Reading a Woven Fault: Every Line in the Cloth Names Its Cause

**A line where the structure is wrong** — the over-under pattern breaks along one or two threads. A **threading error**: those ends went through the wrong heddles. It runs the whole length, and it is fixed by re-threading those ends, which is worth doing however far in you are. **A line where the structure is right but the spacing is wrong** — a visibly wider or narrower gap. A **sleying error**: too many or too few ends in one dent of the reed. Re-sley that section. **A loose line, threads floating above the surface** — a **slack end**. Weight it separately over the back beam. **A puckered line, the cloth drawn up along one thread** — a **tight end**. Ease it, or weight the neighbours. **A streak of different colour or lustre down the cloth** — a different yarn, or the same yarn from a different dye lot or a different bobbin. This is why warp for one piece is wound from one lot, and why alternating between two cones across the warp hides a difference that a block of each would show. **Repeated breaks in the same few threads** — abrasion, either from a rough heddle or reed, or from draw-in at the edges. Find which, because the two fixes are different.

**A band of denser or looser cloth** — the **beat** changed. Often at the start of a session, or when the warp was advanced, or as the weaver tired. **A float — weft passing over several warp threads it should have gone under** — the **shed was not clear**. A warp thread failed to lift, usually because it was slack or stuck to its neighbour. Fix the shed; the float can be needled in afterwards if it matters. **A loop of weft hanging out at the selvedge** — the weft was laid in with too much slack, or the shuttle unwound at the turn. **The cloth narrowing** — draw-in increasing, which is the weaver pulling tighter. **A visible line where a new weft was joined** — the join was made at the selvedge, or the overlap was too short, or the tension differed. **A weft thread lying at an angle rather than straight across** — the beat was harder at one side than the other. Watch the fell line. **Streaks of a slightly different colour across the cloth** — a new bobbin from a different part of the yarn. The remedy is the same as for the warp: alternate between two bobbins pick by pick rather than using one after the other.

**Mendable at the loom:** a broken warp end, a slack end, a float caught within a few picks, a sleying error found early. All of these are routine and cost minutes. **Mendable after cutting off:** a float can be needled into the correct path with a fine needle and the excess trimmed; a small hole can be darned in matching yarn. On a busy cloth these become invisible. On a plain one they are visible and better than a hole. **Improvable by finishing:** a slightly uneven beat, a marginally loose sett, small irregularities in handspun weft. Washing and fulling pull a woollen cloth together and hide a great deal. This is not cheating — it is what finishing is for, and every traditional cloth relies on it. **Not mendable:** a threading error left to run the whole length; a sett that is badly wrong; a warp yarn too weak for the job; a cloth woven at the wrong density throughout. **The honest decision is early.** Half a metre into a piece that is going wrong, cutting off and re-threading costs an afternoon. Ten metres in, it costs the whole warp. Weave 20 cm, cut a sample off if the loom allows, wash it and look — before committing the rest.

Every warp is worth a page, and the page is short. **Yarn** — fibre, grist in metres per gram, twist, singles or plied, and where it came from. **Sett** — ends per inch, and how it was sleyed in the reed. **Width and ends** — in the reed, and the finished width after washing. **Length** — warped, woven, and finished, so the take-up and shrinkage are recorded as percentages. **Structure** — the threading and treadling. **Weft** — yarn and picks per inch. **Finishing** — how it was washed, how hard, how dried. **A sample stapled to the page**, washed and finished. That last line is the one that matters most, exactly as it is for the dyer's card: the cloth is the record and the writing explains it. **Two pages with the same fault is a systematic problem** — the loom, the reed, a habit. One is an accident. There is no way to tell which without the pages. And the shrinkage percentages are the thing that is reused most: they are what turn "I want a scarf 180 cm long" into a warp length, and they are specific to the yarn and the finishing rather than general.