Gamp warp

The next chapter in the story about the G-A-M-P, Gamp is about warping the loom.

The warp was 5 yards long with 34 ends of each of the 27 colors plus 2 ends at each outer edge for floating selvedges. Let's see... ((27 colors * 34 ends) + 4 floating selvedge ends) * 5 yards = 2.6 miles. Well, that's a good amount of yarn, isn't it? But someone once explained to me that the warp is 1/2 of the project, so once you get the loom dressed, you're 50% finished. That always makes the task sound better to me.


If only it was this easy

I warped the loom from Front to Back using Madelyn van der Hoogt’s instructional video, Warping Your Loom. I find this technique works well for me and it will continue to be my primary method, at least until I get or make a raddle. So I started out with sleying the reed. Looking at the time stamps of these photos, this took me 2 days. Granted this was over Memorial Day weekend so I had another day off to do the mundane household chores, otherwise the elapsed time would have been at least a week.


1/3 sleyed


2/3 sleyed


922 ends sleyed

After 2 days of getting all those pesky ends through the reed (12dpi, 2 ends per dent for the weavers in the crowd), it was time to figure out how many heddles I had and make sure I had enough on each frame. I probably should have done that earlier because in the event that I didn't have enough, I would have had to order more. Well, it turned out that I had enough heddles with a few to spare. I redistributed the heddles on the loom so I wouldn't run out on any of the frames and threaded the heddles. I divided each color into 4 groups with 8, 9, 8, and 9 ends each. Each group was double checked for threading errors and then it was knotted.

Again, checking the time stamp of the photo I see that the time elapsed from when I sleyed the reed to when the heddles were threaded was just 1 week. That surprises me, I thought it took longer.


Color gamp warp

The next step was to tie the ends to the back apron rod and do what's called crank & yank. Funny, huh? You basically turn a crank which pulls the warp threads through the heddles and the reed and winds it onto the back warp beam. It's a slow process because you crank a little bit, then come back to the front and pull on groups of warp threads to even out the tension (yank). After most of the 5 yards is wound onto the back of the loom, the free ends are tied onto the front apron rod.


Color gamp warp

Now the loom is dressed and weaving can begin! Actually I consider all of the above weaving, but you know what I'm saying. Once you start weaving cloth, the pattern is visible and you can see if there are mistakes in the warp that need to be fixed. But that's why I checked every group of 8 or 9 warp threads to make absolutely positively sure that there wouldn't be any issues and I could start weaving right away. Well, it didn't turn out that way.

I started with some tabby weave or in other words, just some plain over-under weaving. In the picture below, you can see where there is a threading mistake. There's a group of 3 magenta warp threads that are moving together. What should be happening is the thread in the middle of the group of three should be moving up when the outer two move down, and down when the other 2 move up.


0.1%

It wasn't a huge mistake and it was the only one I found in 922 threads, so that was actually pretty good. Basically, I mistakenly threaded the middle warp thread through a heddle on the wrong frame. To fix it, I had to untie that group of magenta threads from the front apron rod and rethread that one thread through a heddle on the correct frame. The only problem with that was I didn't have a heddle in that position on that frame. Madelyn van der Hoogt to the rescue! In her video, Weaving Well, Madelyn describes how to make a heddle out of string for just this purpose. Done and done.

Here's the fixed warp, the plain weave with hemstitching in blue, and the first color stripe woven in point twill in teal.


Color gamp

I'm finding that getting the right number of picks per inch (density of weft threads) is tricky. If I beat the weft too hard, the weft threads are too close together and the squares of color end up being short fat rectangles. If I don't beat hard enough, the squares end up as tall rectangles. So getting that just right AND having neat selvedges (edges) is my challenge now. I'll weave a color stripe find a number of things wrong with it, then I'll unweave and reweave it. Having a critical eye can be a pain, but some of the issues I've fixed are things I would notice forevermore, so for me it's better to take the time to rework them. With that, you don't need to leave any comments about galloping horses.

