Tell Me It’s Knot True!

Let me tell you how this adventure into knotting happened.  

It all started because I am getting low on 2/8 cotton.  Living on an island, I can’t just pop out and pick up supplies whenever I want. I have to order everything sight unseen, pay for shipping and wait a couple of weeks, or more depending on the weather.  I really wanted to weave towels using a design draft in Carol Strickler’s book “A Weaver’s Book of 8-Shaft Patterns”. Usually I weave 4 towels on the same warp to reduce on waste. I have found that 4 is the maximum I can do without loosing interest in the pattern.  Remember I mentioned I am getting low on supplies. This meant I only had enough thread, in suitable colour combinations, to do two towels per colour group.

Somewhere I remember reading about tying on a new warp to the old one.  A perfect solution to save time, reduce waste and get my 4 towels.  After watching multiple videos and reading articles I felt I was ready.

I happily wove the first two towels and really liked how they turned out. Purple and a linden green. I cut the warp, reminding myself to cut at the front of the loom rather than the back. I saw a hint from some clever weaver to tie the back bar to the front beam to keep it steady. [see figure 1] This is the pink cloth strips you can view in the picture. After all it would defeat the purpose to cut all those 400+ threads only to have them pull out of the reed and heddles. I also used a few handy chip clips to secure those threads at the front of the loom, safety first! [see figure 2]

I happily measured out another warp and chained it up ready to put it on the loom. I usually warp my loom from back to front so quickly realized I had chained my warp backwards but, fine, whatever! It wasn’t that long a warp.

I knew what I had to do next. I had to tie a very secure knot to each and every thread, in the correct order and without any twisting behind the reed. I had better go back to the computer and look up the famous “weaver’s knot”.  There are all sorts of knots out there but weaver’s need a knot that can be put under tension and stay put. Did you know there are many different ways to do this knot? I just had to find the one that made sense to me. This may seem obvious but let me tell you there are quite a few examples that I could not (ha, ha) get to work.   

I took small sections of my warp and looped it through binder rings and hung the rings over the shaft leavers. (Just to the top left out of the picture) I found it was easy to see and easy to access the correct threads.  [Figure 3] shows how this was going. By the time I took this picture I was sick to death of tying knots and seriously reconsidering my bright idea.

The next step is to wind the warp carefully onto the back beam. All those knots have to go through the reed and the heddles. As you can see by the mess of threads is was not a quick process.  I made things more difficult than I needed because I completely forgot I have a shuttle race attached to the loom. I forgot to un clip it when winding on the warp. I think this part could have been much less frustrating.

[Figure 4] Finally tied on and ready to go.  I did have two knots come undone but they were easy enough to locate. [Figure 5]

I cut a new length of thread for each and rethreaded through the heddle and the reed and hove them off the end of the loom with a spare bobbin and a binder ring to weigh it down. Remember that old saying “necessity is the mother of invention“ or something like that, you get the idea. The other two threads are my floating selvages, I always use tapestry bobbins for that. 

[Figure 6] So far things are progressing along and I am about 3/4s of the way done. 

What have I learned?

-This process was NOT time efficient. I could have warped the loom the normal way and woven the two towels in the time it took me to do this. Admittedly, it was my first attempt and with practice I know I could be better.

-The knots worked well. Two slipped out from over 400 threads, that’s not bad.

-I would like to have less of a mess of threads after tying the knots. More planning next time. Possibly try warping in smaller sections so the threads are more manageable.

• Remove the shuttle race before starting. Side Note: The Ashford Shuttle Race is wonderful.

– I do not like wasting thread, so I would try this again in the future if faced with a similar situation.