Plans for the Wandering Vine Coverlet

Chosen Yarns for the Wandering Vine Coverlet Project

Yarns

Warp: 10/2 American Maid Cotton, Natural -- Yes, It's strong enough for warp! Although other 10/2 Cottons will break and are not suitable for warp.  This is what I used for the warp on the Mountain Cucumber Coverlet.

Tabby: 20/2 American Maid Cotton, Natural   - 1 spool should be enough.  A little goes a long way!  I may try the 10/2 cotton for the tabby.  It depends on how much space the pattern wool takes up.

Pattern: Wool, Cranberry (purchased on Etsy)   I'll have to do some testing -- wondering if this wool might be too thick?  It says it's fingerling, but seems thicker than that in real life.

I spent the most time with the basic pattern from Carol Strickler's American Woven Coverlets Book page 118.  We even worked out borders, until we realized that including side borders would mean re-threading, because the diagonal pitch of the overall pattern would not allow for taking panel 2 and turning it to be along side panel 1 without changing the diagonal to be it's opposite, or flipping it over to be the positive/negative. This is a much wider pattern motif -- 4 pattern repeats span about 1 yard across per panel.  I can do top and bottom borders.

I also studied the wandering vine pattern from Margarete Davison's "The Green Book," with 7 pattern repeats.  It's on a slightly smaller scale.  This is the pattern The Curmudgeon used for making towels [See below ...]  Initial math says I only need 6 yards of warp for 2 panels that will be about 36 inches wide.  I don't believe that, so I'm going to double the warp calculation to make sure there's enough for loom waste, experimentation and testing, and all the rest.  I ran out of warp on the last project ...  and besides-- now I have a sectional warp, so why wouldn't I want to put on a longer warp?  If there's extra warp, I can always make towels, or make a 3rd panel. 

I also spent several hours on multiple days studying Helen Bress's Coverlets Book HB37, because it has the borders mapped out.  But in the end, I concluded that even my "big loom" isn't quite big enough to make that version of Cattrack / Wandering Vine.  I don't have enough heddles (974 heddles for about 38 inches wide), and don't quite have the mental agility yet to use all 8 shafts for a 4 shaft pattern.  It's a giant pattern even with a single pattern (no repeats) across the panel.  And my brand new sectional warp can't go beyond 38 inches at the widest.

15 dent reed sleyed at 2-2-1 threads / dent for 24 epi.  I don't have a 12-dent reed for the big loom, and purchasing a new one wold be about $250.  I think I'll make do with what I have in stock.

The epi of the coverlet the Strickler book was based on 40 wpi ...  I wonder if I'll have enough heddles for this one?  And the antique coverlet I purchased to study looks to have a warp and tabby that fine as well.  It may be that the structure is twill-ier than the Mountain Cucumber, hence needing more stability in the tabby?

I did count heddles on all 8 shafts today.  There are about 150 heddles (give or take) on each of 8 shafts, for a total of 1200 heddles.   The Curmudgeon Weaves had a video [at about 12 minutes in ...] about using heddles on other unused shafts if you need more heddles than you have available.  He has a loom with those lightweight string heddles and they are a pain to switch.  It's not so bad on my Kessenich looms.  I've done it before, but never thought of ammending the draft to take advantage of heddles on unused shafts. -- One of the benefits of having more shafts, I guess.  

Even with the Strickler draft, it looks like I'd need another 130 (or so heddles) spread out on 4 shafts, so I ordered some from Ability Weavers.  No one makes the flat steel heddles on my old Kessenich looms anymore (although you can sometimes buy the old flat steel heddles).  I ordered some of the inserted eye type--like Tom Kniesley uses.  We'll see how that works ...  It seems you can mix and match heddles, as long as they hold the thread where you want it.   Think about it -- if I put in a repair heddle, it's string, not steel, and it works just fine!

I'm going to try out my brand new sectional warp for this project -- although, perhaps I should try it out on a smaller project first?

I still have 2+ pages of math to figure out the specifics for this project, but I am making progress by starting with the decisions above.