Flowers in red and green, that’s very Christmassy. But the fabric has nothing to do with Christmas, the colors and the pattern are coincidental. It is still a test.

Remember the Jacquard loom I bought in 2020? The problems restoring it? The attempts to find suitable yarn for the reconstruction project I was working on?

When I ran out of grant money in the summer of 2021, I gave up on reconstructing the English jacket fabric with small flowers from around 1750. It was woven in worsted wool and and I had never found a quite suitable yarn. But I decided to continue hunting down all the mistakes in the Jacquard machine using the punchcards I already had, the ones with the flower pattern.

I took a look at my yarn stash. I wanted a thin, smooth, but tough yarn as warp, which would hopefully would make no problems. I decided on thin mercerized cotton, 27’000m/kg, leftovers from a folk costume fabric order (for Norwegians: Gloriagarn, brukes til sjal og forkle til Nordlandsbunaden). The only color I had enough of was green. To find the mistakes, I wove a lot with leftover yarns in odd colors. After a while I decided it would be nice to actually have some fabric for myself with this pattern, so I bought one roll of red, mercerized cotton 20/2.

So here it is, enough fabric for two small pillows. There are still errors though, like the one on the photo. All other possibilities having been ruled out, I have now decided to remove all weak springs. Luckily, there are still factories making custom springs.

My next project is to hopefully eliminate the last errors, make friends with the cloth beam regulator, the warp beam brake and the shuttle switching device. But that’s for 2023…..

Slow Progress

Threads from the Past

How to Weave a Rag Pillow