Warping Up

I have become a great fan of Laura Fry's video Efficient Weaving and have persuaded lots of people to buy it. And they have all become fans too. I myself have watched it several times and have moved over to her method of warping up. So today I am warping up using her method. I have an order under way for Lease stick holders from Purrington Looms (The best thing since sliced bread) and I had a large wall-mounted warping frame made which will take 15 yards of warp. I have always known that warping mills give build up which means unequal lengths of thread in the warp. But how else do you wind a long warp? Well you get a warping frame the right size made for you. We have a man in our Guild who is a dab hand at knocking up equipment for his friends and I asked him to make it for me. 'That's very big', he said. And it is but I will wall-mount it when we get access to our new house.

 

Laura Fry's method of warping up involves winding the warp and then putting it through a reed. This is an extra step and the one complaint I have about the video is that she does not explain this step but appears carrying the warp and attached reed in her hands. Well I just put the end loops through the reed mounted on the loom so they could go on to a stick strapped to the back rod. This is done at the cross end with lease sticks inserted. So you have loops onto back beam, reed, lease sticks and rest of warp. At which point she uses a valet which is basically a rod mounted on the ceiling. My daughter would not be pleased about that but  I will have one in my new studio.  What I did is shown below.

 

The lease sticks are at the chair end and so I can wind on several feet of warp in perfect order.

And this is my very crude weighting system, a plastic bag filled with weights. Even with extra time needed to put the loops through the reed, this all took less than 30 minutes including transferring the lease sticks to the other side of the reed and shafts. Now it is all set up to thread.

 

The bad news is that I brought a box with all the documentation needed for the Summer School and the yarn for the weft and I cannot find it anywhere. I can print out all the documents again but the yarn is irreplaceable. Fortunately another student may have some.