How Harris Tweed is Made - From Yarn to Tweed

If you had asked me a year ago how Harris Tweed wallet is made, I would have answered something like this: Wool goes to the mill and turns into yarn. The yarn is transported to the weavers in their yards and they weave it into tweed. Then the tweed is transported and processed into many wonderful things. Work done. Sounds plausible enough doesn't it?

If you have not yet read the first part, how wool arrives and how it is made and processed into yarn, you will find it here! And now the third part is done, from the weaving shed to the customer, read it here!

Looking back, I can't believe how clueless I was. Not that I was totally wrong, but similar to "Boy meets girl, children go by and everyone is happy until the end of their days" is simple. There is much more to the process. When I visited the Hebrides last year, I gained the knowledge by following the process from start to finish. 

 

Stage 7: The yarn reaches the shed to weave

When you knit with a spinning mill, the yarn is delivered to the weaving shed so you can get started. An independent weaver must visit the factory to purchase the necessary yarn. I'll step aside for a moment and go into a couple of things. One of the things that makes Harris Tweed unique is that it has to be woven in the weavers' home. It is often mentioned that it must be woven by a craftsman, but that is not entirely true. What is a crofter?

That confused me, but it turns out that this is someone who rents a piece of land, no more, no less. However, to become a Harris Tweed weaver, all you need to do is live on the islands of the Outer Hebrides and have a place for your loom. Which brings us to another important point, the loom must be powered by the weaver. I am mentioned many times that Harris Tweed bags are made by hand, which might lead you to imagine that the loom is operated by hand, which is wrong as everything I saw was operated with the foot. Older looms have two foot-pumping pedals, newer double-width looms are like an exercise bike.

However, you really don't want to be too smart with your loom, like hooking up an electric motor (which seems very natural to me). The Harris Tweed Authority is aware of the temptation involved and constantly conducts random checks. You will be caught weaving with unauthorized power and you will be banned from trading. For life. This is serious.

So with that out of the way, let's move on. When the weaver makes custom tweed for a mill, the chain is lined with trees and can be attached to the loom. All warp threads are tied to the last previous job. Again 696 for single width and double for double. That's a bunch of tricky little knots! The independent weaver places the warp threads according to the desired pattern. Remember, the warp threads are the ones that don't move when the loom starts, it's the weft that flies back and forth.

The business side of an Mk2 Hattersley loom, medium weave. Blink and you would miss the shuttle hitting side to side!

As soon as the warp is set, you need to "program" something before continuing. This is to tell the loom how these patterns will be created and even the old single width designs provide a very simple setup that basically defines which shuttles need to be fired in what order. There is a reason herringbone pattern is common, it is so easy to do. You really only need two colors of yarn and you decide how many yarns end in a warp before the pattern changes (how many weft lines, so to speak?). then a 4×4 herringbone is as small a herringbone pattern that is noticeable, and a 12x12 is big. A herringbone (draft) pattern is placed on the boards (the order in which the ends of the thread go through the strands) rather than on the pattern chain (don't worry, I'm trying to figure that out too).

You can also program patterns, even on old looms. However, it is not conventional modern computer programming. In ancient looms, this is done with chained pieces of metal arranged in the required order. Newer looms have a punch card system. The rumor that computer technology will be used at Crofts for the next 50 years is not true.

Stage 8: The loom is ready, we weave Harris Tweed!

Once set up, there's really only one thing left to get your legs going and keeping you awake. A typical weaver creates about 20 meters of single width tweed, plus double width, in one work day. A weber yard is 8 feet long and there are 30 weber yards for a large roll of tweed, i. H. 73.2 meters. A full roll can be up to 43 meters long!

A double width loom is operated by pedals.

It's not just about daydreaming about country bike tours (when asked, 100% of the two Weber interviewed said they had no preference for cycling) or a pass to the Tour de France. You have to keep an eye on progress and nip problems in the bud. And there's the thing with the flying shuttle. As one of the most important inventions of the industrial revolution (around 1750), it replaced the manual shuttle (that is, the piece that goes back and forth between the warp threads to create the actual fabric). The manual shuttle severely limited the speed of a loom, but that changed with the flying shuttle, as it lives up to its name. The shuttlecock is basically in a very fast and very direct tennis game that is struck from side to side at a remarkable rate. It almost always works perfectly and everything is fine. Every once in a while, though, the boundary is jumped and ... well, be careful where you put your cat.

The two types of loom, single and double wide, vintage and modern, basically fulfill the same function. The difference, as I see it, is that twice the width for the effort given by the weaver produces twice the area of ​​the fabric, although this also means an investment of around £ 25,000, so a few feet are needed. tweed for performance. on investment Investment. A vintage Hattersley Mk2 from the 1950s would weigh around xx pounds.