WEAVING 



G233 



WEAVING 



grasses for weaving its nest and makes the 

 openings on the side. The eggs are pure white 

 in color and are six or more in number. In 



THE WEAVER BIRD 

 And some of the nests it constructs. 



India and Ceylon is found the baya, a weaver 

 bird which constructs a flask-shaped nest with a 

 long, tubular entrance, suspending it from 

 thorny branches of the tips of palm leaves. 



WEAVING, weev'ing, the art of making 

 cloth by interlacing threads or filaments of 



y:irn. Between rustic homespun and the splen- 

 did tapestries of the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries, carefully preserved under glass in 

 museums, there would seem to be a wide gulf; 

 yet they are the result of substantially the 

 same process of weaving. 



To make cloth of whatever sort, the weaver 

 passes one set of threads, known as the weft or 

 two/, alternately under and over another set of 

 threads, known as the warp. To do this he has 

 to raise certain threads of the warp and 1< 

 others, in order to make room for the passage 

 of his shuttle carrying the weft to and fro 

 across the web. The remaining operation is 

 simply the driving of the weft threads firmly 

 against the warp, so as to form a web of cloth 

 of the required texture. In working into his 

 cloth designs of one sort or another, the weaver 

 naturally changes somewhat the order in which 

 the threads are interlaced; the principle, how- 

 ever, remains the same. 



Hand Weaving. For centuries all weaving 

 was done on hand looms, and much of it was 

 surpassingly beautiful and rich. One need only 

 mention the splendid Gobelin tapestries of 

 seventeenth-century France and the rich \ 1- 

 vets and silks produced throughout much of 

 Europe after the Renaissance. Into the tapes- 

 tries were wrought with cunning art, figures of 

 man and beast, rustic fetes, triumphs at arms 

 and devotional subjects without end. 



In weaving, the warp threads are first laid in 

 place on the frame. They extend lengthwise of 



TRRDAY AND TO-DAY IN 

 An old-fashioned wooden hand loom, and a modern loom. 