She's just a G-A-M-P, GAMP!

Choosing colors for weaving is a challenge for me. Contrast, value, saturation, and hue are terms that I've learned about in various color classes, but there's a certain level of anxiety, fear, and uncertainty that grips me when I need to make my own choices. Perhaps that's why I appreciate kits for stranded and Fair Isle knitting, the work is already done for me.

When I started weaving, I ran across the term "gamp" over and over again. A gamp is a woven piece of fabric that illustrates what happens when different weave structures, yarns/fibers, colors, etc., intersect. So a color gamp is a reference piece that shows what different colors look like when they are woven in a fabric. Michele Belson and Katzy Luhring from Lunatic Fringe Yarns go into detail about color gamps in this Weavezine article.

Think of your color printer--you have only 4 ink cartridges: yellow, magenta, cyan, and black. But somehow the combination of those colors on the printed page can produce seemingly endless number of colors. What color we see depends on how much of each ink is used and how it is placed (in what pattern). It's pretty amazing when you think about how we perceive color.

Anyway, back to weaving. The color gamps I found online have warps of uniform stripes in different colors. Then the weft is woven in stripes of the same colors, in the same order. So every color in the warp will intersect with every color in the weft and the blocks along a diagonal will be solid blocks of color, where the warp and weft colors are the same. With this fabric, you'll be able to see what purple warp and yellow weft look like together. It may or may not sound like a good combination, but the color gamp will show you. Another consideration for a color gamp is the weave structure. That purple warp and yellow weft block will look different in a plain weave, a twill, or an overshot pattern. So weaving a color gamp in different weave structures would be a good idea.

It sounds like a lot of work for a color/weave structure reference, doesn't it? But I don't consider weaving with beautiful yarn to be work... but it is a lot of effort and time. That's okay, I'm learning and discovering as I go and besides that, the fabric is quite beautiful. All in all, weaving can be a very rewarding experience.

I went to the Conference of Northern California Handweavers in Oakland this year and headed straight to Lunatic Fringe Yarns booth. They have color gamp kits available on their web site and I wanted to see samples of the woven gamps in person before making the investment. Well, the gamps were really beautiful and I was able to see them in thicker and thinner cotton and also talk to them about the color gamp kit vs. the color gamp kit plus white, black, and shades of gray. All in all, I felt much better about seeing the product in person first and actually bought the Tubular Spectrum Plus Kit--spectrum colors plus white, black, and shades of gray.

The kit came with instructions for weaving on a 4-shaft or 8-shaft loom, including a suggested color order. Well, I decided to go off course immediately and put the colors in a different order. I asked for feedback from the 4-Shaft Weaving group on Facebook and with their excellent input, finalized on this:


Lunatic Fringe Color Gamp

The order starts in the lower left corner and goes up each column, ending with the upper right corner.

I decided to start with a point twill and entered the colors and design into Fiberworks to see how it would look.


Color Gamp in Fiberworks

You can't see all of the rows in this screenshot, but you get the idea. Pleased with how it looked on screen, I planned the rest of the project in a spreadsheet and the next step was to wind the warp.

It was at this point that I had to stop and find some courage. This project was going to require 922 warp threads and 27 colors in a relatively thin cotton. The width in the reed was going to be over 36". This was easily the largest project I had ever attempted. I took a deep breath (for a few days) and finally go started warping.


Warp chain 3 of 3

After I warped a couple of colors, I revisited my spreadsheet and realized that I didn't calculate enough warp length. So I had to take those colors off the warping board and add an extra yard. At least I found the problem early... it wasn't too painful to fix.


If only it was this easy

The warp chains were so pretty I couldn't wait to dress the loom, but 922 ends was going to take a while. As motivated as I was to get warp the loom, I had to be patient and work carefully so I didn't make any mistakes.

Next up: The Warp