Governor Darling placed the Weaving Establishment at Parramatta under the control of a Civil Engineer in 1826, as follows:

The Master Manufacturer, his assistant and Hackler of Flax will discontinue their attendance at the Female Factory and be exclusively attached to the Engineer's Department.

The wool and flax must be stored in the Lumber Yard and there picked, hackled and in every way prepared for the spinning wheel. In this state they will be supplied to the Matron of the Female Factory in order that they may be converted by the women into yarn and thread. The cloth, when manufactured, must be washed and dried in any situation, removed from the Factory, which may be convenient. It will then be stored in the Lumber Yard until the termination of each quarter when it must be handed over to the Commissariat Department, the officer in charge of which will give a receipt for the quantity to the Assistant Engineer.

The Weaving Establishment will consist of:

1 Master Manufacturer
2 Men to each Woollen Loom
4 Men to every 3 Linen Looms

The weavers and their attendants will work until 4 o'clock and as an encouragement to their industry, will be rewarded according to the following scale - Woollen Cloth - each loom must furnish 48 yards per week. For every yard exceeding, 4 pence will be given.
Linen Cloth - each loom must furnish 15 yards per week and for every yard exceeded, 10 and a half pence.

Cheesecloth - each loom must furnish 30 yards per week and for every yard exceeded, 6 pence will be allowed.

The Master Manufacturer will render an account to the Assistant Engineer every Saturday of the cloth made during the week and will receive the rewards upon the gross exceeds of each description of cloth to distribute to the weavers.

In another part of this minute, the following appears:

As an encouragement to industry, the women will be remunerated for their spinning as follows:

For 7 cuts per Diem, ½ penny (a cut was 70 yds yarn)
For 9 cuts per Diem, 1 penny
For 10 cuts per Diem, 1½ penny
For 12 cuts per Diem, 3 penny

Reproduced from our Journal Volume XXXIIV and researched by EP Geoff Gohl. It will be seen from the above that spinning has never been a very lucrative pastime.

Posted by Red Wolf at 9:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It is important to choose suitable Mohair (fleece of the Angora goat) for your end purpose.

Superfine kid mohair runs about 23 micron and is over 150 mm long. Fine kid may be between 23 and 27 micron and both are the result of the first shearing and should contain no kemp (short, dead white fibres which are coarse and will not accept dye).
Young goat (second shearing) is still soft and silky but the ringlets will be less tightly curled and the individual fibres will be coarser. Adult mohair, over 33 microns, should not be used in garments which will touch the skin but may be wonderful woven into a knee rug and brushed. Avoid any fleece with kemp or dandruff and fleece from a working buck.

There is, however, an old proven deodoriser for smelly buck's fleece - wash thoroughly, then add to the rinsing water equal parts of tea tree oil and eucalyptus oil

Overlong mohair is difficult to card and probably should be cut in half before attempting to hand or drum card it. Best results are often obtained by laying the mohair locks across the width of the carder so that the teeth can tease apart the curled up fibres. If placed lengthwise, whole locks will go through still in ringlet form.

If a brushed mohair effect is wanted after spinning, do not put too much twist in the spin - the length will hold it together - and after washing, brush the strands with short dabs of a soft clothes brush.

Well-chosen Mohair accepts dye beautifully and its shine and softness make it a pleasure to work with. It can also be used as the loopy singles in the making of boucle yarn or spun smoothly with reasonable twist as a warp for weaving.

Posted by Red Wolf at 9:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The January guest speaker was Rod Byatt.

The first international braiding conference was held over five days last November at Kyoto Institute of Technology, Kyoto. It attracted 120 participants from Japan and ten other countries. The next conference will be held in the UK in 2012.

Proceedings have been published and they provide an excellent snapshot of contemporary braiding world-wide. The strongest focus was on Japanese braiding including loop-manipulated braids, but Peruvian braids, Canadian Assumption sashes and Hmong braiding from China were all treated comprehensively. The entire conference was run on a voluntary basis and included practical workshops on marudai, takadai and karakumidai equipment.

