Thursday, February 9, 2017

What I discovered using 40/2 cotton

I'm writing this as it may help some who bought Japanese cotton from Agnes recently.  As you know my stash grew considerably!
1.  I found it easier to unwind from the skein to a cake when the skein holder was vertical (like a ferris wheel).  My horizontal winder is wooden and not very free wheeling so tended to snap the threads especially the finer 60/2.

2.  Keep some tension on the thread as you wind it into cake.  Loose tension produced knots as I wound the warp.

3.  I used two threads together from separate cakes when winding my warp.  It would be better to rewind the two threads together into one cake or onto a cone as I was constantly stopping for tangles mostly caused by 2. above.

4.   I used 4 skeins 40/2, two threads together, to wind a 9 metre warp 768 threads with very little left over.  My warp is a 16 shaft networked draft with an echo of 8 sett at 32epi (32 double threads).  

5.  While winding the warp onto the loom there was a little twisting of threads with their neighbours and also a little pilling.  I put a row of tabby through the warp and separated it into two halves horizontally which helped a lot.  2 broken threads in 9 metres and one of them was my fault for not fixing a couple of crossed threads.


6.  I've woven one wrap with a tencel weft and it wove like a dream.  Next I'll use the cotton as weft.
Edit 7. Take your jewelry off.  Caught a thread on my watch clasp.  Flat ring even made trouble.

Edit 8.  I actually closed the sett to 36 doubled threads per inch and its much better.
Hope these thoughts help when using your fine threads.

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