Preparing the Warp for the Washington-Braddock Sash

The first step in making the replica sash is ordering the yarn. According to my records, the size of silk I need was called "machine embroidery silk". Yes, it's the gauge of sewing thread. And it needs to be reeled silk, not spun silk. I'm wanting my sash to be able to do the job that historically was its purpose: to transport the wounded off the field of battle. More about that later.

I contacted my usual supplier. She's located in the US, and tells me that all silk comes from China. Due to the current political situation, she's not ordering anything from China for the foreseeable future. So I needed to look elsewhere. I did find what I wanted from a Japanese firm. Habu Silk sells de-gummed organzine. The length per weight looked right. Then a colleague in the UK said she had quite a bit of silk, the 60-2 I was wanting. So I purchased her stash.

The original sash featured pairs of threads in the warp. The threads were not plied, but rather sit parallel in the sash. This seems to be typical for sprang sashes from eh 1700s. The reason for this, according to Coby Reindeers-Baas had to do with rules set by weaving guilds in Europe at that time. There was strong bias for "spindle spun" thread as warp (as opposed to "spinning wheel spun" thread). 
I've decided that the first thing I need to do with this silk, is to combine skeins, putting them into skeins of parallel threads.

OK, going from the umbrella swift to the skein, the two threads do twist around each other. They twist around each other once for every time around the warping pegs. That slight amount of twist is OK with me. I figure it will help in keeping the pairs together as I work the sprang.

The challenge is to combine the two skeins at the same rate. I'm trying to avoid tangles. I'm wanting have the double threads ready, wanting to avoid tangling when I get to warping my sprang frame. 

Here's a photo of the tangling that sometimes happens as I wind off the skein, as I combine the two strands.

To avoid the tangle, I try as much as possible to turn the umbrella swift to un-wind, and to avoid pulling on the strand. 
​Working alone, and managing two umbrella swifts, it's slow going.

I am disappointed with myself, when I see that one of the skeins I created has some extra loops in it. Apparently I did not keep those two strands running under the same tension. 
Will just have to re-wind that skein, to even up the length in both strands.

The goal is to create skeins, each composed of two strands side-by-side. I try to maintain order by tying every 50 times around or so. Hoping this will help to keep the threads in an orderly skein through the next step which is the dying.
​Tying the skeins also allows me to count the number of times I went around my warping frame, measuring the length. I like to be confident that I have sufficient length for my project. I calculate I'll need 12000 feet of this double strand for my warp, that's 4000 yards.

The next step will be dying the silk. I sent three small samples to the curator. Waiting to hear what she thinks, whether or not any of those reds will be the color they want.