An exhibition featured top-quality work and participants gained exclusive entry to private studios, factories and retail outlets. More information at www.kumihimoconf.org.

Rod discussed a wide range Japanese textiles and garments, describing briefly the many techniques and traditions perfected over the centuries. He covered fibres and spinning (hemp, paper, ramie, banana, elm, wisteria and other bast fibres prominent in country textiles and silk and cotton in city textiles); weaving (plain, twill and gauze including shima, komon, shifu, nishiki brocade, Saga Nishiki, nishijin-ori, zanshi and sakiori ragweaving); dyeing (indigo, persimmon kakushibu, shibori, kasuri); printed fabrics (paper stencils and katazome, rice-paste resist yuzen, sarasa Indian chintz) and needlework (sashiko, kogin, temari, shishu).

He had on show examples of city and country textiles, mens' and womens' garments including kimono, obi, aprons and jackets. Some examples showed how different textile techniques were combined in the one piece (background shibori dyeing with yuzen stencilled pattern plus metallic embroidery highlights) as well as how fabrics were constantly recycled, from kimono to quilted patchwork to rags ending up as temari thread balls and zanshi weaving using recycled thread.

Posted by Red Wolf at 9:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

There is a program at the Children's Hospital in Seattle, Washington for patients to make something to leave behind as a sort of legacy. Children there have time on their hands. The Seattle Weavers Guild provide trained volunteers to teach them to weave.

Children's Hospital has a recreational playroom. It's the only place in the hospital that patients can go that doctors and nurses are not allowed unless they have to be, so they know that it's a fun place, nothing painful is going to happen to them there. Between 10 and noon and 2 and 4 every day they have projects there.

Having tried inkle and other looms the guild found that Easy Weavers work the very best, because in a two hour period, a child or an adult can weave a 3 yard scarf. They really are easy. The kids love it, and it isn't just patients. Sometimes siblings come. It's really tough for siblings because they're not sick, but they have to be at the hospital because they're too young to be left at home. They've got all this energy. It's boring to sit up in the patient's room!

Sometimes they don't have anybody come in the whole two hour period, so they take an inkle loom or something to do during those two hours. But there's usually two of them, so if nobody comes they sit and talk weaving, knit or weave on an inkle loom or something. But usually they have between two and six people come.

Sometimes they have parents. They are so stressed out and have a half hour free and just want to do something that is totally different. They sit down to weave, and the repetition of it is so calming. You can see them change in half an hour!

The volunteers have changed, but the project has been going for 12 years.

The name of the project leader: Dianne McAuliffe of the Seattle Weavers Guild.

For a full transcript or download of the interview go to WeaveCast.

Posted by Prue Hill at 9:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Pills are formed of a small accumulation of fibres on the surface of a fabric . . . and are usually composed of the same fibres from which the fabric is made. Dictionary of Fibre and Textile Technology, Hoechst Celanese Corporation (1990).

Pills are the product of the fineness of the fibre used to spin the yarn and the method of spinning the fibre - ie woollen spinning. Pilling indicates that you have spun your woollen yarn correctly from rolags and that you have used fine quality fibre with a small diameter. The outcome of woollen spinning is a soft, resilient singles (or yarn) which is not as strong as worsted spun yarn, and which has fewer twists per cm, contains more air and bulk and more fibre ends protruding on the surface than a worsted yarn. Because of these fibre ends protruding on the surface of knitted or woven articles (particularly under the arms or where the body causes the yarn/garment to be rubbed frequently) the fibre ends twist together to form little balls of fibres or pills.

Pills are a sign of good spinning! However if you don't like them on your favourite jumper they can be pulled off with your fingers or with a little pill remover comb.

