So I finished weaving the paper towels, but I’m unsatisfied. I don’t think they’re going to work in any way as paper towels.
Untreated, just off the loom.
This is partly because I chose to make the cotton swathes broad enough that the textures — the paper Shosenshi and the cotton fiber — are too disparate to work well together when used in this way; they absorb differently, and they’re a little difficult to handle.
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With all the prep finished for the paper towel project described in Part One, I began to weave.
The tape measure is looped, and attached, to the loom,
at the right to keep it from pulling at the selvedge,
and the clips are attached about a quarter inch (.6 cm) in,
for the same reason.
As I was reluctant to cut the Shosenshi paper fibre, I hadn’t done any sample weaving. This was less disastrous than it might otherwise have been, since making towels in plain weave isn’t necessarily precision work. Read more…
Tom Knisley, noted weaver, wrote an article for the March/April 2021 issue of Handwoven magazine, describing his experience weaving with paper.
I’m unconvinced that this makes any sense at all — for one thing, it’s expensive! — but, like Tom, once I knew the project existed, I had to try it. How could I not want to weave paper towels? Read more…
No, it’s not the fine art of scoffing chocolates on the divan — it’s using a cord/yarn/thread to edge or decorate fabric.
Using a special foot, the cord is set along the edge, and zigzagged in place.
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Sooo . . . evening after evening I’ve kept my fingers busy repairing the small pulls our felines diligently create on their favorite blanket. And then, one morning, I woke up to this:
Somebody really went to town during the night.
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As I worked on mastering selvedges, I wove a lot of yardage just for practice — not always terribly successfully! This mattered a lot less to me than you might think, since my entire — my only — reason for getting a rigid heddle loom was to decrease anxiety. I wanted something to keep my hands busy and my mind off just about everything. (Times are tough, folks!)
So at one point I ended up with yards of blue, not exquisite, fabric.
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The first project on my 32 inch/81 cm Kromski rigid heddle loom was a cat blanket. This was a no-risk proposition, since the end result was doomed to destruction, eventually. Cats love wool, but ours all have claws, and claws inevitably catch on fabric.
Bearing these facts in mind, I warped the loom with a poor quality (and likely vintage) natural cotton. I was not surprised that it had joins all over the place — something that responsible yarn makers don’t allow any more! In testing the joins, though, I discovered that, though bulky, they were tight, hence perfectly fine for this sort of warp.
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