Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Time Trial

Sooooo back to the crafting....
I had so much fun with Jacob's place mat I decided to do one for Abby too. Again I used scraps I had, rather than going out and buying more yarn (see profile pic....). This one has a very different look than Jacob's even though it's essentially the same. The reason it's different is because of the variegation in one of the warp yarns I used.
I thought it would be interesting to time each step of the process to see how long it took me, find out where my 'time sucks' were, and have relevant information should I choose to start selling my weaving.
So here is Abby's place mat:

It took me just under 4 hours from when I began measuring the warp until I had finished cutting the fringe. I think my time will go down as I get more practice with the loom and the dressing process (putting the warp threads on). Also If I were to warp say 4 mats at a time my time would not increase to 16 hours, it would actually go down on the time per mat since the dressing of the loom is the longest process and I would only have to do it once.
I would have to increase the measuring time by a very slight amount and I would have the same 'finishing' time for each one but overall I would save time by doing them all at once.

For now I have saved my threading from Abby's mat and I am tying new threads onto the ends of the old and will beam them through so I don't have to re-thread the reed and heddles. I think it will be less time to do it this way rather than re-threading the whole shebang.

In other news I have housekeepers now. I know it seems silly and self indulgent since I am a stay at home mom but how else am I going to get my weaving done? I snuck a pic of them at work the other day:

3 comments:

Together We Save said...

Oh my... your helpers are very cute!!

Alexis AKA MOM said...

Yeah to the other placemat I hope it goes faster as you go :).

LOVE the helpers :), Cole is loves to vacuum also. Now if it was really clean ... lol :)

tweetey30 said...

those mats are just adorable.. and so are the kiddo's cleaning. my nine year old is deathly afraid of the vaccuum for some reason.. i cant get her to touch it..