Weaving – Page 2 – Dixie Weaver

Noodling with an MMM WWW Threading

An M-W threading is named for the threading through the heddles, which looks like repeating Ms and Ws on the form. The pattern I was playing with is a modified M W, where each M and W has three high (or low) points. I’ve warped up umpty yards (he warp was measured for a sampler, so … I forget?), and enough ends for 8 repeats, warped alternating 2 olive repeats and 1 tan repeat. The goal is to vary the weft in multiple projects. Unfortunately I forgot to photograph the first two stretches, where the weft was respectively burgundy, and white, so that will have to wait until it comes off the loom.

Once the threading through the headings was decided, and going with a simple twill tie up, the next step is to decide the treadling. (I.e. in which order do the four harnesses get raises, or in what order are the treadles pressed?) This first version looks more complicated than it actually is, mostly because I didn’t pick the best starting point.

In a simple twill weave, the treadling is 1-2-3-4 and repeat. A twill diamond pattern, on the other hand, will treadle 1-2-3-4 followed by 3-2-1-4 for a 8 line pattern. In my way of thinking, that would be a 4 row diamond. In the pattern above, we have a 6-row diamond twill: 4-1-2-3-4-1 followed by 4-3-2-1-4-3. This looks confusing at first, but by thinking of it as a six row diamond, I can reuse the muscle memory from previous projects.

On the other hand, the pattern looked very horizontal; it’s hard to make striped with just diamonds, but by golly I managed. Also; I had woven two 19 or so inch lengths, and was bored.

Time to start playing with alternating treadlings. This is where I once again thank my husband for the gift of a lovely piece of software (Fiberworks Bronze) which allows me to both typeset and change patterns up quickly and easily. I’m still far from adept at pattern design, but the software lets me experiment with different treadlings really, really quickly.

My first idea was to treadly the same way as the heddles were threaded in extended Ms and Ws. As it turned out, that gave a slightly unbalanced pattern and I experimented a little more, resulting in this pattern.

Oddly enough, I didn’t realize that this is still an extended MW treadling, except that if the extended M’s are treadled just as they’re threaded, the extended W’s are shifted one over, resulting in a 3-2-1-4-1-2-3 effect. There’s exactly 1 extra treadling (using 4) between the M’s and W’s which makes this pattern again really easy to memorize. Plus there’s lots of visual cues in the weaving, of course.

So what does the fabric look like? The weft is a lighter brown than the tan warp, keeping the pattern visible (albeit more subtle) on the tan stripes. As well, the edges are the best I’ve had on this yardage yet; there’sa floating selvage on both sides, but here I’m always treadling an even treadle when entering from the right, where in the previous bitsy bobs I always entered from the right on an odd treadle. Funny the different that can make.

Adventures in Tapestry Weaving

So one of the things I got my hands on last year was a tapestry loom, from Schacht. It’s currently sitting assembled in my office, and I am hoping to warp it this afternoon. Right after I can find te wool I want to use as weft; I have some really nice embroidery wool samples that I want to play with.

But meanwhile I had been thinking and thinking about the continuous warp. The warping instructions from Schacht are available at Tapestry Loom Manual but I was struggling to make sense of how the warp was advanced (since it’s a continuous loop). But a bit more digging found me this excellent article https://www.afieldguidetoneedlework.com/blog/long-warp-short-loom which provided the A-HA moment I needed. The key point is that after the warping is complete, the warping bar is essentially free floating because it’s held in place by the tension of the warp.

So hopefully I can warp the loom up this afternoon, and then I want to try knitting heddles as described by Laverne Waddington in her tutorial at https://backstrapweaving.wordpress.com/tutorials/tutorial-continuous-string-heddles/. It’s also possible to make fixed length reusable heddles, as in inkle weaving, but … we’re experimenting.

Weaving Directions in Doubleface and 3/1 Broken Twill using the 2 pack method

While trying to teach a friend to weave 3/1 broken twill, I stumbled on another way of looking at the cards to determine what the next turn should be. To illustrate that method, I’m going to discuss doubleface first, since more of my readers are familiar with doubleface weaving. All cards will be threaded two light and two dark, and we describe the positions of the cards as follows. (Here the light is green, and the dark is blue. We will also assume that the green will be the background.)

Horizontal and Vertical Position

We consider the position of the cards relative to the warp threads. In these diagrams the warp extends to the right while the already woven portion extends to the left. Horizontal and vertical are used to describe the position of the threads relative to the warp.

