Weaving and book binding

The Braid Society has an annual swap. The challenge has a theme and members of the Braid Society send in six samples mounted on a card to the organiser. This means that you receive 5 samples from other members which is always a thrill.  Different techniques and different colour combinations make the package seem like a miniature Aladdin's cave when it arrives. All full members can join in so some samples travel a long way.

This year the challenge was to make a 'Tie for a treasured Book'. The idea came about when members were chatting about lovely handmade books and felt that they would have been even better had they been tied with a nice braid rather than something that looked like 'string'.

When the challenge was announced I was busy preparing a display of my work for the exhibition at Braids 2019.  I was making my own hand made book which was to be tied with a handwoven silk band.

Here is a description of my woven band.

Warp: 2/60 red silk used double;  2/60 dark red silk used quadruple.
Weft:   2/60 red silk used double.
Madeira gold:  4 threads together.
Weave structure: Warp faced plain weave
Total number of warp ends: 39

Weave chart

Warp 

red 2/60 silk                4       7         1                       1                     1          7            4
(used doubled)
dark red 2/60 silk            3                                                                                 3
(used quadrupled)

Madiera gold thread                  1         2 doubled       2 doubled          1

The band is 0.7 cm in width.

The Book of Samples: All the World in One Craft

I made a book of samples for my exhibition at the Fourth International braids conference in Iga Japan in October 2019.

Here is the book with the woven band.

All the World in One Craft with woven tie band

The problem with having a book as one of my exhibits is that it cannot be handled which means that visitors cannot see the contents.  I made another copy of the book but without the woven samples.  I photographed all the samples and  bound them into a small book which everyone could read.


As the conference is in Japan, I thought that it would be fitting if I used a Japanese binding.

This is one of the books that I bought when I took a series of classes about book-binding.  It is published by Wetherall originally in 1986 and my edition is 2003. Of course nowadays there is so much information on the internet and lots of YouTube videos.

The binding that I chose is called Kangxi binding.  It has a pattern of stitching over the corner pieces of the book cover. This gives extra support to the corners and gives it a more elegant finish than a simpler binding.

This is the front of the book. It has a hard cover and the inside pages are printed examples of the actual samples in the display book.  I made an additional loop at the top left hand side so that the book can be fastened to the display table for people to read it.

Book with photographs of the samples and drawdowns

One page of the boooklet

Workshop Booklets.

I made two workshop booklets for participants. The first booklet was longer so I thought that I would use the binding you can see pictured on the Japanese Book Binding book cover.  Yes, it was time consuming to do but I thought that the end result was lovely and very appropriate.

I used red cottolin for the thread to match the border that I put on the cover. The pages were printed on one side of A4 and then folded. I put them in my bookpress to ensure that they were flat. There were six pages in all. Once flattened, I carefully stacked them in the correct order. I made a template for the holes which you can see on the yellow card.

I have a Japanese spiral hole punch which has various attachments for different size holes. Four holes are needed for this binding.

Once the four holes are punched, the sewing can begin. The booklet is placed so that the inside edge is over the edge of the table so that I can take the needle through easily.

Here is the finished result.  Thirteen booklets bound and ready for use.  By the time that you read this the booklets will have been used.

Booklets bound for the workshop

Happy weaving

Susan J Foulkes October 2019

Shoe laces and decoration

In the early 70's I read a wonderful book called  the Narrow Road to the Deep North. It was written by a Buddhist monk.  Bashō made a challenging journey on foot through Japan in the late 17th century.  It is interspersed with haikus.

On one occasion he was given new sandals.  They had blue laces which reminded him of iris flowers. He wrote this haiku which caught my imagination at the time and I have always remembered it.

The Haiku.

It looked as if

Iris flowers had bloomed

On my feet

Sandals laced in blue

I decided to make some shoe laces and designed my own sanada-himo band. 

Warp ends: 34 ends of 16/2 cotton.

Warp Order

Purple           2               5                  3
Pale purple                 3                  3
Lilac                        3                  3
Pale blue              3                  3
White                3                 3

Weft: Purple

drawdown of the weave pattern

I am indebted to the web site Inkled Pink for the suggestion about securing the lace ends.
do check out this lovely web site.  https://inkledpink.com/2013/05/28/inkle-shoelace-tip-how-to/

 I had not heard of the term 'aglet'. I found that I could buy aglets on-line and made a pair of laces.

A: Unbound end. The end of the band needs to be bound.

B: The ends are bound with a purple thread.

C: Once the end is bound, the aglet, the narrow plastic tube is put onto the bound portion.