Pills on your garments are a sign of successful spinning, and a much loved, much used favourite garment. Some suggest that a good collection of pills on the surface of your garments create a surface or greater three dimensional appearance (like velvet) from a distance thereby enhancing your garments. You can achieve this without even trying!

Soft fibres tend to pill or produce nebs. In order to avoid pills care must be taken to take out as much of the short fibres as possible and incorporate lots of twist.

Tender or tippy fleece will break during processing, creating uneven fibre lengths which won't spin properly. To check for tippiness or tenderness, take a thin lock of fibre and holding each end tightly, tug pretty hard. If the tip of the lock pulls off, your fibre is tippy. If some of the fibres break in the middle, so that the lock pulls apart, your fibre is tender.

Second cuts are short (up to 2cm) lengths of fibre that are created if/when the shearer does his/her first cut too high in one place, and then goes back over the same spot to clip off the short bits remaining. Second cuts will turn into little pills during processing into rovings prior to spinning, and then cannot be removed. The pills will create slubs in spun yarn. To check for second cuts, open up the fleece and look at the shorn side. Run your thumbs over the cut ends as if you were fanning a deck of cards.

Staple fibres cut from polyester filament are often blended with natural fibres, including cotton fibres, to form blended yarns and fabrics that exhibit desirable properties of both the natural fibre and the synthetic polyester fibre. Blends of polyester and cotton are particularly suitable for such purposes and have found wide acceptance in consumer textile products, particularly clothing.

In blended polyester and cotton fabrics, pills tend to be almost exclusively formed from the polyester fibres in the blended polyester/cotton yarns. The pills appear to be the result of the higher tensile strength of a typical polyester fibre compared to the cotton. The greater strength of the polyester fibres encourages them to work their way out of the yarn structure and then curl up upon themselves to form the pills.

Posted by Prue Hill at 9:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Members of WeaveTech had an interesting debate last year about dyeing bamboo. The following is a précis of the discussions of Laura Fry, Su Butler, Ruth Blau, Diane de Souza, Ingrid Boesel, Sara von Tresckow and others.

Bamboo yarn, according to the National Geographic, is made from an extremely fast growing species of bamboo, which makes it a viable renewable resource for fibre as compared to wood which takes years, not months, to reach harvest. The yarn is a viscose rayon fibre not manufactured by a retting process as is linen. Viscose can be made from any wood or cellulose source as that is what it is - regenerated cellulose fibre. Rayon has been around since the 1920's. Instead of using cotton or wood pulp from trees, and instead of using chemicals to break down the cellulose into solution, industry is now looking at more sustainable crops (bamboo) and using enzymes which are then filtered out and re-used. Rayon has been considered by hand weavers as a natural fibre because it is cellulose, not a petroleum product.

Like all living things, plants consist mostly of water and proteins, and are made up of units called cells. Each plant cell is surrounded by a cell wall containing cellulose, a complex carbohydrate. From a chemical point of view, carbohydrates can be thought of as being carbon + water: they contain C, H and O. Proteins, on the other hand, are made up of chains of amino acids which contain carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Proteins may also contain sulphur - hence the distinctive smell of the burn test.

The plant stem is made up of phloem and xylem. Phloem is largely made of protein. Phloem is the food-conducting tissue of a plant; mature phloem cells are alive (and located in a layer right under the bark of a woody plant, which is why you can kill a tree by ring barking it.) Protein is dyed best by acid dyes. The main components of phloem are sieve elements and companion cells.

Sieve elements are so-named because their end walls are perforated. This allows cytoplasmic connections between vertically-stacked cells. The result is a sieve tube that conducts the products of photosynthesis - sugars and amino acids - from the place where they are manufactured (a "source"), eg leaves, to the places ("sinks") where they are consumed or stored; such as roots, growing tips of stems and leaves, flowers, fruits, tubers, corms, etc.

