How long did that take you to make? How much would it cost to have you make me one of those, or item x?
I always give honest answers to both, thought the questioner rarely likes this honest answer!
Well as all weavers know there are several phases of weaving, preparing the warp, winding on the beam, threading the heddles, for table or floor looms sleighing the reed and then finally weaving! Each project is unique and varies according to the number of threads i contains. I thought for my purpose here I’d elaborate on how long by using my most recent project, a 32“ wide baby blanket. This project is sett at 20 ends per inch, which means that there are roughly 640 threads.
First I had to measure out each thread. I used a warping mill to do this. Although I did not time this process, from other recent projects, I guesstimate that this took about 5 hours. It only took about 2 hours to put the warp on the back beam, thanks to Peggy Osterkamp’s genius!
Because I get asked the how long question so often, I time myself every now and again, which I’ve done for the rest of the warping process. Today I timed myself to see how long it took to thread 4 heddles (or 1/5”). This took just over a minute, including putting the stopwatch down. So I think an estimate of 5 mins per inch is fair. This means that over all it will take about 3 hours total to warp. This doesn’t sound like much and isn’t if you can keep the process up constantly for that amount of time. Assuming sleighing the reed takes the same 3 hours and tying on takes another half hour. I will put in 13 hours worth of work to get to the actual weaving. Since this blanket is a straight twill and I’m using a foot controlled floor loom, the weaving process will go fairly fast, but I’m not yet sure how fast. I’ll keep you updated once the projects is finished with a final estimate of how long that one took.
The last small rigid heddle project I completed, I timed the warping process throughout. It was about a half inch wide and 4 yards long, it took 2 hours to warp, which means this simpler process takes about 4 hours per inch to warp. I plan to completely time my colour gamp rigid heddle pick up lace project, in oder to have a better idea of how long that type of weaving takes and to have a comparison with the floor loom process, which has the additional step of sleighing the reed and more complex patterning.
As you can see weaving is a very time intensive process, this is why the honest answer to the question of how much can I pay you to make a specific item is you can’t. My close friends who ask this question usually get the item they want for the cost of the thread, but even if I charged minimum wage for my time handwoven objects would be extremely costly. 13 hours at $7 an hour is $91 and that’s just the warping process, no the actual weaving! One day I hope to be practiced enough that the warping and weaving process won’t take so long and I might be able to make things to sell in order to subsidize my retirement! Until then my payment for weaving will be the joy that it gives and the experience I gain with each item!