This item is a tabby woven cloth using handspun Jacob fleece. The cloth was based on various archaeological finds across Europe that date from the Bronze Age forward. The fabric created is akin to a homespun and woven good rather than something purchased.
Materials and Methods
The Jacob fleece was sourced from two different locations. Both sources were private individuals with small flocks. The fleeces came lightly skirted but uncleaned. The fleeces both had some vegetable matter in them. The quality of the fleece also varied with some of the deep brown fleece having a finer fiber and feeling very soft and spongy to a slightly coarser fiber with a “harder feel” in the greyed out fibers. The white fleece was fairly consistent even across the different providers. In general, Jacob wool is a medium grade (24-33 microns, Bradford count 44-56s, demi-luster), with an open character, a soft springy handle and little or no kemp, or britchyness. The staple length ranged from 3-5”.
The fleeces were both left unprocessed and spun in the grease to allow for the lanolin to stay within the yarns. The weft was spun first. It was combed with “Viking combs” that have approximately 6” tines with open spacing allowing for the fleece to be combed but to pass freely enough to not damage the individual fibers.
Spinning was done on a modern castle-style wheel for the sake of expediency and time. The amount of fiber that can be spun using a wheel is significantly higher when compared to a drop or supported spindle. The white/light gray weft was spun using a long-draw technique to allow for the loft to stay within the yarns. This method allows the twist created by the wheel to travel up the length of the yarn and into the extra fleece to preserve some of the airiness, or loft. While this is usually done for knitting yarns as opposed to weaving yarns, I wanted to allow for the additional loft in the weft so that the fabric would full and, even felt, during the last stages of processing the cloth.
The weft was “s” spun with the wheel and spindle moving in a counterclockwise direction. The weft has an average of 30 “wraps per inch” with some inconsistency in the yarn diameter.
The dark (brown/dark grey) warp was “z” spun with the wheel and spindle moving in a clockwise direction during the spinning. The warp was also spun in a worsted style only allowing the twist into the part of the fleece in front of my hand. This allows for a smoother, tighter, and finer yarn with less chance of fraying as it is warped in the loom.
The hope was that with opposing directions of spinning in the warp and the weft, the fabric would have less of a bias pull to it allowing for straighter fabric.
Originally, I was hoping to weave the fabric on a small 4-harness loom that would have been appropriate to the later Middle Ages, however, there were some technical issues with missing parts, and I, therefore, defaulted to my 32” rigid heddle loom with two 12.5 dpi heddles. I planned to use a 2-1 twill pattern that would have been appropriate to time period, however, after warping the loom with two heddles, it became apparent that the residual lanolin in the warp threads combined with the fineness of the weaving yarns posed a significant challenge. The heddles would not move appropriately or allow the sheds in the weaving to open or close due to the “stickiness” of the warp.
I re-warped the loom using a single 12.5 dpi heddle and moved two yarns to each slot and each hole. I tied on and began to weave. The warp wasn’t as tight as I would have liked in both the up and down positions causing the weaving to be slower than anticipated since I had to manipulate the warp by hand at times to throw the shuttle. And when I tried to advance the warp, I again ran into the problem of the sticky warp. I advanced what I could, continued to weave, and then cut off a sample portion.
The sample was finished using castile soap and cool water. I used cool water so that all of the lanolin didn’t dissolve but the soap did lift the dirt from the fibers. Then I used very hot water to rinse and shocked the fabric in cold water to try to set the fibers. I did use the dryer with wool drier balls to remove additional water and full the fabric slightly more.
Facing the challenges of the thin, sticky warp threads that tangled easily behind the heddle, I believe that if I try to re-warp the loom again in order to complete the project that I will need to either use a lower dent heddle to allow more room for warp movement or convert the project to a loom similar to a warp-weighted loom.
This forced me to cut away some of the length and to re-warp the loom using only a single heddle and to switch to a simple 1:1 tabby weaving pattern.
The intent is to complete the weaving and then to wash and full the material leaving as much of the lanolin as possible to create a water-resistant cloak or shawl.
Relevant Historical Information
While I used Jacob sheep fleece for this project, there is no definitive evidence that they were present in Europe during the time period appropriate for this project. In period, according to ML Ryder, most sheep in Europe and the British Isles were comprised of three main types – horned hill sheep, shortwools, and long wools. The predominant sheep type during the Middle Ages was of a type that produced hairy-medium/generalized medium fiber.
