Project Dates: 12/12022 to 5/26/2023
Ever since I saw Deborah Silver’s book The Technique of Split-shed Weaving on the bookshelf, I yearned to try this technique. The cover of the book shows all. Weaving a beautiful fabric that incorporates a human readable image. The cover shows a portrait of a person. As an added and surreptitious bonus, my husband and the artist met some years ago, and the book was given to him signed. I, of course, being the fiber artist and weaver in the family, was given the double gift of something related to fiber arts, and a signed copy, no less. I thank Deborah Silver for all the hard work and effort that went into the research, the sampling, the writing, and the editing in The Technique of Split-shed Weaving (2019, Silver).
.jpeg)
I keep a list. Those of you who know me probably roll your eyes. They would say, “Of course, he has a list. If he’s doing something, it’s written down somewhere. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be doing it at all!” This particular list is called Fiber project in motion.” It has in process projects. It lists in-flight projects; those sad younglings that for one reason and another stopped at some process, and paused for some small or great length of time, waiting for the next step to becoming, well, whatever it is they are in the process of becoming. That particular list, I try very hard not to add to. I try really hard to always do one new and finish one old. Despite the best of intentions, I still ask myself, “How did that list get to be that long“ and roll my eyes!
Then there is the possibilities section. Musings that come at me externally or internally that are things I want to try. Many times, they come from inspirations in a magazine or blog that I’m reading and say to myself, or feel that excitement building within as I imagine, “I want to try that!”
Then there’s my pride and joy; the “DONE” list. Nothing more be said than to breathe a sigh of relief and feel a sense of accomplishment.
I added split-shed weaving to the possibilities list and waited for its turn to come up.
How does that happen you ask? Well, it’s very complicated. It needs dice, or an electric equivalent which generates a random number. I select that project number from each of the waiting lists and move them to the in-process list. I know, it’s complicated. Oh, did I say, one of the lists I pick off of is the in-flight list? Those projects get really excited, because they will have my focus and attention sometime in the very near future.
The planning for this project, that is the first step in the multi-step in-process list, began December 12, 2021. While waiting for the prior projects to be finished, I coped by using up all my free time to educate myself, and immerse myself in that wonderful book. I couldn’t put it down. For a weaver, it’s a real page turner. The most wonderful things could be done on a floor or table loom that look almost like the magic that tapestry weavers or those with jacquard looms and computers can do.
The first conundrum was what to design. Because for this project it was about playing with the technique, not so much the project or outcome. After several many years of living in a pet-less home, my husband and I adopted from our local shelter two wonderful kitties. Eureka! I know knew whose portrait I absolutely had to weave. After a dearth of years being childless parents, the camera roll footage was embarrassingly long when it came to the topic of felines. There were no lacks of choices. But to narrow it down. I wanted a nice view of each of their faces. In order to check whether they would be a successful conversion to this split-shed weaving technique, I had to convert them to sepia toned values in order to compare and contrast. There needed to be strong light to dark gradients for it to work successfully. Finally, I found two photos that seemed like they would work well together.
.jpeg)
Rumi is the chocolate seal-point Siamese with these intense turquoise blue eyes. He has very fluffy fur that ranges from an almost white brownish gray to a very dark grayish chocolate. Samson is the domestic short hair in tawny tiger stripes with white feet and nose.
Then there was the next decision. Which weave technique to use. If you need to know, my preference is to see the entire smorgasbord before deciding on what to have. So, I read the entire book first before deciding on which weave structure. Ok, some of the more technical discussion on some of the weaves I skipped because my purpose was not learning every single technique, but to know enough to make an intelligent decision on which I liked and which I could do as a first exercise. When the number of permutations of each structure is included, the book enumerates and gives examples of dozens. It was quite challenging to narrow down and pick something. I finally settled on a weave called, well it’s a mouthful, and something I hadn’t heard before: Polychrome Tied Biederwand (Silver, Pg. 68) which is a balanced weave background with twill floats that are five warp threads long.
My stash is rather large. I like choices. Or I’m a compulsive fiber purchaser. I think we’re still awaiting that verdict. I was hoping to do this project from my stash. Or most of it anyway. That would be a near first. Certainly not my go-to method of operating. Buy first, then check the stash is the more usual means. But, time and economy have forced my hand. I did find several options. Again, I had to line them up, take photos with my camera, and then convert each to white and black to check for value differences. I was going for the value differences in the photo, just wasn’t too picky on whether I was looking at sepia or black and white. They served the same purpose. The gradient review is what’s really important to the final product. Something else is to, but I’m getting to that.
.jpeg)
I loved this project, like many others, because I take it from concept through various techniques to a finished product. Well, almost finished in this case. Still have to figure out how I’m going to hang and/or frame it. But, I can’t stop that from moving on and writing about it! Hmmm, I wonder if that’s how my in-flight list grows?
