Hi experts all over the world, I need your help.
I've bought the wavy thing for my rigid heddle ashford because I LOVED the 3D effect it can make and I've been battling it for a few weeks. For the love of any god, I'm not able to make the ends stick together.
I've tried different yarns, different widths, different beating, different sides, read lots of text, saw a ton a of pictures and hours of videos, asked a million questions - and this is what made most sense: double threaded cotton on 7.5 30/10 with ashford caterpillar.
The center is fine and it looks it might be good even after wet finish but I'm lost on the edges.
What is your experience? Do you have any secret hack? Thanks a lot for any answer!
it's a trap š that's exactly me a few weeks ago. the caterpillar ashford cotton IS really pretty and 3D! (fyi it's very pretty even with a plain shuttle and weave)
Hi, so ā¦.. after many attempts to make the edges work and many failures to do so, Iāve accepted Iāve failed and untangled the yarn so that I can use it again (itās one of my most expensive yarns).
Maybe later Iāll try again BUT it looks like the wavy shuttle is great for tapestries and definitely not good for scarves etc and I donāt want to make tapestries soā¦ here we are.
That is such a shame. Funnily enough i showed someone your post the other day. They said that wavy shuttle work best if you change shed & then beat. Mine arrived, but I haven't had a go yet...
Change shed. So i suppose nothing i can do with my rigid heddle loomā¦?:).
Iāll come to it some time later but i have just this one loom and i had it blocked for two weeks trying to figure it out so wanted to get rid of it
I think Iāve tried that too.
Iāve seriously spent more time just searching how to solve this than I spent searching for the loom, buying it, bringing it home, building it and making the first five carpets :-D and then more time trying to make it work.
It might be some stupid mistake I made maybe at the beginning and I wonāt make next time I try it because the middle of the thing was all perfect (and the width was narrower than the shuttle), just the edges were shit.
Looking at your pictures, the edge problem on wavy weave is almost always a tension issue rather than a yarn. When you beat, come in at a slight angle rather than straight on, this helps the weft settle into the curves more evenly at the edges.
it might be seen at one of the pictures, I beat it a bit at an angle (and I thought this might be the problem actually).
I really don't know - I've tired the longer waves at first, nope, edges looked even worse, so I went back and started again with the shorter waves. it definitely looks better but the adges are still shit Ģ_(ć)_/ Ģ
From the first photo, you can see the draw in at the outside edges of the warp threads align directly with the breakdown of your wavey weaving. Try doing your work with a more dramatic amount of weft in each pick. I think a "mmmmm" instead of a wide "n" sort of throw before you beat down. Obviously, your interior weft tension is ok, so focus on a little extra weft at the edges so there is less draw in.Ā
I can't guarantee, but try this for a couple inches, aiming for your warp thread to remain straight with no draw in. I think it may work.
Workshopping a theory here but I think they might mean before beating make sure you have a good amount of āextraā looseness in the weft threads (I.e. instead of a single arched shape so your weft is slightly longer than the width of your piece, have several small arches so that excess is available across the piece). This will help the weft settle into the wave shape without distorting the edges so much. Apologies if Iāve got this wrong, though!
Your sett looks too wide. I never use anything less than a 12.5 for 8/4 cotton. Even doubling it doesn't fill in the spaces in between the heddles in the reed. Your ends need more draw in for it to be more compact. When I make towels with 8/4 on a 12.5, the draw in is only about 1/4" on each side, and my selvedges are clean and tidy.
(I live in the other part of the world where we don't use inches so we dont use "8/4 cotton" categories. makes things a bit more complicated for me but hey, that's what Google was invented for!)
I do not make wavy towels, but that shouldn't matter. There is too much space between the heddles. You need a smaller sett. See my picture attached.
You can make your own determination about what the sett is by wrapping the yarn around a ruler. Weaving is unfortunately dominated by imperial measurements WPI/EPI, (ends per inch), but if you wrap the around around 1 inch on a ruler, and count them, you can figure out what sett you need. Less will give a more open weave, tighter will be stiffer.
okay, maybe I wasn't clear enough - we don't use this classification where I am, so saying 8/4 for me means basically... two. and it's not writeen anywhere on the yarn I get here. also the first number is about yards per pound or whatever (which is in the same category as inches for me).
either way, I'm trying narrower sett next time
there's weight of the skein, length of the thread and usually recommended size of knitting needles and hooks. and material and colour code. that's it.
if you buy at a shop specialized in weaving, they have the size (x/X) on their website
At uni we were recommended to do a plain weave selvedge if we were doing any fancy patterns that didnt have much stability at the edges to help keep the shape. Unsure how easy this would be one your loom or with your technique though. It is a very beautiful result that your creating.
i would love to see the edge areas that are giving you trouble, or maybe i donāt understand the question really. very fun effect though. i am extremely curious how it behaves after washing.
if no one pops up with experience with this specifically and a solveā¦ nothing wrong with covering the edge with a wide fabric border, maybe that frames it on all four sides, and call it an intentional design decision. might look awesome
I am not an expert as Ive never tried this, but I have ideas!
Consider buying a tapestry beater? After placing your weft with the wavy shuttle you could potentially use the tapestry beater to tamp down the edges.
I wonder what would happen if you tried skipping dents or using a variable dent reed that would allow you to open up your sett a bit toward the selvedges? Then you could overcome the tendency of the yarn to not pack as tight because you're giving it more space to pack.
