When Anu Bhatia contacted me about some experiments she had done using a fan reed, I asked her to write about what she had learned and share some of her beautiful ondulé scarves for eye candy. ~Susan
I knew nothing about fan reeds or ondulé weaving until March 2022 when I watched Norma Smayda on a Handweavers Guild of America Textiles & Tea interview. Norma showed her beautiful weavings and talked about the book she had written about ondulé textiles. I had never done anything remotely close in my weaving, and I wanted to try.
Ondulé is a French word meaning “wavy” or “corrugated.” Weaving ondulé textiles requires a special reed called a fan reed that has fanned-out dents in place of the typical straight vertical dents. The number of fans in a reed varies according to the number of dents per inch and length of the reed. In the vertical center part of the reed, the dents are equally spaced, and when the warp is in the center, it is also evenly spaced. When you move the reed up or down, the warp ends move closer or farther apart depending on their position in the reed. The undulation of warp ends and subsequent sett changes result in textiles with wavy patterns. These are the basic mechanics of how a fan reed works to produce ondulé textiles.
Getting Started with Ondulé Weaving
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In the Unites States, The Woolgatherers (see Resources) is the source for fan reeds. The company, owned by weaver Sara von Tresckow and her husband Hans, sells stainless-steel fan reeds in two standard setts of 12 or 15 dents per inch and two standard lengths of 16" or 24", although you can order custom reeds.
My first hurdle was devising a system to hang the fan reed between the heddles and the breast beam. A fan reed needs to move freely: vertically to change its height and the warp ends’ setts and horizontally to beat. When weaving ondulé, the loom’s standard beater is either kept out of the way or removed. Thanks to our deck-building contractor who put together two wooden blocks with drilled extensions to clamp onto the castle, I soon had the structure I needed. With this contraption in place, I excitedly ordered a 16" long 12-dent full-fan reed and Norma Smayda and Gretchen White’s book, Weaving with a Fan Reed.
With the help of a building contractor, Anu added extensions to her loom’s castle that hold the fan reed but allow it to move forward and backward for beating and up and down to change the warp sett. This photo and the next two by Anu Bhatia
Even before the reed and book arrived, I designed a simple twill scarf and measured the warp for my first project. My beautifully handcrafted reed came with two yards of 12 mm Texsolv cord and anchors for hanging the reed. The reed has seven full fans in the middle, two half fans on each end, and is 4" tall. I threaded the cords through holes drilled in the extensions and hung my fan reed.
Ondulé Twill
My first ondulé project was a two-block twill scarf. I wanted to focus on color and design placement in relation to the fans of the reed. For warp, I selected wool-silk laceweight yarns in three colors. The warp of 256 ends plus doubled floating selvedges spanned across five of the middle fans of the reed and aligned perfectly with the edges of the fans. I sett the warp at 24 epi as I would for a non-ondulé project knowing it would go higher and lower depending upon the position of the reed.
I am a front-to-back warper, and according to The Woolgatherers, you must warp back to front with a fan reed to avoid damaging the dents. To resolve this issue, I first warped front to back with a regular 12-dent reed keeping the lease sticks attached. After beaming my warp, I removed the regular reed, using the lease sticks to keep my ends in order. Then I re-sleyed my warp in the fan reed before tying the warp to the breast beam. After switching the reeds, I pushed the beater out of the out of the way leaving it to rest against the breast beam and the now threaded fan reed hung in place in front of the heddles. It worked like a charm!
Weaving and Reed Positions
In a fan reed, the warp lays flat in the middle aligned with the center of the heddle eyes. At this position, the warp is evenly spaced. I marked this middle neutral position as zero (0) on the cords. For my first scarf, I wove borders at this neutral position for a few inches, then started moving the anchors in increments of two cord holes up or down on every ninth pick. When I pulled the reed up, the warp moved down within the reed, and vice versa. Each position shift moved the warp about ½" in the reed. Using markers, I color-coded three anchor positions above and below 0 on both cords, calling them +1, +2, +3... or -1, -2, -3, etc.
Anu’s black-and-white scarf on the loom threaded through the fan reed and midway through weaving.
Starting at +1, I threw 8 picks at each position moving the anchors up first and then going down incrementally to -3 before returning to 0 totaling 12 anchor moves. As the fans in the reed are so arranged that an upright fan is followed by an inverted fan, with each anchor shift, the warp opened up in one fan and got crammed in the next. I kept detailed records of these repeat cycles and completed my very first ondulé scarf. The piece turned out beautifully with subtle wavy selvedges and twill patterning along the length of the scarf.
