Moving Silk Skein to Spool for Warping

Question: I’ve just bought some silk from JST and I don’t want to mess it up! Do you recommend winding silk onto spools in the same way she winds bobbins?

Our silk comes in a skein. To get your silk to be easy to wind into a warp, the first thing you need to do is to “open” up your skein. That’s done by putting your hands inside the warp to support the warp and snapping the skein a number of times, as you move the skein around your wrists. This helps the silk to stop clinging to their neighbours and get ready to unwind happily from the swift. Find where the 2 ends of the skein are tied together and take the outside one and get it started by winding a bit around a spool. Put your spool into your bobbin winder and away you go! A large Leclerc styrene spool will hold 100 g of silk.

In Season 1, video 1.1.2 of the School of Weaving, Jane demonstrate how to move silk from a skein to a large styrene spool.

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