Friday, January 4, 2013

Mending


While weaving the rose towel warp I suddenly had a broken end, very near the end of the towel body.

Truth be told, it was a knot in the warp I hadn't noticed while winding and the knot simply gave way.  There are a number of ways to deal with such a situation.  I was in a hurry and since it was so near the end of the towel, I simply tied another short bit of thread onto the loose end, threaded it back through the heddle and pinned the new end into the cloth.  The repair knot will be below the fold, so I decided not to worry too much about it in that placement.  If it had been within the towel body itself I would have hung a repair end off the back beam.



After cutting the towels from the loom, I got out my trusty blunt nosed tapestry needle and carefully followed the path of the end with the needle, then threaded the original end into the eye and pulled it through.



The ends were clipped flush with the cloth and the join/overlap is barely noticeable.  After wet finishing, the join should be nearly invisible.

Always do such repairs before wet finishing.  Before it goes through the water the threads are still individual and it is much easier to see the path of the threads through the web.  After wet finishing it is much more difficult to do this sort of repair.

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