Who-hooh! I'm weaving again! Using all 8 shafts on the BIG "Mary Meigs" Kessenich Floor Loom. It took a long time to get things set up, threaded, and wound on, but here we are again! You have no idea how happy this makes me!
This is an 8-shaft waffle weave for towels. It will have a lot of texture one it is wet-finished.
I'll be using the 2 big Jim Hockett shuttles, which seem to work well for this weight of 8/2 cotton yarn, and the expanse they need to travel through the open shed. They have a nice weight. I love the Schacht kayak shuttles, but they are too light-weight for a job this big.
This is a kit from ?? that I bought a few years ago, but never made because my "little" floor loom wasn't wide enough to do them justice. Now I also get to practice using all 8 shafts --
It's a pretty simple pattern, just zipping up and down the treadles: 8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8
Most of them are not too bad -- I was concerned that with the extra shafts added to each treadle, some of them might be too heavy to push down. So far, the only treadle that is a challenge is #7 because it has 7 of 8 treadles attached to it. Sometimes I have to stand up to get that one to work properly. The rest are pretty easy.
Before I could do the fun part of weaving today, I still had to lash onto the cloth beam. That's sorta why I needed the treadles to be set up with plain weave / basket weave -- so I could make sure I threaded everything properly and had a good open and clean shed. This method has you open the shed for plain weave, to make it easier to insert the lashing cord. That worked well enough. So on to the next step ...
Setting up the treadle beads. I used the bed in the guest room as a work table. Each bin has a wooden bead with a number corresponding to the treadle in the pattern. I had it written out ahead of time on the notepad, so that I knew what I'd be programming.
Then I laid them out in order, and started threading the rod that sits on top of my beater bar.
And here are the treadle beads installed atop the beater bar, and ready to be used.
As I said, it's a pretty easy and straightforward treadle pattern -- maybe the easiest I've done in a very long time! The Mountain Cucumber Coverlet had more than 300 treadle beads!
I should go back and oil all the moving parts of the loom to make sure things run smoothly with this project.
This is not even a 6-yard warp, so I don't think it will take long to weave through these 2 towels. ;-)
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