Completion of my first ondulé project gave me the confidence to design projects in other weave structures using a variety of yarns. I added two more anchor positions (+4 and –4 marked in yellow on the cords) to weave curves that were a little wider and deeper.
Marking positions on the Texsolv cord allowed Anu to see where to move her pegs as she wove.
Ondulé-Bronson/Huck Lace
My next two ondulé projects were lace scarves. In the first one, I used a dark green accent in the warp to highlight the wavy lines. I beamed the warp as I did for my twill scarf, centering it in the middle five fans of the reed.
Accent stripes in the warp accentuate the waves in this lace scarf woven with silk/wool and silk yarns.
Taking advantage of the gradually widening sett at the top of fans where the dents were farther apart, I wove the lace motifs at the top and bottom positions of the reed and alternated them with plain weave woven at the middle section of the reed in more neutral positions. Treadled at nine different positions with 14 anchor position moves and 5 or 6 picks per position resulted in a dainty and elegant scarf.
I used the same draft for the second ondulé lace scarf. I combined solid and variegated Tencel from my stash for the warp to weave this piece. I placed solid Tencel for lace motifs in the center of the fans and variegated Tencel on the edges of the fans to undulate and create waves. The use of color enhanced the yarn movement and created a beautiful drapey scarf with an allover windowpane-like effect.
Three ondulé scarves. Note the sakiori-style scarf on the left woven in solid and variegated Tencel, and silk fabric remnants. Warp sett changes created warpwise stripes in the fabric.
More Ondulé Adventures
My next fan-reed adventure combined ondulé and deflected doubleweave. I wove with laceweight yarns in the warp and weft. I wove this scarf using nine different reed positions with eight picks per position and various treadling sequences. The scarf has a tortoise shell–like pattern along its length.
Finally, I used my fan reed to weave a Japanese sakiori-style scarf. I wove with ½" strips of silk remnants as weft and used 8/2 Tencel for both warp and tabby weft to complement the silk. I threaded this warp starting from the middle of a fan on the left to the edge of a fan on the right using 3½ reed fans. I used nine positions in the reed with three silk picks (one silk pick was followed by two Tencel tabby picks) thrown at each position, and the result was astounding! Only the selvedge on the right resulted in a wavy edge (shown on the left in the photo above). Sections of crammed and open warp resulted in warp-faced Tencel stripes alternating with weft-faced sections showing silk fabric.
What I learned about Ondulé
I enjoyed every bit of my explorations of ondulé weaving with a variety of weave structures, yarns, and sett. Although at first the initial setup was daunting, once I got used to the weaving pace, I found ondulé easy to manipulate to achieve the woven aesthetics I desired. Keep the following variables in mind when designing an ondulé project:
• As with any weaving, choices of yarn, sett, color, and weave structures are important factors to consider for ondulé weaving.
• The width of the project in terms of the number of fans used determines the number of waves in an ondulé textile.
• Position the warp in the fan reed in relation to the pattern repeat.
• Warp ends in the middle of a fan stay straight whereas ends in the first and/or last dents will show the most movement.
• Frequency of reed position affects the curves in the final fabric.
• The number of vertical positions in the reed determines the width of the waves produced. In my first twill project, I used seven positions. From the second project onward, I used nine positions (four above, four below, and the neutral position).
In my projects, I used a fan reed to add undulation to the warp. Similar wavy effects can be achieved in handwoven textiles by using rail reeds or open-top reeds. A wavy beater stick produces weft waves. Rail reeds work on the principle of altering the density of the warp by physically moving the reed dents. Open-top reeds allow weavers to swap threads to different positions to have more dimensional textiles. These reeds are wonderful tools that make interesting textiles and can take your conventional weaving to the next level.
Resources
Smayda, Norma and White, Gretchen. Ondulé Textiles: Weaving Contours with a Fan Reed. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, Ltd., 2017.
The Woolgatherers, woolgatherers.com.
ANU’s passion for weaving is rooted in the rich textile traditions of India. She considers herself a curious and perpetual learner of weaving. Anu enjoys weaving from her home-based studio Kargha (a loom) in Fort Collins, Colorado.
