Monday 27 July 2009

Getting the weft pattern right...

OK, today I am going to explain how to work out the weft for my new linen. So, are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin..

The Hattersley loom has a revolving shuttle box that has six segments so it can carry up up to six shuttles at a time.
The picture above shows the front of the box and you can see two segments where the shuttles sit when they are not in use. To bring a shuttle into use, the appropriate segment must be at the top of the box so it can be fired along the sley board by the picking arm. The box remains static until the shuttle has completed a second shot and returned.

Small metal cards containing either one or two holes are used to turn the box. If a card has a hole on the left side it will turn the box one segment away from the weaver, if the card has a hole on the right side the box will turn one segment towards the weaver. If the card has two holes the box will stay in the same place for the next two shots.

In this way the pattern for a cloth can be set before weaving starts.
The cards are clipped together by little wire rings that are opened and closed by means of a pair of pliers! (This is all high-tec stuff!).

The weft pattern I am going to use will be the same as the order of the warp ends, thus making up a check design.

The order of the ends are:- 2 yellow, 6 natural, 2 yellow, 6 light green, 2 yellow, 6 natural, 2 yellow and 6 dark green. This makes a total of 32 shots - and because each card accounts for 2 shots, we need 16 cards.

The order of the shuttles in the revolving box, going clockwise when looking at the batwing end of the box: dark green, yellow, natural, yellow, light green. Though we only have four colours, we need to use five shuttles, doubling up on the yellow because yellow appears next to natural, light green and dark green - as the box will only move one segment at a time, its necessary to put in an extra yellow shuttle to accommodate this. All the other colours only have yellow next to them.

Here is my completed chain....
.... along with the shuttles.

Now we just have to put the chain of cards onto the card sensor on the loom, and put the shuttles into the box in the correct order, and we should be ready to start.
Thank goodness it's ok!

2 comments:

donnie said...

truly the appliance of science ... and a hefty dose of art

Scalpay Linen said...

...plus a liberal amount of luck!