Sonja Mantere

Wool weaving

In early spring 2019 we started school with an interesting project which took us to Scotland and its long history of wool weaving.

We could design our own woollen checkered tartan with a unique colour and stripe rhythm. I had never woven with wool on a loom before nor used the Weave-point program, so that course was an important launching step and challenge for me in my professional career. I learnt a lot about different weaving patterns, materials, finishing techniques etc.

Here you can read what tartan actually means:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartan

"Tartan is a patterned cloth consisting of criss-crossed horizontal and vertical bands in multiple colours. Tartans originated in woven wool, but now they are made in many other materials. Tartan is made with alternating bands of coloured (pre-dyed) threads woven as both warp and weft at right angles to each other. The weft is woven in a simple twill, two over—two under the warp, advancing one thread at each pass. This forms visible diagonal lines where different colours cross, which give the appearance of new colours blended from the original ones. The resulting blocks of colour repeat vertically and horizontally in a distinctive pattern of squares and lines known as a sett. "

I wanted my tartan cloth to look a little bit different from my first mental image of traditional Scottish kilts. I wanted to use crisp, springlike colours in my poncho.

I wound the warp from four different yarns and colours. We used "Esito" wool yarn :

(https://www.lankava.fi/fi/esito-kampalanka-villa/)

Here in the picture my four-shaft loom is prepared and ready to go...! I had set up looms before, so that itself was not new for me but I was not so familiar with different weave patterns.

I learnt twill weave (= toimikas) is characterised by diagonal ridges, created by the regular interlacing of threads of the warp and weft during weaving. I learnt how versatile twill weave actually is; you can design and weave many different pattern variations depending on how many shafts you are using, the thickness of your yarns, colours etc.

I was very inspired by the wool, its various possibilities so I was happy we were given free hand to weave whatever we wanted for our last work during the course. I designed a three-meter-long pine tree tapestry for our 110 year old house using the Weave-point program. The pattern I used in my design was curved twill (= kierretoimikas) I wanted to create a three- dimesional feel to my two-dimesional textile by using many different colours in the warp. I used "Pirkka" yarn:

https://taitoshop.fi/tuote/pirkka-lanka-ohut-100g-vyyhti/

Warping (= loimen luominen) took a lot of time because of many different yarns, but the weft was only one and the same natural white colour. I used my own handmade 12 -shaft loom for weaving.

Pine tree tapestry

This woollen fabric which I designed for school was inspired by the Finnish national costumes. We also used the same traditional patterns in weaving like satin (=pomsi), plain -weave and weft rep (=kuderipsi). This fabric was made for these little bags which were on sale in the Taitava shop.

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