Heddle Puzzle Solved!

Some of the barn frame looms at Marshfield School of Weaving. 

Following my last post, I did some networking.  Craig had told me that Norman Kennedy knew how to "knit heddles".  In trying to contact Norman, I found Kate Smith of Marshfield School of Weaving, who had learned how to do it from Norman.  Kate said she was willing to set up a class with one of the teachers at her studio, Alison Pyott.  So on 27 September, Laura Busky, Diane Howes and I piled in to my minivan and headed up to Marshfield, VT. (Maxx went along, too. Kate and her people are very dog friendly.) It was a beautiful fall day, and the 3 1/4 hour drive went quickly with the good company.

Laura and Diane get the hang of it quickly.

After a quick orientation and tour around the amazing studio facilities, we got started.  Alison gave us a demo and then set us to work.  Laura and Diane sat on opposite sides of one setup, working in tandem, while I started a new set of heddles on Diane's jig.  We used 12/6 cotton seine twine wrapped on netting shuttles.

One thing about these heddles is that on each harness, all the heddles are connected.  That is, they are made from continuous threads tied to a guide thread along the top and bottom of the harness.  That means that you need to decide on how many heddles per inch are needed for the project before starting to make them.  Since I didn't have a particular project in mind, but I know that I have several reeds available, I decided to go with the nice round number of 10 per inch.  With 2 harnesses, that gives me 20 ends per inch to weave with.  (There's no rule that you have to use all of the heddles, so I could skip some when threading and go with fewer epi, but I won't be able to use a higher sett.)  An additional thread is used along the edges to mark off sets of heddles (10, in this case) to help keep track.

Here's a video of the process. There are 2 steps, so you may have to watch it twice to catch both parts.  The first (Diane's part) is to take the shuttle down under the harness stick, around the center dowel, and back over the harness stick. Using the shuttle, the thread is looped around the guide thread and then tied in a half hitch to secure it.  This process is repeated 10 times, spacing the heddles as evenly as possible along one inch of the heddle stick.

The second part (Laura's part) is a bit more complicated. A separate shuttle and twine is used. Starting on the opposite harness stick, the thread is brought under the harness and around the dowel, bringing it through the first loop on the other side.  This connects the two parts of the heddle.  Shaped around the dowel, a clove hitch (2 half hitches) makes the heddle eye.  Then back over the harness stick, wrap around the guide thread, and tie a half hitch to complete the heddle.  Repeat for each of the loops.

When the heddles are complete (sometime in the future), the center dowel is pulled out, revealing the heddle eye.

The process looks complicated at first, but it's very repetitive, and once you get the pattern, it goes pretty fast.  The key is keeping the heddles evenly spaced and evenly tensioned.  The first set of 10 was slow, especially since I was pulling too tight and had to cut them off and start again, but after that I settled into the pattern. By the end of the afternoon, I had about 3" completed.  We were back in Westford in time to do some spinning with the Westford Spinners that evening.  It was a long but happy day.

The heddles in progress on the jig with the OCGH loom in the background

Diane's jig was missing some legs, so Dan turned 3 new ones out of some oak on Saturday.  On Sunday the OCGH had its annual Colonial Craft Day.  I took the jig and partially knitted heddles over with me to work on.  Visitors were interested in the process, but it took some creative arm waving to explain to the non-weavers what the heddles were going to be used for.  I got a few more inches finished before running out of thread. My LYS (The Fiber Loft) has it on order, so hopefully I'll be back in production in a few days.  In the mean time, I got some flax spinning done on my Country Craftsman wheel (visible between the heddle jig and the loom.)

Next up: the beautiful treadles Dan made!