As the change tsunami rolled through my life last year, it washed away many old things, but also washed in some new things. One of those is a 16-shaft 32-inch-wide Ashford table loom.
When I first started weaving, I quickly realized what intrigued me was the complex structures. I am particularly fond of doubleweave and advancing twills. Complex twills are shaft-greedy structures. I soon upgraded my four-shaft table loom with an 8-shaft expansion kit. Then I discovered I always seemed to want to weave something slightly wider than 24-inches. So I bought the 32-inch loom and sold my 24-inch loom. But I still had only eight shafts. I even wrote to Ashford and asked if they ever made the 16-shaft model in the wider width. I only ever saw it offered in the 24-inch width.
Well, apparently Ashford made a run of 16-shaft looms in the wider width in early 2018. And I, somehow, did not get the memo. By the time I learned about it, they were all gone.
And then representatives from Ashford were at Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair in 2018. I happened to put my snowflake twill full-body pillow in the skein and garment competition. The pillow was made from the ubiquitous Aunt Lydia's crochet cotton. It turned out well; and I wanted other weavers to see that this inexpensive big box store yarn could work for hand weaving. The pillow won a blue ribbon. That gave me a chance to ask the Ashford people in person if I could please have a 16-shaft loom in the 32-inch width? Pretty please?
By spring of 2019, Lisa at Yarn Junkees in Hoschton, Georgia, was able to place the special order. It still took several months for the loom to arrive. I finally picked it up in August, just a few days before Dragon Con.
When I searched "dye texsolv heddles," I got surprisingly few results. Knowing not enough, I decided to give it a try anyway. I ended up needing multiple tries.
The heddles come tied together with twist ties. I was concerned leaving the twist ties in place would produce a tie-dyed effect. But, I also wanted to keep the ties, since that makes it easier to put the heddles on the shafts. My compromise was to re-tie all the heddles with sewing thread before putting them in the dye pots.
In this case, my dye pots are old glass salsa jars. I have a dozen I've kept for use as luminarias at Yule. I had some old citric acid leftover from a dye class. It was definitely old and discolored and possibly had some microbes growing in it. But, into the dye pots it all went. I used six colors — 620 hot fuchsia, 605 pumpkin orange, 601 yellow sun, 627 kelly green, 624 turquoise, 612 lilac. Each dye pot got four clumps of heddles (40 heddles in each clump) and two pairs of cords (4 total) for tying the shafts to the handles. The sixteen shaft loom has short cords for the front eight shafts and long cords for the back eight, so I dyed one pair in each color. In this way, the cords will help color-code the handles.
Lessons learned:
1. Using old citric acid is probably a bad idea. The way the dye pots did or did not exhaust varied. (Notice the lilac dye exhausted but the other five did not.)
3. Heating to make the dye set did not necessarily help. The orange turned brown.
When I first started weaving, I quickly realized what intrigued me was the complex structures. I am particularly fond of doubleweave and advancing twills. Complex twills are shaft-greedy structures. I soon upgraded my four-shaft table loom with an 8-shaft expansion kit. Then I discovered I always seemed to want to weave something slightly wider than 24-inches. So I bought the 32-inch loom and sold my 24-inch loom. But I still had only eight shafts. I even wrote to Ashford and asked if they ever made the 16-shaft model in the wider width. I only ever saw it offered in the 24-inch width.
Well, apparently Ashford made a run of 16-shaft looms in the wider width in early 2018. And I, somehow, did not get the memo. By the time I learned about it, they were all gone.
And then representatives from Ashford were at Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair in 2018. I happened to put my snowflake twill full-body pillow in the skein and garment competition. The pillow was made from the ubiquitous Aunt Lydia's crochet cotton. It turned out well; and I wanted other weavers to see that this inexpensive big box store yarn could work for hand weaving. The pillow won a blue ribbon. That gave me a chance to ask the Ashford people in person if I could please have a 16-shaft loom in the 32-inch width? Pretty please?
