brightclothesforwinter - Tumblr blog

[brightclothesforwinter]

I know I saw somebody say they wanted to learn more about weaving the other day...?

Today I am thinking about weaving.

I can knit and crochet, but those crafts didn't exist in Roman times. Any historically accurate Roman cloth must be woven. So when a little potholder loom jumped into my shopping basket for 50 cents, it felt like a sign I should learn.

One potholder that was 50% yarn and 50% weird gaps later, I looked up a tutorial, and realized why the damn thing was 50 cents. I needed a better, more adaptable loom. And, because I am a cheapskate and slightly loony, I decided to make one instead of buying it.

So, how does this thing work?

First, you string the warp threads up and down, around the pegs. Here, I made a zigzag shape. Then, you use a needle or shuttle to weave more yarn over and under the warp, horizontally, back and forth. This produces woven fabric.

Some looms weave from the top, some from the bottom. This Greek urn shows two weavers working from the top. The left weaver uses a rod to compact the woven fabric upward, keeping it even and sturdy. The right weaver is passing an oval-shaped shuttle through the warp threads to form another row.

Most Roman looms would have looked like this, with the finished cloth at the top. Unlike my looms, these are warp-weighted. That means you keep the warp yarns taut by hanging weights at the bottom, rather than through a bottom row of pegs.

Warp-weighted looms also have a big advantage over my little potholder loom: you can easily create multiple sheds.

A "shed" is a temporary gap between lifted strands and non-lifted strands. Instead of having to go over and under each strand individually, you raise the entire shed, then pull the shuttle or needle straight through. This saves lots of time! Then, to weave the next row, you close the shed, lift up a different set of threads to create a new shed, and send the shuttle/needle through the other direction.

On a warp-weighted loom, the sheds are opened by loops called heddles (H), which are attached to a heddle rod (G). When the rod is down, shed (1) is open (middle diagram). When you pull the rod up, shed (1) closes and shed (2) opens instead (right diagram). Most warp-weighted looms also have a pair of forks you can rest the heddle rod on, to free your hands.

Here, there are three heddle rods and sets of forks, the heddles are white, and the warp thread is red. This gives you four different sheds, and the potential to weave very complex patterns indeed. Not bad for a device invented over 6500 years ago!

I liked the multiple heddle-rod design so much, I tried incorporating it into my DIY loom, too. I've tested both yarn and paperclips as heddles:

I actually got both sheds and heddle-rods working, too. Which is pretty cool for a lap loom - every other lap loom I found only has one shed, so you have to go over-under the individual threads on alternate rows.* More time-consuming. However, the sheds here are narrow, and I'll need a smaller and smoother shuttle to pass through them smoothly. This wouldn't be an issue on a warp-weighted loom, where the warp hangs freely downward, and can move more flexibly with the heddles.

Anyway. I may get a "real" loom at some point, but I wanted to build one first, and I think it gave me more appreciation for just how resourceful ancient weavers were. They created technology, clothing, and artwork out of very basic materials, and civilization depended on these skills.

Now, I need to go finish the...whatever the hell it will be. Big thanks to Wikipedia and to the lovely Youtubers who make this craft easier to learn. I think it'll be a lot of fun.

(*Edit - found out a rotating heddle bar can make two sheds on a lap loom! Exciting!!)

[brightclothesforwinter]

really enjoying this series

[brightclothesforwinter]

Ditto dreamwidth comment emails!

emails with “[AO3] Comment on _____” in the subject line give me a better dopamine rush than hard drugs ever will

[brightclothesforwinter]

Oh no help, I am writing a story that is SAD and it is making me sad! How can this be happening!

[brightclothesforwinter]

Man, there is a huge bias in the way that hobby fibercrafters approach and think about textiles—and I say that as a hobby fibercrafter myself! See, weaving has a high barrier to entry relative to knitting, crochet, spinning—even embroidery or sewing, these days, as the sewing machine automated much of the tedium of the craft. All of those crafts require a lot less in terms of startup costs to the hobby crafter than the machinery of a loom does.

But... look, if you want to understand mass produced textiles or textiles in any historical context, you have to understand weaving. If you want to understand how most of the cloth that people wear is made, you have to understand weaving, because weaving is the oldest art for mass producing cloth that can then be turned into garments.

Spinning is also very important, of course. Spinning is how you get the thread that you can turn into cloth any number of ways. Historically speaking, though, the most common way that thread or yarn becomes cloth is inarguably weaving. More to the point, weaving is also a historical center of industry and labor organizing. Ironically enough for the argument about how no one asked a woman, the industrialization of weaving is actually an interesting early case example of men organizing to push women out of a newly profitable position.

Besides that, knitting and crocheting in particular are incredibly modern crafts. Most modern knitting as we would understand the craft is shaped by the inventions of Elizabeth Zimmerman, and even things like the circular knitting needle date back only to the past century. Historically speaking, the great innovation of knitting as a tool for fiber craft is the ability to construct garments for small, odd shapes that can stretch and grip: stockings, gloves, underwear. Even that great innovation, the knit sweater, is an artifact of the 1850s—and the familiar cable knit sweaters of the Aran Isles are even newer than that. Crochet is even younger: the entire craft originated in the 1820s as far as anyone can document.

None of that is any shade on anyone. Like I said, I knit; that's the locus of my personal interest in textiles. I just think that textile history is neat, but if you're going to make big pronouncements about the historical development of textiles, it's important to think about what changed about the technology of textile production in the most common ways of turning raw fiber into cloth—and you cannot stop at the level of understanding how to make thread or yarn, because the properties of the cloth are always going to be an artifact of the construction of the cloth.

