White Threads

Today, as I am heading off on my research trip, we have a guest post by Lilian Kok from Holland. Lilian will be sharing with us about her embroidery group’s trip to Vaupel and Heilenbeck. Vetty Creations stock linen banding from Vaupel and Heilenbeck, and I have recently ordered more, including some that I haven’t stocked before. Hopefully they’ll arrive to coincide with my return. I’ll let you know when they go up on the website.

Let’s hear from Lilian:

“Out of a desire to meet other women with my passion for needlework, plus the wish to preserve the skills involved in needlework, I started a little local group eight years ago. It is called Handwerkcafé Waddinxveen Café (pub) because you only attend if you feel like it, and can miss meetings if you have no time or inclination.

We meet weekly in a school, and we only have to pay for coffee and tea. This is ideal to keep things simple. In the meantime, we have grown from an initial 6 to 10 attendants average, to 18 to 22. From purely local to serving a wider region around Waddinxveen, a community of around 30000 inhabitants.

Every woman simply brings her current project, and we have fun chatting and get lots of inspiration from one another. Sometimes, we arrange to do a workshop. Here too, we like to keep things simple and costs down, to avoid thresholds due to lack of income. The camaraderie among the needleworkers is delightful and by sharing unwanted needlework materials in the café, we even manage to raise a little money for our local food bank.

We have a (Dutch language) blog and a group on Facebook.

This week, we went abroad to visit the weaving mills of Vaupel and Heilenbeck in Germany. Many of our group are currently focusing on needlepoint embroidery done on the linen banding produced by Vaupel and Heilenbeck. Located in Wuppertal, it is a good 2.5 hours drive from us. This is a small family business that has ‘rescued’ weaving looms that are 100+ years old, producing fine linen banding in numerous colours, widths and even thread counts. The most common thread count being 11 threads per centimetre, but they also weave 12 threads and 14 threads/cm.

Need I say that we enjoyed the cordial reception we received at Vaupel and Heilenbeck? We were greeted at the door by the owner and his wife, asking us if we cared for coffee and ‘Kuchen’ (cakes). The showrooms were so beautifully decorated with stitched items. The coffee room mainly in reds and green as the Christmas season is near. Other rooms had spring, summer and autumn decorations, we were all so inspired and enthusiastic.

We were taken to the weaving mill, and could view the process of weaving up close. The space between the various looms is hardly wide enough to get in between them. One loom can produce 5 or more bands simultaneously. The machine (loom) is set up with lengthwise threads; warp, and width threads; weft.

(If you’re reading this in an email, you can view the video here.)

The warp threads are pulled up or down according to the pattern to be woven. Very thin metal parts, like needles, are attached to threads which go up in the loom, where die plates (sturdy cardboard cards with a pattern of holes in them) dictate the up or down of the warp threads. Between the warp threads a bobbin that looks like a shuttle is moved from left to right, the warp threads are changed and the shuttle goes through the warp threads from right to left, and so on.

The die plates are manufactured by a separate firm, and it is a very precise job. The plates are attached to one another by stitching, and if this is done incorrectly, the loom will weave mistakes. After use the die plates are stored with a piece of the woven fabric attached, so that it’s easy to see which pattern the plates produce.

Newer machines in the factory weave aida banding. The owner of the mill showed us the stock of threads for weaving and told us the linen threads are mainly imported from Italy and France. Explaining how short fibres result in poor quality banding, he prefers to pay for premium quality materials rather than saving on production cost. Also, for the cotton the mill uses, they import from Egypt.

After a careful quality check where possible mistakes are marked and cut off the banding, it is ‘ironed’ between two rolls, much like a wringer, and rolled onto a cardboard cone. The wringer also keeps track of the length of the banding and this is marked on the roll once it is full. No two rolls have the same length since the mistakes are cut off.

The finished banding is then taken to the store rooms and offices, located on the bank of the river Wupper. From the packing tables, you can see the famous ‘Schwebebahn’ (aerial railway) pass at regular intervals.

I bet none of our company really cared, because we were ‘let loose’ in those very storerooms. Lanes of shelving units filled to the brim with linen banding. Natural, white, cream, pink, red, purple, blue, yellow, green, with gold threads, silver threads, with patterns, every colour imaginable. Then there are bands with prints on them which can be enhanced by stitching. There are complementary decorative satin bands, patterns designed for the spaces in between the prints on the banding. Valhalla or candy store is what I heard my friends say. At the same time, it was no fun at all: how can we possibly pick the prettiest one? Or stay within budget, for that matter? For we were allowed to buy, too!”

Thanks so much, Lilian! If you’d like to visit or join Lilian’s group, please contact her through their blog or Facebook group.