Card is shown with woven ribbon on left, warp extending on right, and the light coloured threads are in the two front holes closest to the woven ribbon

In the vertical position, the two green threads go through the holes closest to the woven ribbon. Those holes are one above the other, so I call this position vertical. If I turn this card forwards, the two green threads will lie above the warp and I will weave a green row. Turn backwards, and the blue threads will be uppermost, and I will weave a blue row.

Card is shown with woven ribbon on left, warp extending on right, and the light coloured threads are in the two top holes above the warp. In the horizontal position, the top two threads are both green. In this position, I will weave another green row regardless of whether I turn forwards or backwards.

Weaving Doubleface

Weaving doubleface with the 2 pack method, the cards are separated into two packs. We can call these two groups “Background” and “Pattern”. When we start all the cards are in the background pack, and we start with the cards in vertical position. If we consider “Front vertical” as the case where the background threads are all in the holes closest to the woven ribbon, and “Back Vertical” as the case where the background threads are closest to the unwoven warp threads, then the turning directions for each row in the pattern are as follows:

Make sure any foreground/pattern cards are in the foreground pack and all other cards are in the background pack.
If the background pack is in front vertical position, turn the background pack forwards and the pattern pack backwards, and put the shuttle through. (Do this twice so that all cards are once more in vertical position.)
If the background pack is in back vertical position, turn the background pack backwards and the pattern pack forewards, and put the shuttle through. (Again, do this twice.)

For each row in the pattern you will complete either step 2 or step 3, but not both. Notice how the pattern and background pack always move in opposite directions, and all the cards should all be in exactly the same vertical position every time you return to step 1.

Weaving 3/1 Broken Twill

The setup of the cards in 3/1 broken twill is slightly more complicated, and is a multi-step process:

Divide the cards into two packs as follows.
1. Card 1 goes into the Odd pack
2. Card 2 goes into the Even pack
3. Card 3 goes into the Odd pack
4. Card 4 goes into the Even pack
5. …
Flip the cards as needed so that the threading alternates between S and Z in each pack
Turn the cards in each pack so that they are all in vertical front position.
Turn the Even pack only once forward so that it is in horizontal top position.

Now the key point of weaving 3/1 broken twill is that the cards never shift between the packs. Colour changes are made by flipping a card on its vertical axis, but only when that card is in vertical position. (This reverses the threading for the card, and also switches between front and back vertical position.)

The turning direction now also never changes. Each row will be one of four possible scenarios, and you can see which scenario comes into play by looking at the vertical or horizontal position of the two packs. Be careful to key off cards which have not been flipped to produce pattern; but look at background cards. Then the turning directions are:

Position of Odd Pack	Position of Even Pack	Turning directions Odd – Even
Front vertical	Horizontal	Turn both packs forwards
Horizontal	Back vertical	Turn odd pack forward, even pack backwards
Back vertical	Horizontal	Turn both packs backwards
Horizontal	Front vertical	Turn odd pack backwards, even pack forwards

At first try weaving only the background, without flipping any cards. Notice how before every turn exactly one pack is in vertical position, and the other is in horizontal position. Which also means that I can only effect colour changes in one pack, or the other, but not both at the same time.

Then eventually when it comes time to weave patterns, I like to use brick graph paper like 3/1 twill graph paper where each rectangle represents one card and two turns, emphasizing that the ability to change colours alternates between the odd and even packs.

Edited to add: At some point I will be adding a second article which focuses solely on weaving 3/1 twill patterns. The purpose of this article is to get you weaving the basic 3/1 twill structure.

Weaving Broken Twill on a 4 harness loom

These are notes for a project currently on my 4 harness loom. The wool I’m using is 8/2 Jaggerspun wool, from the Maine line, in royal blue and dark green. I wanted to make fabric that was stripey and that displayed the broken twill diamonds encountered in Viking weaving. The final fabric will be used to make a bag with Hedeby handles, as described in https://nattmal.wordpress.com/2015/05/14/haithabu-bag/. Unlike her bag, however, I will be using a tabletwoven rather than a leather strap.

The measured warp: 208 eights, in 13 groups of 16, to produce a striped fabric.

Step 1 was to measure out the warp. As a computer programmer, binary in all its glories is very attractive, so I decided the diamonds would be 16 threads wide, and 16 picks high. Sizes can vary of course. So I measured out 13 strips of 16 ends each, on the horizontal warping mill; to make counting easier, the white thread groups the warp in bundles of 8 threads each. This allows me to easily stretch the threads across the width of the backbeam using the raddle. Since the epi for this wool is listed as 15-18 for twill, I decided to start with 16 epi, so the diamonds should be about an inch square.