D:  Once this is in place, it is is ironed to shrink the plastic so that it is a tight fit.

Here are the finished laces.

a pair of warp-faced weave shoe laces

I also decided to weave another set of shoe laces with a flower pattern.  This pattern is in my latest book published be Schiffer Press- Weaving patterned bands - how to create and design with 5, 7, and 9 pattern threads. https://durhamweaver64.blogspot.com/p/books-about-band-weaving.html

The pattern is 9:8 on page 81.

These shoe laces are part of my display at the Braids conference in Iga Japan in October 2019.

 I also decorated a new pair of flipflops with a woven band.

original flip flops

I bought these flipflops as they had an iris pattern on the insole - although it cannot be seen when being worn.

I designed a woven band in 16/2 Swedish cotton to match the colour of the flip flops.

Design for a woven band in 16/2 cotton

There are 43 warp ends.

close up of the woven band

Sewing on the band

I carefully sewed the bands onto the strap.

The finished embellishment on my flip flops.

I think that it gives my flip flops a personal touch  and I can think of irises every time I glance down at them.

I was particularly thrilled to find out that Bashō came from Iga in Japan.

A Lovely Inkle Belt

This is a dramatic cotton inkle belt woven by Anne, a founder member of the Durham Guild of Spinners Weavers and Dyers.  She allowed me to post these pictures.

I love the two owls in macrame to finish each end.  Here is a close-up.

Close up showing the front and back of the owls.

Anne is very creative and she always finds some fascinating variation to add to her weaving.

Reflections about craft

Last month, the Durham Guild had a weaving open day. Two members, new to weaving brought their looms to warp and start weaving. One member, Averil, brought her new Ashford knitters loom.  She was helped by Jane but she warped up rapidly although she had only unwrapped her new loom the previous evening. 

Another member, Barbara,  had an old two shaft loom with metal heddles. She had brought the loom to a previous meeting and made the warp and wound it on to the back beam. On this occasion, she was finishing threading the heddles and the sleying the reed. Of course other members were around to help and advise these two new weavers.

The warp on the second loom was wool and once it was tied on to the front beam, it was clear that it was rather sticky. The weave was plain weave on two shafts. I went over to see how she was getting along. For a new weaver we wanted to make sure that her first weaving experience was positive.

Three of us looked at the warp and checked the sleying.  Yes, here were a couple of threads that had been crossed in the dents. She retied the warp and we all ran our hands over the ends to check that the warp ends were at an even tension. This is a skill which you can only gain through practice. For silk, thrumming the ends helps to separate them and we tried that as well. 

The first few picks using waste yarn proved difficult as the shed was not clear enough when the shafts were raised and lowered. She had to physically push some of the warp ends apart. I suggested moving the cross sticks at the back of the loom over the back beam. There was now a greater space between the warp behind the heddles and the back beam. This did not fully solve the difficulty.

Another solution would be to resley the whole warp so that the ends were slightly further apart. Time consuming but as a last resort it might be the answer. However, the warp and weft seemed to weave together comfortably. The problem was clearing the shed when the shafts were raised and lowered. 

The solution was to make a shed, put the weft through and then change to the next shed before beating. The act of pushing the beater back to the heddles cleared the shed more effectively. A couple of ends were still a bit tricky but it worked!  We watched as she wove a few more picks and one of us wrote down the instructions carefully so she would remember what to do when she got home. 

Barbara's loom

I still remember my very first piece of weaving.  I was so proud of it and I was hooked! Happy weaving Barbara.

I have been reading another book about craft. 'The case for working with your hands or why office work is bad for us and fixing things is good' by Mathew Crawford. It struck me that in working through the problem of this sticky warp illustrates a part of the nature of craft knowledge. Crawford talks about the tacit integration of sensual knowledge. which refers to understanding of how things work which is built up through experience of working with different materials.
Knowing and doing are related.  Craft skills cannot be analysed so completely that they can be passed on as a series of rules or precepts - or as Crawford says practical knowledge is not completely formalised or rule based. We know more than we can say. It was through discussion and trying out ideas that the three of us came up with a workable solution to this sticky warp.

He also quotes two philosophers. Anaxagoras wrote that 'It is by having hands that man is the most intelligent of animals.'  Merely looking at something is not enough as Heidegger points out ..'handling, using, and taking care of things which has its own kind of knowledge.' 

Reference. 

'The case for working with your hands or why office work is bad for us and fixing things is good' by Mathew Crawford. 2009, Penguin Books
A fascinating book although the motor mechanical 'ethos' is sometimes a bit too 'masculine'.

Happy weaving.

Susan J Foulkes  October 2019