Category
Acta non verba (deeds not words)
Finish a project you’ve been telling yourself you’d get around to
Entrant
Melissa Wijffels
Entry
Handspun, Handwoven Cloth
This project has been in paused several times, and I kept telling myself I would finish it, and for this challenge, I finally have!
Early medieval textiles in the lowlands (my time and area of interest) of average quality have around 14 threads per cm (Brandenburgh 2010). In 2022, I started spinning, trying to get my singles down to that fineness on a consistent basis. The singles also had to be strong enough to not snap when beaten vigorously! Once I managed to achieve this quality of yarn, I spun 2km of the singles, half in the darker wool, and half in the finer wool. Both colours of wool are from the same fleece. There is some evidence of this style of preparation from extant examples, with the darker, slightly higher micron yarn being used as warp, and the lighter, lower micron yarn being used as weft.
I then jumped directly into the deep end and tried to warp up the warp-weighted loom for diamond twill. This complex procedure involved quite a lot of trial and error (mostly the latter!), involving re-tying the string heddles multiple times, much tangled yarn, and an eventual resignation of the project to the ‘naughty corner’ in frustration mid-2023. I didn’t work on it again until after encouragement from the Fibre Guild at Canterbury Faire 2024.
Having learned I needed to do a simpler practice piece before doing something more complex, I undid everything and re-knitted the heddles and re-tied the weights for tabby weave. I was then able to knock out the project in occasional evenings over a few months, yielding a dense fabric with the characteristic unbalanced weave (many more warp threads per cm than weft threads) of period textiles.
Brandenburgh, C. R. (2010). Early medieval textile remains from settlements in the Netherlands. An evaluation of textile production. Journal of Archaeology in the Low Countries, 2(1), 41-78.
