HOW TO WEAVE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22145, 26 June 1935, Page 5

HOW TO WEAVE

DARNING SHOWS THE WAY MAKING A SIMPLE LOOM BT COUNTRY SPINSTER No. V. Have you ever seen any of the great woollen mills of New Zealand? If you have, the word "weaving" probably conjures up in youi' mind a picture of enormous rooms filled with clanking machinery, sheets of taut fibres going up and down, flying shuttles driven by mechanical power, and weavers dashing from one to another of half a dozen machines, mending threads, putting in ucw spools and seeing that the pattern is working out correctly. What can this have to do with making our own clothes and how can we do it at home ?

And yet, like Moliere's Bourgeois Gentilhommp, who found to his surprise that he could talk prose, you have heen doing it most of your life. Possibly you are a backslider, but surely sometime, somewhen, you were taught to darn in the orthodox way—to fill up a hole neatly with a web of interlaced threads. You remember how you first placed a series of threads side by side across the hole, from north to south, as it were, and you then laboriously wove —yes wove — other threads from east to west, and west to east across the first threads, which we may as well call at once the warp; and how these side to side threads —the weft —went alternately over and under the warp threads one way, and coming back reversed the order of this interlacing. That was simple or tabby weaving.

Have you ever come across a useful gadget for darning, consisting of a flat bit of wood with rounded top and a spring bracelet to hold the stocking 011 top; and with it goes a littlo metal rod, triangular in shape, with notches on the angles. The notches on the central ridge are twice as numerous as those on the side ridges, and each continues a central notch, but alternately on one side or the other. Thus if you put the central ridge under your north and south warp threads of the darn, and then roll the rod first one way and then the other, you get alternate threads raised, first one group and then the other, and can simply run your darning needle with the weft thread across under the raised group in the gap between them and the rest. This gap is called a shed, and in weav-

ing on a loom you run a shuttle carrying the weft thread through an exactly similar gap. You will now see that in weaving any material, what you must have is a group of warp threads lying side by side and evenly stretched; some means of lifting these in groups, and a shuttle or needle carrying a weft thread backwards and forwards in the spaces so made. Plain or tabby weaving is the simplest form of weaving, alternate threads being alternately raised. Pattern weaving is done by raising the warp threads in more complicated groups, as you do in drawn-thread work or needle-weaving on the threads of linen and sacking which have similarly been left as warp threads after you have drawn out the weft threads ot the original material Quite a simple matter, is it not? Now for making a simple loom on which you can weave a scarf, a bag, a table runner. I have a delightful bng for knitting which was made 011 tin; simplest possible loom, from the short ends left over after making Axminster carpets, called thrums. Take a strong piece of cardboard —the back of a block of writing paper will do —and rule lines an eighth of an inch apart down it from top to bottom, and cut down the ends of each lino about Jin. Take two balls of wool and tie their ends together and lay them so that the threads lie side by side in the first two top notches, and wind them round your cardboard so that they lie on the drawn lines from top to bottom, and then up the back to the next pair of notches. If the two balls are different colours, say, white and blue, it will be easy to see that'they are laid alternately and do not cross. When all the notches are full, you can break off the balls and secure the ends 011 a pin or knot them at the back. Now you have your warp threads or warp set up, and they should all be equally tight, lying firmly 011 the cardboard parallel to one another.

Now we must 'arrange some way of making the slice]. Take a knitting needle or a long crochet liook or a pencil, and run it across the middle over and under alternate threads as in darning—here the two colours are a help. Then pull a long piece of string through in place of the pencil. Repeat

this, raising the other set of threads. Now you can see that lifting one or other string will raise half the threads and make a gap ior your weft, but also draws the raised ones together awkwardly; you need somehow to lilt the threads singly. For this get a couple of smooth sticks bits of bamboo will do excellently—and pull ti|> your length of string between each pair of the warp threads that it lilts and hook it on to the bamboo. Do the same with the second bamboo and the. other string, and fix the ends of the strings to their own bamboo. You can now simply lift the bamboo rods alternately to make the two sheds or gaps through which your shuttle is to take the weft.

Now for vour weft. A simple plan for a start 'is to leave a fringe at the sides, using for weft single or doubie threads drawn from one of those manycoloured twists sold for darning, or a small skein cut into lengths as much longer than the width of your cardboard as will make a nice fringe. Lilt one bamboo and draw a thread across in the gap between these- and the other set lying on the cardboard, using a crochet hook or a bodkin as you prefer. Take a coarse-toothed liair-comb and push this weft down to the bottom of the cardboard, lift the other bamboo rod and draw a second weft thread through under the other set of warp threads, and beat it down to the bottom close against the first one. Go on doing this with alternately raised rods until you have covered as much of the cardboard as you can. Then hem over the ends to keep them firm, untie one end of the string on the bamboo rods and pull it off the warp and the rods, and cut the warp off at the same length as the side fringes—or longer if you like. Knot the fringes, and you will have a little woven mat. You might make a set of these to put under dinner plates. You will have come across various difficulties as you do all this, and will bo ready to hear next week how these can be overcome in a simple loom of a rather more elaborate kind, l'irstly, you have not as many hands as you would like. You want your warp held firmly on something that will not slip about like cardboard, nor lift up when you raise the warp threads; and on something stronger which will not bend or curl. If the notches did not break, you could pull the warp round from back to front as you work, and so make it twice as long; also, if the bamboo rods were held up on some support when lifted you would have both hands free to manipulate the weft. Another tiling—if the warp were fixed on rollers instead of being wound round in one length, you could vary the length woven as much as you pleased and replace a broken thread if necessary. Also, if the weft were wound on a shuttle you need not have a fringe at the sides, but a selvedge, as in most woven materials. How all these things can be arranged on a simple homemade loom, 1 shall describe to you next week.

A BRICK FIREPLACE In answer to Farmer's request for a method of treating an open brick fireplace that has been washed with red ochre - with unpleasing results, a correspondent, Mrs. B. (Mount Roskill), suggests buying a tin of liquid paint from one of the stores, and after washing off the ochre, painting the bricks with paint, in the desired colour. There is a special kind of paint that is used for this purpose, and, no doubt, he would be told in the shop what to get. Another method is as follows: After cleaning bricks with a caustic soda solution, they must be washed down with vinegar before paint is applied, to kill the ell'cet of the caustic soda. After treating the fireplace with vinegar, use a good heat-resisting paint on it. Certain brands of paving paint are recommended for the purpose. Advice as to suitable paint may be had from a reliable firm of oil and colour merchants.

TO PRESERVE SHOES Oil removing dump shoes they should he stuffed with newspaper, us this absorbs much of the moisture and helps to restore them to their correct shape. The dark patches which often appealoil brown siioes after they have been thoroughly wet may be removed by applying turpentine. This should, however, be used quickly and sparingly us it has a drying effect on the leather. A good cream should be applied after cleaning and allowed to remain on the shoes for an hour or so before finally polishing them. Suede shoes should be carefully brushed, then treated with benzine or petrol to remove dirt and grease. A gentle rubbing with a piece of fine glass paper or with a .special wire brush sold for the purpose will raise the surface of the leather again and make it appear us new. Black patent shoes should be wiped over with a damp cloth as soon as they are removed 011 a wet day so that no trace of mud is allowed to dry on them. A few drops of cream taken from the top of the milk, rubbed in and allowed to dry before the shoes are polished, helps to keep the leather from cracking-