Lampas – Documentation

Here is a link to the documentation for my lampas project.

Polychrome Lampas Finished

The lampas is off the loom and finished.  As you can see it bloomed up nicely with the doubled threads.  I made a few mistakes in the patterning, but I am very happy with the piece overall.

Before finishing

After finishing

Polychrome Lampas In Progress

I’ve made it into the three colour portion of the weaving.  Apart from a few mistakes, I think it’s coming along beautifully.

Polychrome lampas in progress

Polychrome Lampas Started

I managed to save myself some time in warping by tying on my new warp to my old one.  I’m doubling the pattern weft with the hopes of it filling in more.  I won’t know until it is off the loom and washed.

This is more work than it looks like

It doesn’t look like much, but what you are seeing is the bottom two rows of my pattern (each row is woven twice, so two rows of green weft equals one row in the graph).

My final pattern

Monochrome Lampas Finished

The weaving is off the loom and through the wash (delicate, warm, low spin).  The wash shrinks up the threads, and shifts them to the place of least resistance.  Fabric can completely change appearance and texture after finishing.

Unfortunately, it’s still really hard to photograph well.

Finished lampas

This is all 8/2 tencel.

I think for my next sample I’ll double the pattern weft, as that was usually done in a thicker thread and it’s just not filling in enough for full coverage.

Lampas Design #2 (Polychrome)

I’m only going to do two lampas designs, since they are taking even longer than I anticipated to weave.  So, a monochrome and a polychrome (multi-colour).

I’ve decided to do this pattern for the polychrome, probably repeating twice in the width:

From Ostaus, Giovanni. La Vera Perfezione del Disegno, 1561
Recharted and mirrored

The background will be white, with dark green and red, and either yellow or gold for the acorn.

I think it looks very similar to this textile in the bottom left of this picture:

Photo by Glyn Davies
Orphrey (part), silk compound weave, 1400s, German; Interlaced folage and flowers, gold red blue

How to Weave Lampas on a Four Shaft Loom

People have been asking me about my technique, so I thought I’d try to explain it here.

The loom is warped using the plan described in a previous post. I added an extra treadle sequence to lower 1 and 2 (the binding warps) to make pick up easier. This system uses pick up sticks to maintain the pattern while the binding warp is raised.

Step 1
Lower shafts 1 and 2 (or raise shafts 3+4 if you have a jack loom) – this moves the binding threads down and out of the way.
Use a pick up stick to pick up your pattern.

Picked up pattern

Raise the pick up stick and treadle pattern 1. This will raise one half of the binding warps. The shuttle needs to go in the smaller shed.

Raised patterm warp and lifted binding warp. The arrow points to where the shuttle goes.

Step 2
Transfer the pick up stick to back behind the heddles while maintaining the threads.

Pick up stick behind the heddles

Treadle and weave ground 1.

Step 3
Transfer the pick up sticks with pattern back to the front.

Raise the pick up stick and treadle pattern 2. This will raise the other half of the binding warps. As before, the shuttle needs to go in the smaller shed.

Step 4
Remove the pick up stick. Treadle and weave ground 2.

Step 5
Repeat steps 1-4 for the next pattern row.

On an angle, you can see the pattern in the weave. This should show up much better after finishing the fabric.

Lampas In Progress

The loom is warped using the plan described in a previous post.  I added an extra treadle sequence to lower 1 and 2 (the binding warps) to make pick up easier.  This system uses pick up sticks to maintain the pattern while the binding warp is raised.

The shuttle needs to go through the small opening – this is the pattern plus the binding warps.

I’m doing 2 pattern repeats, -1 to even them out, an inch of ‘plain weave’ on either side.  I’m adding another binding warp on the far end to balance the fabric.

So far it’s coming along nicely. I can’t really see the design, but I’m hoping that will show up much better with wet finishing – this is often the case with textured textiles.

Weaving so far. This took 20 minutes. I hope I get faster – I expect I will.

Lampas Fail

Well, big fat weaving fail.  I underestimated the difficulty of picking up the main warp through the binding warp.  I’ve cut off what I’ve done, and I have enough warp for one more attempt.

This time, I’ve added another treadle to lift just the main warp – I will do pick up here (unencumbered by the binding warp), then raise the binding warp afterwards and run the shuttle in the small space in between.  This should work.

I’m also realizing the time it’s  going to take to complete this project.  I will have to cut down the size of my samples, I think.  1 inch of plain plus two repeats of the pattern instead of 3 2/3 repeats.  That should still make a nice sample 8 inches wide before finishing.

I’m also concerned that the tencel will not bloom enough to show the pattern nicely.  It worked great in the cotton sample, but the tencel is a different animal.  I’m going to forge ahead and see how it goes, as fabric often looks completely different after finishing.

Threading the Heddles

I find this to be the most tedious part of weaving.

13 inches with 48 threads per inch means 624 + 4 (to center the pattern) gives me 628 threads.  Each thread needs to be threaded into the eye of one heddle, in a pattern.

1/4 of the way done.