Restlessness

Abelisto & I spent most of the weekend cleaning and organizing the house. We've half decided to move our bedroom upstairs since Nova & Mike have moved out, leaving the second largest room of the house empty. It's a great deal colder room than the one we use for a bedroom right now. Running lengthwise down both sides of the room, the ceiling meets the walls part of the way up. Only the center of the room has a flat ceiling. There probably isn't a whole lot of insulation in the ceiling where it slants.

I like moving things around in the house. It soothes the restlessness I often feel. Having moved 19 times since I was 20, I seem to get anxious after living in one place for very long. Moving furniture and making things new and fresh eases it a bit.

Anyway, we're thinking of moving upstairs so that I can move the mosaic out of the front room. We don't really have a living room. We have a huge room that currently has several bookcases, two desks and my mosaic work bench. The parlor studio is totally crammed full right now, with no room to work. I've put the tapestry loom in there because the cats - or rather one cat, Finn - claws the canvas apron if it sits out in the front room, and it totally fills the empty floor space. If we free up the other room on the first floor I can divide all the art tools and supplies between the two rooms - perhaps mosaics and encaustics in one room, weaving looms and spinning wheels in the other. 

Leclerc Tissart Tapestry Loom

I have not posted on here for a few days - mostly because I was busy getting some things done. There is this thing about doing and/or writing about doing that I sometimes struggle with. It is the residue from graduate school. I want to do the work. I do not always want to document it. However I realize that I can get pretty lazy intellectually if I do not work at documenting the work.

However, that was not the reason I have not posted lately. The reason was that I have been all wrapped up in the new tapestry loom. It is a 60" Leclerc Tissart loom, probably made in the 70s or 80s (still need to do more research).

We drove to Chicago in the new car (2007 Pontiac Vibe - more about that later) on August 1st to spend the weekend with Eileen at her new place, go to some museums, visit Loyola where Abelisto went to grad school and just hang out. On the way back we drove to Krakow Wisconsin (an hour or so north of Green Bay) to pick up the loom.

We took it apart and put it in the Vibe. We had to fold down the wider section of the back seat and the front passenger seat to get it all in there. Some of the pieces are around 6' long. Abelisto ended up sitting behind me in the narrower section of the back seat.

When we got it home late Sunday night we piled the loom in the front room and went to bed. Monday night I cleaned and oiled the wooden parts and steel-wooled the brake assembly and the harnesses (slight surface rust). The heddles are wire with inset eyes (maybe stainless steel - I did not look that closely at them) and are in really good condition considering the loom sat out in a barn for a few years.

Then Abelisto and I put it back together.

Step one: Side pieces and bottom piece with treddles.


Step two: Added the front and middle back beams and the beater assembly (which is backwards in this photo - we discovered that pretty quickly and turned it around).


Step three: Added the cloth beam (or whatever it is called on a tapestry loom) and tension arm.


Step four: Here we turned the harness assembly around the right way and added the warp beam. All that is left is the top back beam.

Once the loom was together we decided to move Sheba's desk and put the loom in front of the big window.

Tonight I plan to start dressing the loom.

New Loom

Usually I stay away from Ebay. For a number of reasons - mainly I like to see and touch what I buy before I do so, However this week I found a Leclerc tapestry loom on Ebay that was too good to pass up.

(Seller photograph)

It came with some other items.

(Seller photograph)

It is a 60" loom, and hopefully Abelisto and I can pick it up on the way back from Chicago this weekend...

Tapestry Finishing - II

Tonight I took the tapestry off of the loom. Once the piece was relaxed, once the tension was normalized, the selvedge issue became much less obvious. That is good to see.

I tied each pair of warp threads together in square knots. Then I started weaving the loose ends back in. I used the threaders I mentioned before with mixed results. I snapped one right off. Then I tried a twisted beading needle, then a large gauge bead threader. I ended up going back to the punch embroidery needle threader and just being careful, careful, careful as I pull the yarns back through the weft.


I managed to get maybe a third of the ends woven in before I got tired of doing it. I will probably finish weaving them in tomorrow. Then I will have to figure out what to do with the warp ends. Now I am going to finish building the smaller loom and maybe warp it.

Tapestry Finishing

Last night I started taking the tapestry off of the loom. Thought I should stop at one point and refresh my memory of how this would best be done. I have decided to weave the loose ends that are sticking out of the back into the weft before going any farther with the cutting down the tapestry. If that works out to be too difficult (given the tension on the piece) I will continue cutting it loose and tying it off and then tuck in the loose ends once it is off the loom. I think the best tool for that would be the threaders for punch embroidery needles that I have. They look like giant sewing needle threading aids. I can easily slip them between the weft yarns, catch the loose ends, and pull them up between the weft yarns in order to bind them in and hide them.

I did run across some encouraging information - since this tapestry is woven with wool it may be possible to somewhat correct the draw-in/selvedge issue by steaming and blocking the piece.

It is worth a try.

Made a New Loom Today

I did not finish the tapestry this weekend. Instead I did some weaving on it, but I spent much of today building a new tapestry frame loom. I had an idea come to mind for raising and lowering the threads with a frame loom.


I made a rigid heddle that is slightly longer than the loom is wide. If it works I should be able to weave on the frames faster.


This loom has a 24x36" weaving area. It measures 36x47.5" and is built using the same model as the larger frame that I have been working on.

