It’s funny, I just was talking about how to have straighter sides in your weaves, and then I wove for our weave along and noticed that the rows I put in are really pulling the weave’s sides in. Like I said it takes some attention to make sure your sides are straight when weaving, even when you’ve been weaving for a while. And when I was making the weave along post, I was more focused on setting up and getting a good picture of each step that I didn’t pay proper attention to my weave sides.
Mistakes can always happen, but the best thing about weaving is most of those mistakes can be corrected. I had talked about this type of weaving issue in my post on fixing weave sides that pull in, so I’m actually happy that this gives me a great opportunity to demonstrate how to fix your rows that are pulling in your warp threads too tight.
step 1|| I separated out my bottom row so that I had enough space to pull my thread through the warps.
step 2|| I carefully worked the thread from the right side where it ended, pulling an amount to the left side of the loom. I pulled out about 1 inch of the thread (you might need more then 1 inch if your rows are pulled in a lot) to the left, making sure that I still had enough end thread to tuck in the back of the weave. If you have to fix rows and your end thread is too short to pull to give slack, then I would recommend pulling the whole bottom row out from the warp threads and using that to get slack for the rest of your woven rows. You can always re-weave that bottom rows with another piece of that same weft thread.
step 3|| work the extra thread through each row, making sure that each row is loosened and the weft thread loosely wraps around the end warp thread. Your amount of weft thread slack will lessen as you move up the rows. When I reached my top three rows, I was out of weft thread slack, so I pulled some from the top row, where I had another end thread.
step 4|| once you have loosened each row with more weft thread, pack your rows back against the previous rows that were woven. In our weave, this would be the twinned row.
After I fixed my rows, it doesn’t look like a lot has changed, but it actually does make a big difference in my weave’s overall shape. It’s also important to fix my mistake here so that when I weave more rows, I don’t want them affected by this mistake. You might also notice that I also fixed my bottom rows so that they were straight. I did this by separating the rows more evenly.
Have you ever re-worked rows in your weave that you may have pulled too tightly? It seems daunting at first, but it’s not too much effort to fix, especially if you spot the error early in the process. Laura, a reader, had commented on my last post on fixing weave sides that she’ll run fishing line down both sides of the weave. She’ll tie the fishing line next to each end warp thread, then weave around it. Once finished with the weave, she’ll cut the fishing line and pull it out. I love this idea, the fishing line is strong enough to keep the end warps in place and might be something that you would like to try. Thanks Laura for the tip!
Happy Weaving!
Kate
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