The linen is off the loom and finished. Final measurements, 9 yards at 25 inches wide.
Before finishing
After finishing (but not ironed)
This project is the first time I had done any weaving with linen. For those of you that warned me it would be a different experience, boy were you right!
- Sizing really helps. I haven’t had the fraying issues I expected. In fact, so far my only broken warp threads have been caused by teeth (see photo below).
- Linen is inelastic. Once stretched it will not go back to its original shape. This made keeping tension difficult, especially due to my unusual, but not unexpected, stretching issues. I found that leaving the lease sticks in helped even out the tension. If I do another long linen yardage, I will order a second set of lease sticks and use all four instead of just the two I have. I also ended up dangling weights on individual threads that stretched.
No matter how hard you plan, something unexpected will occur.
