Tips and Tricks for Weaving on Your Cricket Loom /
A Cottolin Picnic Roll-up
continued
Sett: 20 ends per inch, two threads in each slot and hole in a 10 dent rigid heddle
Warp length: 48”
Total warp needed:
214 yards natural 22/2 cottolin
54 yards gray 22/2 cottolin
Width in reed: 10”
Weft:
Picks per inch: 20
Weft needed: 220 yards to weave 36”
Warping sequence:
1” natural
1” gray
6” natural
1” gray
1” natural
Weave the full length of your warp in plain weave. This should give you roughly about 36” of fabric if you are beating a balanced plain weave. Balanced simply means that you have the same number of weft picks and warp ends per inch. After you finish weaving, cut the material from your loom, leaving about a 1” fringe, and zigzag stitch along the cut edges. You’ll cut this fringe off once the piece is washed and pressed. Toss your fabric in the laundry (washer and dryer) with your clothes and steam press.
Pre-wash dimensions: 36 3/4” x 8 7/8”
Post-wash dimensions: 35” x 8 1/2”
The piece is now ready to be cut in two, leaving you with two 17 ½” x 8 ½” pieces of fabric.
I’d like to talk a bit about using a sewing machine with your handwovens. I love to use the walking foot for this purpose. The walking foot contains a second set of what I like to refer to as grippy bits. So not only do you have the grippy bits integrated into the sewing machine guiding your fabric along from the bottom, but you have a second set of grippy bits attached to the walking foot that help pull your fabric along the top as you are sewing.
Because I love a good experiment and am happy to do what needs to be done to best illustrate an idea, I stitched down two seams of our cottolin fabric, one
using the standard zigzag foot and the other using the walking foot.
You can see that the seam sewn with the zigzag foot got a bit more squashed and puckered, and at the end of the seam, the top and bottom layers of your fabric do not line up. The seam stitched down with the walking foot, however, looks nicely sewn. I used a zigzag stitch and my walking foot on all of the seams in this project as the zigzag stitch visually blends a bit better than a straight stitch.
So now you have two pieces of fabric. Using your iron, press a ½” seam along one of the cut edges of your material, folding this over again and pressing to hide and protect your cut edge.
Along the opposite edge, you will make your silverware pocket. Start by pressing over just a single layer ½” seam. Get out whatever cutlery you might like to fit in your roll-up, and determine how much fabric you need to fold over in order to create a pocket of the correct size.
Press the edge to form your pocket. When you stitch this in place, you will also stitch along the bottom edge to create the pocket, leaving one end open into which you can slip your cutlery.
You’ll need a tie to keep everything in place. You could use ribbon or twill tape, but I opted to make some twisted cord. Schacht sells something called The Incredible Rope Machine. This is based on a gadget that Barry used as a Boy Scout, back in the day, and I promise you that you will find a use for