Tien Chiu

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You are here: Home / All blog posts / A journey of 82,000 shuttle-throws starts with…
Previous post: Celtic braid, redux
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May 17, 2009 by Tien Chiu

A journey of 82,000 shuttle-throws starts with…

…a single spreadsheet.

I’ve decided that I like the Celtic-braid dress fabric enough that I want to weave it up.  So I whipped out my home-cooked spreadsheet today and made my warp and weft calculations.  19 yards of 24″ fabric at 96 epi/ppi, assuming 20% shrinkage lengthwise and 10% widthwise, will require 3.8 pounds of warp, 3.6 pounds of weft, in 2/60 Nm silk at 15,000 yards per pound.  That’s over 110,000 yards of yarn, and over 82,000 throws of the shuttle!!  (And that’s just for the dress!  I’d still need to weave another 20 yards for the coat…)

Good thing the wedding isn’t scheduled yet…

Anyway, I’m debating whether to get started right away or whether to weave another sample first.  I have some samples of metallic gold yarn that should really be woven up with the 2/26 nm silk/cashmere to see how they suit.  Obviously I won’t be able to do that if I start weaving 19 yards of 60/2 silk now, but I’m so excited about this pattern that I can’t WAIT to thread it up!  I’m tired of weaving samples, I want to start weaving the actual dress.  (Of course, we’ll see how I feel about this 9 yards in…this weaves up at about 1/4 the rate of the coat fabric, so this is gonna take a LONG time.)

Well, I’d better start with the canonical single step…which will be putting all the heddles back on my loom, then counting them to see whether I have enough.  24″ wide x 96 epi = 2300 or so heddles.  I thought I had WAY over-bought heddles last year, when I bought the loom and decided to bring it up to 100 heddles per shaft…apparently not!  I hope I have enough.

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Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, weaving Tagged With: wedding dress

Previous post: Celtic braid, redux
Next post: Weavolution is in alpha!

Comments

  1. Lisa J says

    May 18, 2009 at 8:39 am

    I am cheering for you. It is going to be a beautiful fabric.

    I have a question: do you have a fancy speed technique for threading heddles or is it practice? i love the idea of working with fine threads, but the thought of all that threading and sleying makes me a little woozy.

  2. Sandra Rude says

    May 18, 2009 at 10:38 am

    I agree with you – the celtic braid looks terrific! It’ll make wonderful dress fabric.

  3. Kujo says

    May 18, 2009 at 12:22 pm

    How much will the dress and coat weigh, ballpark? I’m hoping not over 30lbs….

  4. Peg in South Carolina says

    May 18, 2009 at 1:26 pm

    I know just how you feel–much as I love weaving samples, there comes a time when my excitement to get started on the “real” project is overwhelming.

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