Step 2 was to wind the warp on to the backbeam; to do this I used what some call “Angel Wings”: a pair of dowels which are put through the warp on both sides of the cross, and kept together with hairbands. I use loops of string to hold the dowels in place. This allows me to wind the warp on to the backbeam while maintaining the cross. It usually maintains a nice even tension too, although here the wool was being very sticky and obstreperous.

Step 3: threading the heddles. We left the dowel sticks in place and heddles from right to left. The pattern repeats: first 8 heddles 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4 and then 8 heddles 2-1-4-3-2-1-4-3. Keeping track of count was easy since everything was being done in bundles of 8. The outermost thread on each side was not heddled, and will form the floating selvage.

The reed I have for this loom is 10 ends per inch, so it took me a while to puzzle out how to thread it to get 16 ends to the inch. Finally I decided that solving 8 ends to the half inch (and 5 slots) was easier, and threaded in a 2 – 1 – 2 – 1 – 2 pattern through the slots.

Broken twill, alternating between two shuttles every 16 picks.

Step 4: We weave! Took a bit of monochrome weaving to get the edges right, and I realized that perhaps I could have set the threads closer together on the outside on both sides, but I got it to square up eventually. And that’s when I added the second colour. There are two shuttles loaded with blue and green respectively, and the one not in use is perched on the desk next to me. The shuttle in use treats the thread from the other colour as a second floating selvage, so there’s a little bit of oddness on the right hand side of the fabric.

For now, though, my concern is still on getting the edges even, and trying to keep the squares … we.. square, which means managing the interplay between the tension of the warp threads, and the force with which I beat. (And when a bobbin runs out, as you can see in the green, you just double up for an inch or so and keep going.)

The last picture, btw, was taken with flash so that you can really see the structure. In natural light the patterning – especially in the monochrome areas – is much more subtle.

Reading 4 harness weaving drafts

(Right after I started planning out 10 days of posts, I got hit by the crud, so these posts will be a bit delayed. Sigh.

At Gulfwars this year, I picked up a lovely little 4 harness loom – a Wolf Pup LT. It’s got an 18 inch weaving width, which is perfect for sampling and trying to work out how patterns work. That, along with a copy of Anne Dixon’s The Handweaver’s Pattern Directory, meant that I could start experimenting with patterns. First weaving some of the many many patterns in her book, and eventually moving on to my own. (Not there yet.)

So today I’m going to talk a little about patterns. Now the way they’re drafted in her book, you have the threading along the top, the treadling (which treadles are pressed for each row) along the right hand side, and the tie-ups (which harnesses are lifted when a treadle is pressed) in the top right hand corner.

Consider for instance this set up. Here the tie-ups and treadling aren’t listed yet, and all we’re concerned with is the warp threads. The warp threads grid is structured as follows: each row represents one of the harnesses, and each column represents one thread. For now, each thread will be controlled by only one harness.

Later when I’m trying out more complicated patterns I may switch to a different type of heddle. The loom currently uses eye heddles which means that the thread high is controlled by the harness; if the harness goes up, so does the thread, and if the harness stays down … the thread can’t rise. If I use an open heddle, lifting the harness will raise the thread, but lowering the harness won’t force the thread down.

In any case, in this set up the threads are set up so that from left to right you have one thread each through harness 1, 2, 3, and 4, and then you repeat.

Now we add the tie-ups and the treadling. This is a standard 2/2 twill tie up: the first treadle lifts harnesses 1 and 2, the second lifts harness 2 and 3, then the third lifts 3 and 4, and the last lifts 4 and 1.

The treadling is actually read from the bottom up, since when weaving on modern looms you usually weave away from you. (On standing looms it would be quite plausible to read the pattern from the top down. Unlike cardweaving there’s no twist to worry about, so either way would work.)

The nice thing about this setup is that as long as the twill goes in the same direction, you can just keep treading 1-2-3-4 over and over. (Or for a twill in the other direction, 4-3-2-1 repeated ad nauseum.)

But let’s say, for the sake of argument, you want diagonals that change direction after every fourth throw of the shuttle. You can start with 1-2-3-4 for the first four rows, but following that up with 4-3-2-1 gives an odd effect (or rather, you end up unweaving what you just wove, unless you have a floating selvage), so that doesn’t really work.

