Weekly 11

Creating a closed pocket (on accident)

As I began to weave, I had to just trust that the pattern was doing what I wanted. After a while, I thought it wasn't, but then I remembered that I would have to lift up the black and white threads (odd and even) separately to see the pocket. Once I did, I found that I hadnt created exactly what I was expecting. I forgot that I woul dhave to use two different wefts to make a separated pocket, so my single weft pocket was closed on both sides. While this was originally a mistake, I kept weaving like this in order to add more space, since I realized this would create a safer compartent for my battery.

To simplify the more complex pattern, I distilled the lift plan into numbers of which levers where supposed to be down. The pattern was: 1 and 5, then everything but 4 and 8, then 3 and 7, then everything but 2 and 6, and repeated this. The numbers helped me understadn what was happening, and also helped me go faster.

Creating an accessible pocket

I then switched to using two different wefts. This was very easy to see, since I had already started creating a pocket.I could see this progress immediately, and it worked just as I expected. Using thicker yarn was also interesting to see, as it made layers bulkier. My goal was to weave this long enough so that I could place my battery inside and access it through the open pocket area.

With my number pattern, I just had to remember that I only used yellow when two levers were down, and blue when all but two levers were down.

Integrating Electronics

I slipped my battery inside, then used inlay to pass the wire through each layer. I put the positive wire to the yellow side and the negative wire through the blue side so they didn't accidentally sew the pocket closed. The LED, wrapped in yellow yarn, was passed over the weaving so that it kind of blended in. I think I could have worked harder to hide the ends of the LED. 

Switching lever order

At the end, I was having fun so I wanted to see what happened if I kept the same numbered pattern but switched it so I counted the levers from the opposite side (so lever 1 before was now lever 8). This brought the black warp ends up to the top layer, and with it, the blue weft. I created a thin open pocket., big enough to fit a pencil in, before finishing with tabby.

I noticed that the two layers progressed at differetn rates to one another, due to the way they were beaten at an angle, so when I started this pocket, there was a gap in the weft.