SOUTHEAST FIBER FORUM

The Southeast Fiber Forum was held at Arrowmont School of Crafts in Gatlinburg in early April.  I attended and took a weekend class in Turned Beiderwand taught by Karen Donde of Sutherland Studios.  Karen is a great instructor, very well organized with lots of information ranging from fairly straightforward to deviously complicated on this old weaving structure.  By turning the Beiderwand structure, it can be woven with one shuttle, which makes the weaving progress much faster.

However, in weaving turned beiderwand, two different yarns are required for the warp and they are taken up differently during the weaving. The pattern warp has much   longer floats and therefore ends up looser on the warp beam.  So it is necessary to either use a second warp beam or do what most of the class did - jerry rig a secondary warp with a piece of wood pretending to be a secondary back beam and weighting the warp to  provide the tension.  This is a technique that can be used any time a supplementary warp is required.  I have read about supplementary warps for other weaving structures, but wasn't sure how to go about this without a second warp beam.


Attached are some of the other student's samples of work created during the week.  We sampled a wide variety of turned structures, including Turned Beiderwand at 1:4, 1:3, and 1:2. I was using 8/2 cotton for the ground warp and weft and a 5/2 cotton for the weft.  Most of the rest of the class was using a 10/2 yarn for the ground warp and weft.  This meant that my sample had very long warp floats, especially on the 1:4.





The other weave structures that we turned were:

• Summer and Winter
• Extended Summer and Winter
• Even Tied Overshot
• Uneven Tied Overshot
• Paired Tie Weave
• Half Dukagang

  The photo to the left is of our class assistant Dana's work.  Dana brought a borrowed Baby Wolf 8- shaft loom to class, just like my loom.  The person she borrowed it from, offered it up for sale and I bought it immediately.  I have been looking for a loom to take to Montana, so I don't have to drive one out and back on every trip. Dana used a pink supplementary warp on a green weft and not only did I get the loom, but she also left her remaining warp on the loom, which I have been weaving off with a burgundy tencel as weft using a Turned Extended Summer and Winter draft.

 It is hard to put an additional warp beam on a Baby Wolf because the back beam is not square - it comes out from the loom at an angle.  This makes it difficult to attach another back beam using clamps.  Once I got back to Brevard, Gary made a creative solution for the Baby Wolf by building a frame with a secondary back beam that slips over the original back beam leaving a space of about an inch between the two warps.  The supplementary warp can be run over this beam and weighted using water bottles and S-hooks.