Guild project 2

At the weaving part of the guild meeting this weekend we began a project to try out ikat weaving.  Anyone familiar with the term will know it is a method of preparing warp or weft with dyes that when woven will form some sort of pattern.  Very complicated versions are made in Indonesia/India/Middle Eastern countries (and no doubt more), but we are aiming a lot lower than that, and given the skill and knowledge of the leader for this project, probably very simple indeed.  Somehow I was volunteered for the job, I think because I had suggested it might be interesting to try, and I had just read the guild library book on the topic.

So with some work on the days leading up to the meeting to find some useful background information (photocopies made & attributed) and the construction of a 'shifting' device I began the task.  First job was to work out the 'maths'.  Everyone had a go at the Steve method - the way I work out the amount of yarn needed for the project, and a bit different for others to tackle.  To their credit everyone worked through the problem and we quickly identified that the amount of 2-ply I had made wouldn't be enough for a luxury scarf for everyone, so the plan b will be to adjust the size down to something that will use about 300 yards each, and call it an ikat sampler :-)

How long was that piece of string?

There were some great examples of ikat brought along, and also one member brought along her laptop with some great videos of ikat preparation.

Shifting device in the foreground, and working out amount of wool using a McMorran yarn balance

The calculations done, we divided up the yarn and all will go away and wind their warp yarn onto their warping frame.  Next month we will tie on some resist and dye the warp.  If time permits we will have a go at putting a stripe on some weft yarn to make our weft and warp ikat sampler.

Demonstration of what we might do with the weft yarn

One of the examples - useful for showing 'shifted' warp.

Everyone contributed useful tips and helpful thoughts - this project is likely to run for the next two meetings, so if the enthusiasm stays high, and I don't confuse matters too much,  I'm confident we'll get some great results.