Digging through my stash of fabrics I found some old bamboo sheets that were pale enough to make the cartoons. I have one set of white sheets that will probably make it to the stash eventually. So, finding light color tracing fabric in the stash is problematic. Whose needs white when you can have color!
After selecting the photos and deciding on the final overall size and placement of the two images, I traced the cats outline onto vellum as well as some of the color and texture changes. This pulled me back to reading cartoons and how I noticed that cartoon pictures, despite blocks of shapes and color, read very well. It was fun to choose which lines to select.
The weave, pattern delivers four distinct contrast areas to help with the visual need for dark and light to create a pattern the mind will interpret as a picture! So, keeping that in mind, I colored both cartoons to maintain good contrast and readability. It was really a fun exercise. I then transferred the drawings over a natural light box AKA a window and onto the bamboo fabric ex-sheet, creating the weaving cartoon.
I ordered 8/4 green warp thread but went back to the stash for weft, this time in the weaving threads section of my stash. I selected several colors in the same weight and some slightly heavier weights to give contrast. I lined them up and took photos again converting them to black and white to test for sufficient contrast. I mentioned earlier about another important step; the variety of thread weight adds to the contrast depth.
The warp was measured on a horizontal mill using up almost my whole bobbin of purchased thread! The weaving fun continued in earnest during the winter holiday week with threading the reed and then the heddles. I warp from front to back. I used double ends on the selvedges to help with finishing the edges. The tie-ups on the front and back were finished.
Before I could start weaving I had to tie up the heddles to the pedals. The whole premise of split-shed weaving is that there are two sheds created for the pattern weft. The shed is that space between the warp threads you throw the shuttle, in case you were wondering! So, for the pattern tie-ups I had to tie them up only halfway. This took some incredible acrobatics to get under the loom and not just tie and connect a loop of string, but I had to measure and knot them halfway first. So, when a pedal is depressed, half of the warp threads raise the normal height, the other half raise only halfway, all with the same pedal. So, it went something like this. On pedal 2, tie up heddle 1 full height, and heddle 3 only half way up. That way, when you depress pedal two, there are two distinct sheds!
After threading the warp, I wove heavy weight yarn as filler to re-align the warp threads. Then using the target background weft, I wove balanced weave for a couple of inches to provide a sufficient length of selvedge.
I finished off the holiday week creating two samples with different thread weight and color combinations weaving all four variations of the light and dark weaving pattern. I took a photo after the first sample and converted to black and white to see how it read. Comparing both the color and the black and white, I wasn’t crazy about the color combination. The first used a split complimentary composition of purple, orange, and green. The contrast was insufficient between the middle and darker contrast. The second try used an analogous color scheme in greens and blues with a light gray. The color contrast was much better. I liked the overall effect.
.jpeg)
Before I could start weaving the project, I needed to place the cartoon. This process placed the cartoon under the warp threads. It was attached to the first few inches of woven fabric with pins. It stretched back toward the beater bar, and required a hanging contraption to pass the cloth through, and then it hung on the back side of the beater bar to the floor. It was weighted with a wooden slat for just a little bit of weight. A really clever solution that Deborah Silver describes in her book (2019, p. 21).
Working the weft meant manual manipulation of the shuttle. The shuttle is slowly manipulated across the weft, sometimes in the top shed, other times in the bottom shed. The cartoon which can be seen right under the warp threads provides the guide. Each of the areas of the cartoon was marked with the corresponding pedal to create the four gradient areas of color. Though it was much faster, arguably, than doing straight tapestry work, it was still much slower than simply throwing the shuttle back and forth across the warp threads. That was an unpleasant surprise to this antsy personality. It became one of those slow-go projects. I did manage to eventually get into the flow of it. Took a lot of breaks. But it was ultimately satisfying once I got into its particular rhythm.
I am happy with the results. I definitely would make some changes to the cartoons. The cartoon drawing, particularly how wide any part of the drawing is, the width between any two lines, needs to consider the ends per inch. There were some areas where my lines were too fine and they didn’t read properly. Like Rumi’s eyes, the lower cat in the fabric, had white lines around them in the cartoon. Well, it was too fine to get picked up. Contrast that outcome with the dark edges of his ears which reads really well. Thin horizontal lines worked fairly well like Rumi’s mouth. The thicker vertical lines on Samson’s tiger stripes on his arms came out well. Also, I had a lot of zig zag lines to show the texture of fur and those were too small to appear.
With the last bit of warp I wove a small towel. Nice little extra surprise at the end. One in which I could just mindlessly throw the shuttle back and forth. It was a great relief and surprise. One of the things I would say about this project, is to come at it from the perspective of tapestry weaving. With a mindset of hand manipulation. The loom becomes a great tool to aid in that process. It isn’t about speed, but about controlled weaving.
This project took me five months. I am a part time weaver. A few hours in the mornings on the weekends plus a couple of hours total during the week maybe. I was pleasantly surprised by the results. It was just complicated enough for my detailed brain to love.