As I'm looking at other folks versions of this online, it looks to me like you might be beating a bit hard for this sett. The visual effect is very cool, but I think that's maybe part of what's causing challenges.... You're essentially doing a cramming and spacing technique but the cramming is happening h design so the spacing is happening automatically. Not sure, but might be worth a try to just beat a little less hard.
Your weft needs to be tighter to draw in the edges. It looks confusing because your wavy beater is causing the inner warp threads to draw inward due to the irregular shape of the edge of the beater. The outer warp threads do not enjoy this benefit as they are on the edge and the wavy pattern does not tighten the weave from the outside in but instead from the inside out. To remedy this, give the weft yarn more tension when pulling it through. The overall width of your final weave will be more narrow. You will have to experiment with what amount of weft tension works best.
Edit: look at the spacing between your warp threads. See how they are closer together in the middle but farther apart as you get closer to the edge? You want those to be even.
aaaawwww thank you (not finished, I got different stuff to to for the next few days so the work is waiting and I'm collecting information and try something later. I'll come back with the result)
It seems your warp is wider apart towards the edges than in the main/middle part of the warp. No idea though how that happened or how to solve it. I'm only a beginner weaver myself, but seriously tempted to try this, it looks so wonderful!
This has to do with the tension of the weft. Itās drawing in more towards the middle and less at the edges, which is actually the opposite of what most ppl struggle with. Which leads me to believe tension is the over all issue here, but that could also have to do with the set.
Hi- incoming advice from an inexperienced weaver, and I have never used this type of shuttle, but in looking at it two ideas come to mindā¦
1) closer sett at the edges- if youāre able to somehow add more warp threads (Iām experienced, but the self described queen of trying all the things, while muttering to myself āthis is a terrible ideaā, just so i know for sure what works and what doesnāt.
2) adjusting the placement of shuttle towards the selvedges (might make smaller waves?). I think I saw someone once make wavy shuttles out of cardboard with different sized curvesā¦ maybe some amalgam of those ideas?
I have used these types of bars before, you have to get the sett exactly right or else everything will wash out and just look off. Unless it is nice and compact it will just wash out and be too loose when you wet finish it. Right now don't really worry about the wave of it. Worry about getting your tension correct just like you would with a normal piece of cloth. All of those loose areas are just going to look odd when you take it off tension. Been there don't worry this is normal for learning. You need to get to the place where you are beating it and each row is nice and tight. Pull your ends in on the sides, beat tighter, rethread possibly a little tighter, but I wouldn't necessarily start with rethreading, just going tighter and more consistent with each thread. Let me know if you have questions, its been two decades since I have used this kind of beater but I have used one.
oh perfect! yeah, I'll just go on with this and will see what happens after wet finish.
the previous attempt looks fine-ish after wet finish even at the edges - but I used different yarns so the 3D efect is not there (just a slight waving).
so - did you use the wavy shuttle from the beginning or a few rows later? I started with the plain one, made a few rows quite loosely, and then started with the wavy one. the 3D effect is made by moving the shuttle to the side a bit so it's not like it stays the same at the sides, it just has to change. and that's where I'm lost
I always weave really tightly; it's personal preference. I started with thick yarn and a normal beater, until my warp pulled together as normal. I don't remember moving my beater back and forth. I'm sorry about that, but I must have, because it was undulating. My beater was metal and a wave, so I could beat hard with it and create different wave textures. I was mostly experimenting with how it looked with different weaving twill structures, so there was already a play happening between them. I was just pushing it farther. You have something great happening. Just keep playing. I would say just work on getting tighter. I always worry about losing structure in wet finishing. You could conversely add some tapestry pieces in, to fill in structure that could be really lovely as well, and would add to it, just make sure to weave in your edges.
O am piggybacking on your post, hope that is ok. There is a wavy weave I did for my daughter, she wants a bag out of it, so I didn't care about how the edges looked, as I will be sewing them up. I haven't gone any farther, as the waves don't seem stable. Research has show several peeps have washed the waves out, yikes! Would a sewing stabilizer between this weaving and a backer fabric work?
heyyy that's nice! I like the idea of a stronger row sometimes!
I'm not sure I can help with washing - I've read people just make it wet in a bathtub, keeping it flat, and then carefully push the water out and dry it flat too.
I wasn't gentle with my previous attempts (like washing it in a normal way and then squeezing the water out) and the waves almost disappeared so I know you can't do this.
A master Mayan weaver taught me backstrap weaving and the thread was so slippery and fine that she had me twist the thread at the end before starting then next round.she had me hold the tension at the other end while I twist and gently pull then beat it again. She explained that twisting it once or twice will tightening it up and secure it from separating at the ends (amongst other things which I canāt remember). I wonder if that would help š¤·š½āāļø
that's interesting!!!
the caterpillar blue is wavy itself though. and this waviness should connect with the multithread cotton warp somehow
so I'll try twisting with a different experimental weave, thanks for that!
In my experience you lose the 3d aspect immediately if you twist the work at all after you're done. I chose a fluffy yarn for my weft and a tacky yarn for my warp. It's been too long to remember the specifics, but my instructor said not to ever wash and to probably never even wear it when I made that pattern. I currently use it as a runner.
For the endges I always use a floating selvedge. And I beat a few times working from the tensioned edge to the free at an angle until I was horizontal.
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u/Clone-Club Jul 29 '26
Sorry, no idea, but that is so pretty š I might need to buy a wavy shuttle now!