By spring of 2019, Lisa at Yarn Junkees in Hoschton, Georgia, was able to place the special order. It still took several months for the loom to arrive. I finally picked it up in August, just a few days before Dragon Con.
By this time, I've figured out a few things about the Ashford table loom. One of them is that a forest of white Texsolv heddles is difficult to thread. When you have only four shafts, it is fairly easy to see where shafts 1 and 4 are. Shafts 2 and 3 are the only point of obvious confusion. But when you have eight shafts, telling the difference between shafts 3, 4, 5, and 6 simply by three-dimensional visual perception is trickier. I know trying to thread sixteen shafts will be a challenge.
If I were doing this for an eight-shaft loom, I would leave the first
and last shaft un-dyed and use the colored heddles in rainbow order
across shafts 2 through 7.
Since I have sixteen shafts, I'm breaking the sequence into groups of four.
1 = white
2 = fuchsia
3 = pumpkin
4 = sun
5 = white
6 = kelly
7 = turquoise
8 = lilac
Repeat sequence for shafts 9 through 16.
Since I have sixteen shafts, I'm breaking the sequence into groups of four.
1 = white
2 = fuchsia
3 = pumpkin
4 = sun
5 = white
6 = kelly
7 = turquoise
8 = lilac
Repeat sequence for shafts 9 through 16.
If I simply did the 8-shaft sequence twice, I'd end up with shafts 8 and 9 both being white, which would create confusion. I could also simply dye two more shafts (maybe light grey), which I might do later if this works well.
When I searched "dye texsolv heddles," I got surprisingly few results. Knowing not enough, I decided to give it a try anyway. I ended up needing multiple tries.
I started by using Jaquard acid dyes, since I have a whole set of those. Atlanta was still in summer weather, so I could sun dye outside — my preferred method. I can dye inside on the stove, but one of the things I love about sun dyeing is the protection from overheating the fiber. Since Texsolv is a manufactured fiber that will melt when exposed to excessive heat, solar dyeing is less mistake-prone than boiling on the stove top.
The heddles come tied together with twist ties. I was concerned leaving the twist ties in place would produce a tie-dyed effect. But, I also wanted to keep the ties, since that makes it easier to put the heddles on the shafts. My compromise was to re-tie all the heddles with sewing thread before putting them in the dye pots.
In this case, my dye pots are old glass salsa jars. I have a dozen I've kept for use as luminarias at Yule. I had some old citric acid leftover from a dye class. It was definitely old and discolored and possibly had some microbes growing in it. But, into the dye pots it all went. I used six colors — 620 hot fuchsia, 605 pumpkin orange, 601 yellow sun, 627 kelly green, 624 turquoise, 612 lilac. Each dye pot got four clumps of heddles (40 heddles in each clump) and two pairs of cords (4 total) for tying the shafts to the handles. The sixteen shaft loom has short cords for the front eight shafts and long cords for the back eight, so I dyed one pair in each color. In this way, the cords will help color-code the handles.
The color took a little, but with significant variability. So rather than saying Texsolv heddles can or can't be dyed, I would say they can be dyed but some colors will definitely work better than others. Also, there is a limit to how dark the colors are going to get. I wasn't happy with the results. And when I rinsed the heddles, the color seemed to wash away. And the orange got strangely brown.
1. Using old citric acid is probably a bad idea. The way the dye pots did or did not exhaust varied. (Notice the lilac dye exhausted but the other five did not.)
2. What it looks like in the dye pot is not necessarily what it will look like after rinsing. See how the blue looked saturated, but washed away?
 |
| Texsolv heddle in dye pot at end of day. |
 |
| Turquoise heddles after rinsing — much less saturated. |
3. Heating to make the dye set did not necessarily help. The orange turned brown.
 |
| After simmering on the stove top, orange turns brown? |
4. Some colors definitely behaved better than others. But overall, the whole experiment wasn't great.
 |
| Final results varied in intensity and color fastness. |
Tomorrow: a successful solution!
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