Double cloth weave with stripes using repurposed green bean coffee bags as yarn.

Culture & Context

I have been working as a part time barista for the past 18 months while also pursuing
my textiles career. In this time, I have fallen in love with the process of making coffee
however there is a huge amount of waste that comes with it. Through this project I
wanted to see how many ways I could utilise waste from the coffee industry and turn it
into a new/ experimental material or process.

This sample was inspired by the large bags that the green beans arrive in before the
beans are roasted. I collected a number of these bags and thought the yarn in them
would be interesting to try and reuse/ repurpose for new weaves and materials. I
unraveled the bags and then wove them into this sample focusing on the sections of
yarns that had colour on them from the printed words and imagery on the original
sacks.

Process & Production

The process of this material was firstly setting up the loom. When that was complete I started weaving. This sample focused on using the double cloth weave using these  repurposed yarns. I wove a couple of inches using the thicker yarn and then incorporated a small stripe of the darker finer yarn from a different green bean coffee sack. The front and back cloth are not woven together leaving a large landscape tube
with frayed edges each side.

Recipe Details

Loom Set Up :
Double Cloth set up using 16 shafts on a 24 shaft shaft ARM Touch 60 Loom.
Warp 1 & 2 : Galway Wool 1ply – length 4 yards, one dyed with waste coffee grounds
the other was left plain.
Weight : 232g for both.
24epi, 336 ends in total
Width : 14”
Straight draft in blocks AABAABAABAABAA

Material Sample :
Spend some time unravelling the green bean coffee bags/ sacks to get some of your
weft yarn prepared.
The sample was first woven with plain weave across both cloths.
Then 4” of a double cloth weave was done using the thicker yarn from one green bean
coffee bag as the weft.
A small 0.5” stripe of the darker and thinner yarn from a different green bean coffee
bag was used for the weft in bunches of 4/5 yarns.
Then 4” of a double cloth weave was done using the thicker yarn from one green bean
coffee bag as the weft.
The double cloth was then secured with