I love to take band weaving with me when we travel. I have several inkle looms of various sizes, but I also weave them backstrap style. It never ceases to amaze me all that you can do with some string and a little free time. Here are some pictures of bands I’ve woven over time.There are more in my projects on Ravelry and there are MANY more in a basket just waiting for something to be done with them. Thinking about adding them to the shop.
In other news, my youngest, Joseph, graduated from High School on Sunday. Bittersweet. I’m excited for what the future holds for him, but it’s really gonna be tough seeing him in the rear view mirror when we leave him at college in August.
Edited to add on Nov 2019 – Funny how we evolve. I don’t hem like this anymore. I wrote a new post on how I do it now. You can find that here: https://jeanelizabethstudio.com/finish-line-2/ Try them all and see what works for you.
Oddly enough, I used the same title even though I didn’t remember I’d written a post on hemming already. Who knows, I may find another way and do a Finish Line 3 in a couple of years. I thought I’d leave this one up because someone might prefer it to the new way I do it.
Thought I’d share a trick that is new to my weaving arsenal. Fusible thread (FT) is my new best friend. On these towels, I threw three shots of FT at the beginning and end of each towel with two shots of a contrasting thread to give me a cutting line. This is the first time I’ve tried this and I love it. I took the whole length of toweling to the ironing board and ironed each of the FT areas. Make sure to use a pressing sheet on top of and under the FT or you’ll get it all over your iron or ironing surface. I threw caution to the wind, cut between the lines and threw the towels in the wash. A couple of them lost a few picks of weaving where I hadn’t ironed quite enough, but it worked out really well.
This saved me SO much time as I didn’t have to haul the serger out and stitch down each end. Obviously, it saved serger thread as well. It also saved the extra bulk that the serger stitching puts in the hems, which already always feel too thick for me. I’ve tried the trick of weaving with a finer thread in the hems, but I don’t like how it draws in the selvedges. Speaking of hems… I usually weave them in the same structure as the rest of the towel. If you weave a plain weave hem on a twill towel, you are going to get the little flared out ends when you sew up the hem. When doing twill sometimes I do a different twill pattern for the hem, sometimes I do the same as the rest of the towel. Just depends on my mood when I sit down to weave.
Back to the FT. A nice surprise was the fact that when I pressed the hems up to get them prepared for stitching, the FT held the hem! I didn’t really need the clips, but I like them as a back up. Next time I’ll use four shots of FT at each end to help facilitate this added little bonus.
So here are the eight towels I cut off. I’ve already been weaving on what I retied on and will most likely get five more towels. One will be short because I was trying out different white wefts and ran out. Anxious to feel the difference in the hand of the fabric from using the different manufacturer’s 8/2 cotton.
A couple of other things… After washing, I always take the towels out of the dryer before they are fully dry. The dampness helps in the pressing. When I finish hemming, I wash them again and it usually is enough to get the creases from the first wash.
So when last we left the loom I kind of left you hanging. After finishing up the towels that I cut off I lashed the warp back on to the apron bar and continued to weave. The great thing about this method is there are no knots to worry about as the cloth starts to go over the cloth beam. So, onward with the weaving. I should get at least five more towels out of this warp, but we’ll see. The towels I took off were a huge 27″ x 16.5″ after washing, hemming and pressing. I like a little smaller towel, so I might take a couple of inches off while weaving.
That is the question. There have been many times when I’m in the middle of a multiple piece project…. like towels… where I need to cut some off. I tend to wind very long warps because I hate tying up on my Glimakra Standard. I have the Baby Wolf for shorter warps and she’s SO much easier to set up, but she doesn’t weave quite like the her Swedish sister. Give and take. Pros and cons.
Anyway. When you put very long warps on, you get a spongy and sometimes too large cloth roll on the front beam as you weave. I add warping sticks once in a while as go to add firmness to the cloth roll and that gets me a little farther. There are times though when it just has to be done. I have a custom order for six towels. I really messed up my back when I dressed the loom with this project and couldn’t do anything for about three weeks. It really put me behind. Some of the towels are for Mother’s Day, so I cut them off this morning. They are washing now so that I can hem, iron and get them in the mail giving my friend time to send them out.
I weave an inch or two in plain weave, depending on how brave I’m feeling and the thread I’m using. If I’m using a slippery thread, I’d weave 2″, if it’s, say 8/2 unmercerized cotton or thicker, I’d just do an inch. Then I insert a firm dowel and then weave another inch or two of plain weave. If you click on the photos, you can see them larger. You can see here that I also wove some twill. That’s because the towels are in twill and nothing will spread out a twill project faster than plain weave. I wove the twill to draw it back in. Note the two stings on each side holding the dowel to the beater and to the front beam. These are my 3rd, 4th and 5th hands just to hold thing stable when I start cutting.
I will tie that rod to the cloth rod and continue to weave. It’s nice because there’s no knots, you don’t have to tension things out again and it wastes very little thread.
Another thing I’ll share with you are my homemade temples. The traditional kind and I do not get along. I always end up getting poked and bleeding or tearing up my selvedges. These tarp clips work great. I was all thumbs when I first started to use them, but once I got used to them I can move them up the selvages in no time flat. Much faster than the traditional ones and they do the job. I used scrap handwoven (yes, there is such a thing) and made little pouches that I filled with 2 oz of buckshot. I used texsolv to tie it all together and command strip hooks to hold them to the sides of my looms. I did the exact same with my Baby Wolf.
