{"id":335,"date":"2021-11-02T16:02:31","date_gmt":"2021-11-02T06:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spinweaveknit.net\/blog\/?p=335"},"modified":"2021-11-02T20:33:24","modified_gmt":"2021-11-02T10:33:24","slug":"playing-with-balance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinweaveknit.net\/blog\/2021\/11\/02\/playing-with-balance\/","title":{"rendered":"Playing with Balance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Plain weave isn’t necessarily balanced. For this floor loom project and the next, I’m taking balance to the extremes. What do I mean by balance? The Log Cabin<\/a> project created a balanced weave structure – both the warp and weft were equally visible in the finished fabric. In contrast, this project shows only the weft threads – it is a weft-faced fabric. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The warp is a natural linen sett at 5 ends per inch – that’s a lot of space between warp threads. The weft is an 8-ply pure wool (think knitting yarn), packed in as tight as it will go. Other than at the ends of each piece, the linen isn’t visible at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You would think that would be pretty boring, but actually there are lots of things you can do to vary the look. The warp has been threaded over 4 shafts (1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4 ….), which allows for twills as well as plain weave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this sampler I started at the bottom of the frame with plain weave. Alternating colours gave vertical stripes, which could easily be turned into a checkerboard pattern. Two blue followed by two green gave thin horizontal stripes. While I was using my floor loom, all of the patterns in the bottom half of the sampler could be easily done on a rigid heddle or 2 shaft loom as well. To get the rest of the patterns I tied up some other patterns:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The first set of two treadles are tied up for plain weave. The 2\/2 twill in the middle set was used for the diagonal lines and large blocks in the sampler. The 3\/1 and 1\/3 tieups were used for the open squares and roman key designs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After completing the sampler, I had enough warp for a dozen more mats, so I experimented with zig-zags – the horizontal lines in this piece are all parallel, even though they look slanted:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And I experimented with shading:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the end I had 9 mats, mostly about 12″ square:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The fabric is thick. These will be useful for protecting the table and benchtop from hot pans or as decorative pieces around the house.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plain weave isn’t necessarily balanced. For this floor loom project and the next, I’m taking balance to the extremes. What do I mean by balance? The Log Cabin project created a balanced weave structure – both the warp and weft were equally visible in the finished fabric. In contrast, this project shows only the weft … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Playing with Balance”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":336,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Playing with Balance - weft faced mats provide lots of design possibilities!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[6,37],"class_list":["post-335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weaving","tag-loom","tag-weft-faced"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/spinweaveknit.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/WeftFacedBanner-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinweaveknit.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinweaveknit.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinweaveknit.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinweaveknit.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinweaveknit.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/spinweaveknit.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":344,"href":"https:\/\/spinweaveknit.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions\/344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinweaveknit.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinweaveknit.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinweaveknit.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinweaveknit.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}