tromp as writ

The iPhone camera can take pictures of fabric through the lens of a pick glass, so you’ll be seeing some extreme close-ups of my weaving.

A pick glass, if you are unfamiliar with one, is a small folding magnifier with a 1-inch square opening that is used to examine textiles and count ends (warp) and picks (weft) per inch. When I was a student at Parsons School of Design, we used them to analyze weave structure and produce documentation about the fabrics we selected for our designs. As a weaver, I like to get a close-up look at my fabric on the loom, and again after wet finishing.

Through the lens, looking at a different part of the fabric, you can see that this is a warp-faced fabric, and you can see the multi-color fibers of the sari silk stripes in the weft. The square is 1 inch, and the magnification is 6X. A quick count shows 36 epi (ends per inch)and 10 ppi (picks per inch). Don’t forget to count across 2 rows to accommodate for the warps that go behind the weft on the first row.

The pictures are easy to take under bright lights. All I had to do was place the camera lens over the pick glass and wiggle the camera around until the entire square came into view. Afterwards, I used Photoshop to reduce the picture size. The original image is four times larger than what is shown here. I also cropped the picture tightly to the image shown through the pick glass lens.

Halcyon Yarns lists a 5X pick glass in their catalog. Come join the fun of seeing your fabric up close.