Sieve elements have no nucleus and only a sparse collection of other organelles. They depend on the adjacent companion cells for many functions. Companion cells move sugars and amino acids into and out of the sieve elements. In source tissue, such as a leaf, the companion cells use trans-membrane proteins to take up - by active transport - sugars and amino acids from the cells manufacturing them. Water follows by osmosis. These materials then move into adjacent sieve elements by diffusion through plasmodesmata. The pressure created by osmosis drives the flow of materials through the sieve tubes. In "sink" tissue, the sugars and amino acids leave the sieve tubes by diffusion through plasmadesmata connecting the sieve elements to the cells of their destination. Again, water follows by osmosis where it may leave the plant by transpiration, increase the volume of the cells or move into the xylem for recycling through the plant.

Xylem is made largely of cellulose and lignin. Xylem conducts water and dissolved minerals from the roots to all the other parts of the plant. Mature/functional xylem cells are dead - hollow tubes of cellulose, basically. Cellulose is dyed best by basic dyes.

In woody plants, the older xylem ceases to participate in water transport and simply serves to give strength to the trunk. Wood is xylem. When counting the annual rings of a tree, one is counting rings of xylem. Their walls are thickened with secondary deposits of cellulose and are usually further strengthened by impregnation with lingnin. Perhaps the lignin, which is highly acidic, is why the bamboo breaks down over time. But perhaps that tells us something about the properties of bamboo as well.

If only the cellulose from bamboo is processed, then the bamboo will be cellulose. But if the lignin is processed the resulting crumb will contain proteins.

Lignin in neither protein nor cellulose. It is a polyphenolic compound and these are very active molecules. They could well bind to any number of other chemicals, including dyes. Who knows what the polyphenolics may be dyed with and how well. Cotton has no lignin. The seed fibres are largely cellulose.

Flax plant has both cellulose and fairly large amount of lignin making up the xylem of the stems. Retting rots the fibres so that the cellulose and the lignin are separated. Most of the lignin is washed away, leaving the cellulose fibres used in the manufacture of linen.

In the manufacture of bamboo fibre, if only the cellulose fibres remain as long fibres they could be all cellulose and stiff like linen. If the fibres are mashed to shorten them and treated to get rid of the phenolics they could be soft like cotton. But since we do not know what process they use, we cannot tell which components of the bamboo are removed and which remain. The actual yarn may well be 100% bamboo, but the amount of the different constituents native to the bamboo can give different end product.

The bamboo may be treated in such a way as to leave only protein fibres in the cellulose mash, or it may leave the phenolics in the mash, or both. We would have to do a chemical analysis of each manufacturer's fibres. It may be more practical to do dye tests and look at type of dye, wash fastness, light fastness and depth of shade and record that with each type of bamboo yarn. This would still not tell what the properties of bamboo fibre are, but we would know how to dye the white yarn on our shelves.

Actually, as we discovered this summer, rayons can be dyed with either acid or fibre reactive dyes, as can the soy protein fibres. They don't take the dyes in the same way, or to the same depth, but you can dye them with either.

The BambroTex web site about bamboo & dyeing, says:

It is better to use active dyestuff during dyeing process, and the alkali should not be over 20g/litre, the temperature should not over 100deg C. During drying process, low temperature and light tension are applied. This suggests that this company recommends dyeing with fibre reactive dyes in an alkali solution. But apparently acid dyes work, too (maybe all too well!)

Instructions for dyeing Bamboo using Procion MX Reactive Dyes are given at: Halcyon Yarns

For more information about fibre characteristics: Swicofil

Posted by Prue Hill at 9:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Project Gutenberg has a new book available for free download that may be of interest to Guild members: Vegetable Dyes by Ethel M Mairet.

First published in 1916 by Douglas Pepler at the Hampshire House Workshops. Being a book of recipes and other information useful to the dyer.

Vegetable Dyes by Ethel M Mairet — Project Gutenberg

Posted by Red Wolf at 12:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)