Tartan Yardage Completed ~ Lynch Tartan

My tartan yardage has been off the loom for awhile now and I just remembered that I haven’t shown you the finished product.

It made a lovely looking log of tartan as I pulled it off the loom.

I ran out of the Ancient Blue wool weft when I was well into the 8 yards; I substituted grey/olive marled wool in the same grist for the weft that I luckily had on hand.  You can definitely see the difference between the two wefts; the true tartan wool is much smoother and has more lustre than the run of the mill wool weft.  However, the grey/olive weft shows the green up much more than the Ancient Blue.  This photo is before washing to full the cloth.

The definition of Ancient colours is that they are distinct from modern colours by being less saturated in tone and lighter in shade.  The term ‘modern’ refers to the aniline dyes introduced around 1860 which produce darker greens and blues and richer reds and yellows.  The term ‘ancient’ should no be confused with the age of the design.

I thought I’d give you some weaving statistics for this yardage.  I sett the warp at 28 ends per inch, 2 per dent in a 14 dent reed.

The On loom Width was 32 inches ~ The On loom length was 8 yards.

The Off loom width was 30 inches for the Lynch Tartan ~ The Off loom lengths was 5 yards 29 inches.

The Off loom width was 30 inches for the Plaid piece ~ The Off loom length was 1 yard 12 inches.

The Loom waste in the warp was 15 inches at the end and 4 inches at the tie on for a total of 19 inches.

I washed the yardage in my front loader machine on a cycle that took 25 minutes.  I want the yardage to be well fulled and this was the least time my machine could do, and frankly I just wasn't prepared to do it by hand.  I used the tiniest amount of organic laundry soap in the wash. Ahhh, I’m wishing for the days when I could open the top of the machine and pull my weaving out when I thought it looked right, sadly those days are long gone and I have to wait for the full cycle!

I folded the yardage a few times so that it fit on the drying rack and put it outside in the shade to dry.

The finished width was 29 inches for the Lynch Tartan ~ The finished length was 5 yards 24 inches long.

The finished width 27-2/4 inches for the Plaid piece ~ The finished length was 1 yard 10 inches long.

The secondary weft caused more shrinkage than the Lochcarron Wool weft; but overall there was very little shrinkage ~ not even 1%!

This is the tartan before it was pressed.

 You can see a huge difference in the fabric after just one pass through the steam press.  This yardage is amazingly supple and light and has a fabulous sheen, really lovely.

My plan for much of this yardage is to frame a piece for each of the members of the family and maybe get a garment for myself.

The Europeans have a phrase for one slow truck trying to pass another slow truck on the highway ~ an elephant race ~ well, this yardage and Ngaires shawls were our elephant race!  Thankfully, both are off the looms and we are ready to weave again!