Here's a quick look at some of the basic steps involved in weaving
something as "simple" as a tea towel.
1. The process begins with the selection of the yarn for the project.
For tea towels, 5/2 cotton yarn is used, unmercerized natural for the
field and mercerized colored yarn for the accents. The amount of
yarn needed for the project is then calculated.
2. The yarn comes in cones. If you look carefully, there are some cones
visible in the background of this first photograph. To get the proper
lengths needed for the warp threads on the loom, the yarn is measured
off the cone using a warping wheel. A guide thread (the thin red line in
the photo) is wound in a spiral path around the wheel to assist in the
measuring process.
3. The wheel is turned by hand as the yarn is wound in a spiral path to
achieve the desired individual thread lengths. This process continues
back and forth until all of the needed warp threads have been measured
off. For a normal batch of tea towels, more than 260 individual threads
are needed.
4. Groups of measured threads, called warp chains, are placed on the
loom in preparation for loading. The plain and colored threads are
separated according to the warp pattern that will be used in the weaving.
5. The threads are then fed through the reed, one thread at a time,
matching the color sequence of the tea towel pattern.
The reed maintains the warp spacing at so many threads per inch.
6. Next, the threads are individually fed through the heddles, again in
the proper sequence. During weaving, the heddles move up and down,
lifting threads in an alternating pattern to achieve the desired woven
structure of the fabric. The weaver uses her feet to press on long wooden
treadles to cause the heddles to rise and fall.
7. After passing through the reed and heddles, the threads are secured
at each end. On the back side of the loom, the threads are tied off to the
back beam. On the front, they are tied off to the fabric beam. This must
be done carefully to ensure an even tension on all of the warp threads.
8. Yarn is also wound onto long pirns that are loaded into shuttles that
carry the weft threads back and forth across the loom. The initial few
lines of weft here are done with light rope as a means of getting the warp
threads stabilized before starting the finish weft.
9. Once the weft gets underway, it's a matter of working back and forth until
the desired length of fabric has been achieved. Warp threads are the "long"
threads attached to the loom, while the weft threads are the "back and forth"
threads coming out of the shuttle. The colored accents are woven in at
regular intervals using a separate shuttle loaded with colored thread.
Multiple tea towels are typically woven in a single continuous run.
10. Of course, more remains to be done after the fabric has been woven on
the loom. The material is removed from the loom, washed and dried (which
sets the weave and softens the material sububstantially). The individual
tea towels are then cut and hemmed, and after a label is attached, they are
finally ready.