Weaving in the Ends

Tapestry Doodle #11: Brassica napus; Hand Woven Tapestry; 2.5" x 2.5; spindle spun wool warp and weft; Weld (Reseda luteola), Wolf Lichen (Letharia vulpina, Indigo (Not sure which genus)

Last week's post generated  a couple of questions:
one about about the clean edges of the tapestry doodles
and another about how I weave in the ends as I go.
Rosemary kindly pointed Janet to my four selvedge warping instructions, which helps explain the clean edge thing, but I thought I'd attempt to show how both questions can, in part,  be answered at once.

 Above is a photo of an empty four selvedge warp, and if you follow the lines of the warp you can see that it zig zags between the top and bottom supplemental warps (smoother and finer).
The warp with which I weave, then, is actually two strands twisted around each other and used as one except at the bottom where the loops are offset by one strand.

This means that when I begin weaving, as in the photo above, I can just lay the weft into the open shed and it is caught by the offset loop which means it does not need a header (or anything else), to hold it in place.
There is nowhere for the weft to go.
This also means  that if I lay the end of the weft (in this case two strands of yellow), into the shed with the ends of the wisps at the selvedge, it stays right where I put it.
 Nothing sticks out save the odd tiny wool fiber.

When I run out of weft, I weave to the very end of the strands, including the little wisps, and then lay the new weft on top, overlapping the wispy ends. 
This is how I change color too. 
​If a shape is finished before I've reached the end of the yarn for that shape, I break the weft at the appropriate place and weave the wisps in.  Nothing goes to the back.

Three  things to note at this point:
1. The wisps exist because I always break or untwist rather than cut the weft
With singles weft, I hold the yarn with my hands a staple length apart, untwist each strand, tug lightly, and the strands separate leaving the wispy ends ready to weave.
​ Plied weft, alas, untwists into its component strands of singles so it is easier to simply break it. The wisps are rarely as long or nicely tapered as with untwisted singles, but it still works. 
If your yarn resists easy breaking, you can 'shave it' with a pair of scissors. 
The point is to avoid the blunt end that happens with a straight scissors cut.

A pass of eccentric weft defines the curves. If I'd taken a photo from the 'dark side of the loom,' it would look essentially the same as this front view.

2, Using wool warp (as well as weft) is a great help with this technique
I once wrote a blog post called In Praise of Wool Warp, where I think I may have talked more about this, but the idea is that the tiny strands of warp and weft tangle with one another and hold all those wispy bits in place. 
​Wool weft on cotton warp should be OK too, as long as all of your weft ends are treated as described above so they can cling to each other and not pop out.

3. Weaving with hand spun weft gives me some leeway.
Since all of my weft is perfectly and consistently 'imperfect',  an extra half pass, or a slight bump where one overlapping strand meets another, will vanish into the general look of the tapestry.
On  the rare occasions that I've used mill spun weft, I still weave in the ends, but use extra care with the overlapping of the wisps.

Unhappy with the similarity in value between the brown and green hills,, I unwove the bit of sky on the left and removed the brown hill.

,It is also worth noting that, though my yarn is not as smooth as most millspun, it is still essential to count passes while building curves and also to pay attention to hollows and fulls (or highs and lows/ fulls and empties) as the shapes build up.
An extra pass in the wrong place can wreck a graceful curve no matter your weft material, giving your smooth hills unlooked for rocky outcroppings,
​or imposing the dreaded nipple effect on an otherwise sensuous body part....

Tapestry Doodle released from upper supplemental warp, but not the lower. You can see the top warp loops however, which give it the clean finish of the four selvedge technique.

There is much more to be said about weaving in ends -- indeed, I could go on and on and on, but I have more little doodles in my head so need to get back to the loom.
For now, you can find out a little more by checking out my post on weaving letters, where I show how I use a needle to move weft around inside the tapestry itself, and also how I finish small shapes without leaving any tails on the back.
 Rebecca Mezoff uses a needle to weave in all of the weft ends of her tapestries, she just does it when the tapestry is off the loom rather than as she weaves, and I know this works better for many people.  Her classes tell you just how to do it. 
For me, it's best to do it I'm still in the thick of the action as, if I waited till the pieces were off the loom, I'd probably never get a Round Tuit. 

11 Tapestry Doodles and counting...

One last thing-- this week is the American Tapestry Alliance Blog Tour!
  It started yesterday with Molly Elkind's great blog post on using collage for tapestry design.
At the bottom of the post are links to the blogs for the rest of the week.
There are even Prizes!!!!
It was great fun doing this two years ago, and I'm delighted it is now a thing.
So check it out!  Who knows what we'll all learn?

Doodles in the raw.