and then 2+3. For the overshoot threads I raise either shaft 3 or 4 only.
In sample 1 I made two picks with the overcoat yarn in tabby weave between each pick overshoot pick woven with the undercoat yarn, but since the bottom weave sample no. 2 was more sparse I decided to add one overshoot pick between each tabby pick. This still left me with a wooly, soft surface that wasn’t quite as dense as I would have liked, but it definitely does it’s job: The wooly undercoat overshoot threads cover the tough overcoat tabby just fine. That means that to weave this I lifted: 3 (overshoot pick) 3+2 (tabby pick) 4 (overshoot pick) 4+1 (tabby pick) 3 (overshoot pick) and so on.
The fact that I was raising only one shaft at the time (when two shafts were raised one of them has already been raised for the previous pick) kept the warp threads from tangling together, which was causing my problems in achieving a clear shed in the beginning.
In the end I got myself a tiny bolt of cloth! I wish sample 2 was bigger so I could make a jacket of it but it measures only 40 x 110 cm. Perhaps it is enough for a small garment, like a vest though!
The two sides of the fabric are distinctly different. The backside looks like a typical tabby, and is lustrous and a bit scratchy. The front side if soft and much more fluffy than the back.
Another change from sample 1 is that I worked with two overshoot shafts. This allowed me to place the overshoot threads in an overlapping pattern, which makes the soft side of the fabric more even. It also spreads out the points where the fluffy overshoot threads are seen on the fabrics backside, so that the slightly stripy effect doesn’t show any more.
When all is said and done I am quite pleased with the result of my project. Sample two is a lightweight fabric which is tough and lustrous on one side and soft and fluffy on the other side. However, I dint think this is the best possible version of this fabric; I would love to see the bottom weave a bit more dense and the resulting cloth more resistant to wind. If I could achieve that I would have a great fabric suited for jackets! I would love to experiment with felting the samples to see if denseness could be achieved in that way, but am aware that the fact that overcoat hairs and undercoat hairs felt very differently would be a problem. Anyway, I’ve been wanting to explore this type of overcot/undercoat dual sided fabric for a long time and I’m so happy that Nämnden för Hemslöjdsfrågor gave me the chance by funding the project!
Do you want to read my previous post about this subject? Here’s a link!