That's technology, baby! It's literally weavecraft. But it's not obvious that weaving is missing from the bounds of a person's experience with textile manipulation until and unless they're trying to understand and work with a wide range of fabric types—and when you can quite reasonably go from raw fiber to a finished garment using modern popular craft techniques that don't rely on anything that appears difficult for a medieval craftsman to make, it's easy to forget the role of weaving in the creation of cloth as a finished product.

I suppose the point I am making is: think deeply about what your own areas of expertise are not bringing to your understanding of history. It's easier to miss things you'd think.

[brightclothesforwinter]

Honestly I suspect the difference is mostly down to 'one of those things you can see in someone else's clothes and go "hey, why has that person got that and I haven't"' but that's perhaps beside the point.

Lining is interesting, because even when it's there - say, when you buy a pair of moderately expensive suit trousers from the 'menswear' section - it's nasty, at least anywhere it's not visible, it's obviously the cheapest fabric they could get their hands on.

I ended up slitting the lining straight out of my suit trousers and re-lining them with linen, because I straight up could not handle the texture. Flat out unwearable. I'm honestly not sure if the jacket lining is slightly nicer because people are going to see it, or if it's just that, you know, there's a shirt between your skin and the jacket.

The last time I wore a dress to a formal event - a wedding, and the couple have 3 kids now, so that gives an idea of time - I discovered I couldn't tolerate tights, wore pop socks instead, and ended up buying a cotton underskirt from India because it was apparently impossible to find a slip in the UK which wasn't also made of something with a heinous texture. (The dress - which I made because nothing in the shops would fit - wasn't lined, actually, because it was silk taffeta and plenty opaque enough; the underskirt was necessary because it was a wrap dress.)

(After that I gave up, went in the 'menswear' section and bought the said suit, which has done me every formal occasion since then. Sure, it didn't fit me any better than anything in the 'womenswear' section, but it was constructed with the obvious expectation of later tailoring. Not to the extent of completely replacing the trouser lining, but still.)

(You'd think I'd've cottoned onto the gender-oh-no-thank-you thing earlier, all things being considered, but no, I was just like, this is practical, I don't need to replace it every time or worry about it going out of style, it's much quicker to get ready, I can put all my shit in the jacket pockets, of course I like it more...)

It's incredible how people have been protesting pants and skirts not having pockets but not a single peep is heard over the fact that skirts no longer have underskirts by default. Underskirts (or lining) was a thing when I was a child, no skirt would be made without lining, you didn't have to think and check if your whole ass is visible in a skirt because lining was a thing!!!! Now most skirts don't and it's simply because it's cheaper, fuck the fact that a customer doesn't want their panties shown in broad daylight, it saves a couple of cents on material.

[brightclothesforwinter]

[brightclothesforwinter]

i am in the 'pet names in fiction have to gel with the worldbuilding and characterisation' camp, which I'm sure will surprise exactly no-one.

Just saw a TikTok complaining about ‘kitten’ as a pet name in fanfiction and while I do agree with their discomfort on that one the comments were FULL of people mentioning all the other common pet names ?? Like honey babe baby sweetheart etc ?? Is your partner just supposed to call you by your name the whole time ????????

[brightclothesforwinter]

had a genuine revelation in therapy that made me burst out laughing, been a while since I had one of those

[brightclothesforwinter]

I mean the way I remember it -

Ah no i guess that doesn't count as a polycule, just a lot of sleeping around in overlapping configurations.

the thing about the three musketeers (book) is that there are three musketeers (guys) and also a fourth dude who's always hanging out with them and is part of the friend group. yet he is not one of the three musketeers

[brightclothesforwinter]

Exactly, like all such things it's horses for courses. (I, for contrast, often* do better if I can see the surrounding context for where I'm writing - and often also 'that other piece where i wrote about x' as well. But that is almost certainly a function of the adhd short term memory thing...)

*except if I'm feeling really awkward about what I'm writing, in which case i do better not seeing it, lol.

*through sweat, blood, and tears* YOU WILL NOT EDIT THE FIRST DRAFT AS YOU GO. YOU WILL NOT EDIT THE FIRST DRAFT AS YOU GO. YOU WILL NOT EDIT THE FIRST DRAFT. AS YOU GO.

YOU. WILL. NOT. EDIT. THAT. FIRST. DRAFT.

[brightclothesforwinter]

what's the first movie you remember seeing in theaters? don't try and be all edgy and cool and say like tetsuo: the iron man. be honest.

Go!!

[brightclothesforwinter]

has anyone done this yet idk?

[brightclothesforwinter]

Credit: artsydoe

[brightclothesforwinter]

its so important for new fans to be aware that gawain is a fake toxic bitch . and this is good and we love this for him. but if uve only read sgatgk i have to tell you that he would be soo nice to ur face and then talk shit about you to guinevere. he cares so deeply and tries to be a good and kind person despite everything he was raised to be but hes also kind of a mean petty bitch. and we like this

[brightclothesforwinter]

I see no reason why you shouldn't! (It's one thing for like, published novels where the title is what someone sees on the library shelf, but an ao3 search gives you way more information, the title doesn't need to bear all that weight on its own...)

how do people come up with titles?

why can't we just number fics like classical composers did with their stuff?

"tentacle porn No. 8 in [fandom], [pairing], op. 57"

that would solve so many problems

[brightclothesforwinter]

May your pain medication always kick in right after you take them. May your compression garments always slip on your body with ease. May you always find your footing when you walk. May you wake up with energy and zest. May your sinuses always be clear