Jacob sheep, while not explicitly in the historical record during this time, also fall into the category of a medium/medium-fine fleeced sheep. Jacob sheep are considered to be a “primitive” breed based on a number of traits common to unimproved breeds including the presence of horns in males and females, body size and type, and somewhat coarser fleece than improved breeds. Jacob sheep display genetic traits more similar to South-Western Asiatic and African breeds according to a research study in the jounal Science in July 2011 using retrovirus integrations to determine the history of sheep breeds.
Nordic sagas provide some insight into the tools and methods of Viking age textile production according to “Semiotics of the Cloth”: Reading Medieval Norse Textile Traditions by Tibbs (2012). Combs, warp-weighted looms and other items are written about. I used what are termed Viking combs to comb the fleece during this project which are tools that would be appropriate during this time period as well. Combs have been found in various Viking Age graves as well. (Pulsiano, 1993).
During the Viking Age through most of the Middle Ages, spinning wheels were not yet known. Spinning wheels were not found in Eurpoe until the 13th century with different styles not appearing for quite some time after that. Spinning was done using spindles of various types depending on region. There are archeological finds of spindle weights of various materials from Roman settlements to Coppergate in England to the Nordic countries. I chose to use a modern castle-style wheel for the sake of time and ease. Utilizing a drop spindle would have taken exponentially more time to produce the amount of yarn needed to weave a significant amount of cloth. In period, this was accomplished by having several women spinning together to create enough yarn for a weaver to create the cloth. (Smithsonian, 1980).
Grave finds across Europe have indicated that woven fabrics were usually made of single threads as opposed to plied yarns. One find in Novosvobodnaya found warp threads of only 0.04-0.06 mm thick and weft threads of 0.06 mm thick. The fabric found there was low density with fine threads creating a gauze-like fabric (Shishlina, Orfinskaya, and Golikov, 2003.) Other finds in the Nordic countries have found both fine and coarse weave fabrics in twill and tabby weaves.
During the Viking and Anglo-Saxon ages, most production of textiles was done in the home. Most commonly, a warp-weighted loom utilizing a vertical frame with warp threads weighted down and held taught using weights of various materials was used. (Pulsiano, 1993.) By the 11th century, the horizontal loom had appeared in France and then started to spread through the rest of Europe (Pulsiano, 1993.)
Finishing of yarns and fabrics usually included the use of fermented urine utilized for the ammonia content to dissolve the dirt and lanolin in the fleece. Fabrics may or may not have also been fulled by waulking or literally using the feet to move the fabric through hot liquid in order for the fibers to become more deeply intertwined and less likely to unravel when cut or worn.
Bibliography
B. Chessa, F. P. (2009). Revealing the History of Sheep Domestication Using Retrovirus Integrations. Science, 532-536.
History of the Jacob Sheep. (2020, February). Retrieved from Jacob Sheep Conservancy: https://www.jacobsheepconservancy.com/history
Hoffman, M. (2020, February 20). Retrieved from medieval.ucdavis.edu/SWEDEN/Clothmaking.html
McCloy, H. (2020, February 19). A History and Evolution of Spinning. Retrieved from The Evolution of Spinning: kws.atlantia.sca.org/spinning.html
N.I. Shishlina, O. O. (2003). Bronze Age Textiles From the North Caucasus: New Evidence of Fourth Millennium BC Fibres and Fabrics. Oxford Journal of Archaelogy, 331-344.
Ostman, R. (2020, February). Clothing and Textiles: Ancient Europe, 8000 B.C. to A.D. 1000. Retrieved from Gale World History in Context.: http://ic.galegroup.com/ic
Rogers, P. O. (2002). Craft, Industry and Everyday LIfe: Finds from Medieval York. In The Archaelogy of York. Council for British Archaeology.
Ryder, M. (n.d.). Medieval Sheep and Wool Types. The Agricultural History Review, 14-28.
Ryder, M. (n.d.). The History of Sheep Breeds in Britain. The Agricultural History Review, 65-82.
Smithsonian Institution, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. (1980, September). Spinning Yarns, Telling Tales about Textiles. Art to Zoo, pp. 1-2.
Tibbs, K. M. (2012, May). “Semiotics of the Cloth”: Reading Medieval Norse Textile Traditions. Marshall University. Retrieved from Marshall University Marshall Digital Scholar.