I plan to make four curtain panels and sew them together in pairs to make a pair of curtains for my dining room. The draft is my own devising.

This has been the most trying weaving project ever. It is the widest and longest warp ever and uses more shafts and treadles than I have ever used before. I created a warp trapeze as there was no way I could beam on a wide linen warp with strong, even tension any other way.

I normally use a continuous roll of builders paper for warp packing. They sell 48” wide builders paper, but I thought that I could use two 36” wide rolls with some overlap. The warp beamed on with few issues. But when I tied it to the cloth beam I noticed that the section with overlapped paper was about 4” shorter than the outside sections. This is no good. That 4” would slowly be reeled out as I wove and the center would sag.

So I consulted Ravelry. Many people said “no paper, only warp sticks. This is the Way.” Other people said to just use sideways strips of paper. Peggy Osterkamp was cited: Cover the warp beam with a few sticks and then use pieces of paper with the edges folded over, don’t overlap the paper. This is what I did. I had to use the trapeze to unbeam the warp back to chains and then rebeam the warp onto folded paper strips. I tied to the cloth beam again and the warp looked great.

Then came a disaster with the tie-up. This was the first project to use the back shafts of the loom and I could not get a usable shed. The lower lamms were hitting the treadles. There was plenty of space between the lower and upper lamms and between the lamms and the shafts. The lower lamms were too low (and the treadles too high). I simultaneously lifted the lamm pivot 2”, lengthened the lower treadle cords 2” and shortened the Y cords by 2”. Now I get a small but usable shed. In the future I need to tweak the lamms a little more.

After rebeaming the warp, it kept good tension for the entire length of the warp, except for the rightmost sixteenth. That warp chain must not have had enough weight on it. I had issues with slack tension on that end of the warp towards the end of the weave.

On the bright side: I actually put on a long enough warp to weave all four panels. Usually with these multi-item warps the last one ends up short.

April 17th: I was planning on buying some fabric to make loops to hang the curtains from the curtain rod. My crazy husband convinced me to take the 2000yds of leftover linen and weave a 2” wide piece of linen fabric to perfectly match the curtains. This warp will actually be longer than the curtain warp: 10yds x 54ends x 24epi/ppi. I will still have linen leftover, but not as much.

https://www.ozonehouse.com/Athena/weavecalc.html?length=6...