Once the glue dries I will put in the nails, thread this one up and test my idea for using a rigid heddle with it.

Tapestry Weaving

Photo of the tapestry (12:14a.m., July 17th) as it is being woven
on a homemade frame loom. You can see the saw-horse leg
brackets at the bottom corners of the photograph. The image
is a bit distorted from the wide-angle lens I used. You can see
several skeins and balls of yarn as well as a basket of yarn on top
of the AVL 8-harness loom behind the homemade frame loom.

Wanted to post a current photo of the tapestry before going to bed. It is late - after midnight here, but I am pretty much fully awake (due to coming home early from work, not feeling well, and making the mistake of laying down for 20 minutes to see if I could get to feeling better. Woke up 2 hours later... so no sleep for me for a while yet. Oh well, I have a good book I would like to finish.)
Read more...

You can see the shapes and shape-shifts that I am working on, as well as the color combinations (although as always with photographs, the colors are not exactly right, and even if I fix them to match closely on my computer, they won't look the same on any other computer...). The loom is working well. Tonight I put longer 2x4s in the leg brackets and now the loom is at standing-weaving height. Much better for my back, although my feet do not like it much. When they get too fatigued I can perch on the adjustable height stool from the physics lab.

Anyway, as I mentioned the loom is working well and the weaving generally goes fast considering it's all finger controlled. One shed (the space between the "up" warp and the "down" warp threads) is held open with a 5/8" fiberglass rod, the other I use a pick up stick - actually a long crochet hook - to select the opposite up & down threads. Not as fast as weaving a tapestry on a real tapestry loom - one with treddles and harnesses to lift the alternating warp threads - but still enjoyable to work on. Especially with the saw-horse legs! I was truly amazed to discover the difference that made. So much more workable than laying the frame on the dining room table and trying to weave with it, dealing with it scooting around like crazy, with bad ergonomics in bending over it for any length of time, and with the dark warp strings blending in with the dark color of the table top.

Back to this piece. I think I will stop weaving it very soon - striking a line about 1" taller than the tallest part and weaving up to that point. If everything were perfect with it I would fill the available weaving height (around 30"), but I was not as careful with the tension of the warp threads as I should have been. There are sections that are ever-so-slightly looser than other sections and it especially shows on the selvedges. I have too much draw-in at both sides. I should be able to finish what I am planning to weave on this piece over the weekend.

I will probably start another tapestry right away - one with better, more uniform, tension. I want to work from a plan/drawing on the next one. This tapestry has been woven randomly, or perhaps I should say it has been woven as mood and fancy took me, no real plan except to play with color and sinuous shapes.

If I do not do another tapestry right away I will probably work on the fabric-armor sculptures.

Not quite perfect

Last night I did more work on the tapestry. I have decided that I need to raise the height of the loom so that I can weave standing up. I should have known I would. I do all the weaving at the AVL loom standing up. I started stand-up weaving back when I was weaving fleece rugs.

Fleece rug, woven circa 1998, 3'x5'

I had to weave them standing up because it took a great deal of force to pack the unspun wool tightly enough to form a structurally sound rug. I wove them on an older loom that I did not mind modifying by added 50 lbs. to the beater to add more swinging force.

All the extra weight meant I needed more leverage than was possible sitting down. It also meant that unless I leaned with all my weight against the loom, the act of swinging the beater to pack the wool in would "walk" the loom across the floor.

Tonight I will be modifying the legs of the tapestry loom. I wish I could get better looking 2x4s to use. I bought finished dimensional lumber to make the loom - it seems incongruous to use framing lumber for the legs of it. Oh, well... it's not like there are no other incongruous parts of my art-studio-house-life.

Working in an organized studio

After Nova and I cleaned and organized my downstairs studio I moved the tapestry from the front room (I hesitate to call it a living room - there is not much in the way of traditional living room furniture in it - three desks, five bookcases, a stereo on an end table, and a printer stand...)


In these photos you can see the progress as of tonight. I will be weaving more as soon as I finish the website work I need to do. You can see the AVL loom that Abelisto bought for me a few years ago. Later in the summer I will be setting it up and teaching a couple people to weave.


It is really nice to have the studio organized and cleaned up. I will need to learn where we put everything. Most of it went into the tall cabinet you can see in the photo below. We got some crates at Target (plastic unfortunately - bad for sustainable living, but the price and availability were right) and sorted things into categories - sculpture-plaster, sculpture-clay, sculpture-found object, fiber work, tablet weaving, adhesives, beeswax & torches, pencils-pens-scissors-paints (non-encaustic),and general/miscellaneous.

Tapestry

Last week I made yet another tapestry frame loom. This time I managed to get it right.

It is a large one, 60" x 30" with a 48" x 24" weaving area. I thought it was another less-than-functional loom until I brought up two pairs of saw horse legs (with collapsing brackets) and used them to hold up the loom. In the two evenings that I have worked on the tapestry I have gotten a fair amount done (in just 2 or 3 hours each evening).


Here is the loom as seen from the front side of the loom - the weaving side - which is the back side of the tapestry when it is finished (tapestries are often woven from the back). You can see the loose ends hanging free where I have began new colors or spliced extra yarns into the tapestry.


Here is the view from the front side of the weaving (which is the back side of the loom). Using the flash on the camera makes the actual weave of the piece show up more than it does when you are looking at it. In actuality it does not look this bumpy.