Hello all:
Quick question from a beginning weaver, my wife is starting her first project, a red and white checked dish towel, 1" stripes (15 epi) that is 17" wide on the loom using 8/2 mercerized cotton. We are using a used LeClerc Nilus loom that I did my first project on which was a bread cloth using same warp materials, only different colors. Here is the issue, on one side of the towel, her left, the weft stripes are curving upward (towards the warp beam) and creating what we refer to as a bit of a smile in the weft stripe. The right hand side seems to be fine. We are not using a temple at this point (though we may try that next, the one we have is too long for this project it turned out). We recently spoke to a friend who used to weave years ago, and their thought was the warp has an uneven tension on that end of the warp (we tied the ends at 1" intervals to the cloth beam, following the stripes). I also noticed as you bring the beater up to the fabric it seems to have equal amount of draw in from either side to the reed. We ran our hand over the warp before and after tensioning it prior to the first throws of the shuttles, and it felt pretty good to us (but again we are new to this).
So, anyone had this experience as well, or know how to correct this? Since we are just starting the project and we put extra length of warp on the loom we could go ahead and cut off the 6-7" we've done so far and start again if indeed this is a tie-up tension issue. Or would a temple correct this, our introductory weaving class did not cover the use of temples so we are a bit unsure of its use.
Hopefully the attached picture will help with my description (the oversized temple we have is laying on top so you can more easily see the issue, but you can also see it as the fabric is passing over the breast beam), thanks in advance for any of your thoughts on this
Mike and Mary in MD