Measuring Progress

I have now crossed the 3 foot mark on my Shadow Weave scarf.  It’s coming along quite beautifully.  My edges continue to remain even, with very little draw-in, and as it rolls onto the front beam, the width is remaining very consistent.  I love it when things work out the way I planned!

As I was working, it occurred to me that some people out there in blog land may be wondering, How do you know how far you’ve woven?  Since the weaving rolls onto the front beam as it weaves, it makes it rather difficult to pull out your trusty measuring tape, especially if you’re trying to use one of those metal tapes, which seem to be the only kind I can ever find in my house.  I know I have at least two cloth measuring tapes, but they have disappeared into my craft room somewhere, and I only seem to find them when I don’t need them.

Another problem with trying to measure my weaving is that even if I did have my cloth measuring tape handy, I don’t want to unroll the cloth on the front beam to measure it as I weave.  There are a couple of reasons for this. 

Unrolling the cloth can create problems with the active weaving edge.  Most of the time, a good sold beat of the reed after re-tensioning plus the proper finishing technique will fix this, but I don’t like to take chances here.  

Another pbroblem I’ve had is warp threads catching on something and breaking when I’m re-tensioning.  Again, I can fix this, but it’s a pain in the neck to do it.  

Finally, if I release the tension to take a measurement, I’m losing one of the big measurements I like to track for my projects.  I track the length of a weaving on the loom so that I can compare the product under tension with the product after removing tension and after finishing.  This is the main reason I try to avoid unrolling the fabric until I’m done.

So, how do I do it?  I took a page out of my woodworking husband’s book and borrowed the idea of a “story stick.”  Woodworkers will sometimes make a story stick using a piece of extra wood and creating markings on the stick to indicate various cuts or dimensions they need to achieve, especially if it is for a repetitive process on a project.

To create my “story string” I found a piece of extra string hanging around and tied a couple of knots in it that are 12 inches apart.  I can lay my string on my weaving from the last marking place and see where to place the next marker.  I use a safety pin to mark the different 1 foot increments.  Here’s a photo of my story string in action.

 

using the story string

 
And here’s a photo of my safety pin markers on the project.

 

safety pin markers

 
Eventually, I think I need to switch from using this piece of cotton to using something that has less stretch, perhaps some linen or something.  I’m not overly focused on accuracy, but using something with less stretch will be more accurate.  I’ve thought about trying some card weaving; maybe weaving a small band for this measurement could also be a good option.   I’ll have to think on that…