Instead, when you reverse the direction of twill, you will weave 4 rows, but start with 3-2-1-4 , and by doing that you get a lovely zig zag.

But notice the long stretches of purple thread on the edges? Those are – as I discovered on my first piece – going to be a problem because the weft won’t go out to the very edge. The simplest solution is a “floating selvage”, which is an extra warp string on each side that isn’t passed through any heddles. Then while weaving, you push the shuttle underneath the first free floating string, and over the second on the far side, so that the shuttle always ends up going around the selvage strings on each side.

For an even nicer edge, you could use multiple selvage strings, but I confess, I haven’t figured out how to tie them into the harnesses yet to get some sort of tabby weave. Having two extra harnesses would really come in handy here.

Playing with Baltic Pickup style inkle weaving (Part 3)

I’ve had a few requests about the rest of the Baltic pickup style patterns I came up with. Like the previous, these are all woven on the same warp, and again, the patterns are designed so that you are always pushing threads down from the upper row and never lifting threads up from the lower row. This speeds up the weaving immensely.

And that’s when I realized that two of the patterns are duplicated, but a little judicious work with a pencil will fix that quite easily. 🙂

Pulling a Pattern from a Picture

So a friend of mine asked me about the trim in https://www.pinterest.com/pin/120400990016540518/, which is a picture (source unknown, because pinterest) of the neckline of a tunic that has been embroidered and embellished by trim.

Looking at the trim, you can see that the outermost three cards on each edge have been threaded with four threads of the same colour; 2 cards are tan next to the pattern, the outermost card is all black. Now when I first saw the picture I couldn’t see it up-close, so I didn’t notice that the inner pattern was actually three colours (each card has 2 white, 1 black and 1 dark blue thread), but the pattern is obviously based on the Egyptian Diagonals technique using 10 cards.

My first stab at the pattern; the 10 cards are each threaded identically with 2 dark and 2 light, and then arranged so that if all the cards were turned forwards you would get chevrons pointing up. You can see the starting position below the squares: the two circles represent the colours of the threads in the two top holes; bottom row is closest to the weaver, top row is furthest from the weaver, and the | or / indicates the direction the string travels through the card.

The pattern is read bottom to top, where each square is one column, each row of squares = 1 turn of the pattern. When the square’s background is grey, the card turn backwards towards the weaver; when it’s white the card turns forwards away from the weaver. As you can see, most of the time the cards turn together, but there is a central part of the pattern where half the cards turn in one direction and the other half turn in the opposite direction. It is because of these central 4 rows that the pattern is not twist neutral which is why – if using an inkle loom or similar to weave the trim – a weaver will often alternate between the two versions of the trim, since weaving one copy of each will result in a twist neutral pattern.

Note that the bottom and top 4 rows are not included in the repeat.

Still, looking at the picture, this pattern made the crossover point of the black X’s awfully narrow, and looking more closely at the picture I could see the crossover point should be wider. Which is an easy fix: by making the repeating portion of the pattern one row shorter top and bottom, the X’s crossover point becomes wider. It also fixes the width of the black dots at the sides, which was previously too wide.

(And here the top and bottom 5 rows are not part of the repeat.)

Musings about Pickup in the large …

The inkle pickup band I completed a while back and described in the two entries part 1 and part 2 (now with more patterns!) got me thinking about weave structures. In inkle pickup, the warp threads are manipulated so that some warp threads (the pattern threads) either float above or below the band to create the patterns. On an inkle band this can be done by hand; you’re usually working with less than a dozen pattern threads so while the picking of individual threads is tedious, it’s not insurmountable.

But that got me wondering how similar manipulations would work on wider fabrics. After all, making clothes (or even pillows and bags) out of bands that are usually an inch or two wide is tedious. And then I ran into a fascinating book A Practical Study of the Development of Weaving Techniques in China, Western Asia and Europe by John Becker, published posthumously after his collaborator Don Wagner tidied and reset it a little. The book starts in China with essentially the same kinds of pickup patterns I had been doing, with monochrome silk weaving that had patterns based on the way the warp was manipulated. I’ve been fascinated with the opportunities ever since.

That, in turn, led to reading the later chapters that discuss the drawloom. In the drawloom, each pattern warp thread is threaded through it’s own separate “heald” which can be used to pull the thread up and down. Usually the pattern would repeat across the width of the fabric, and each repeat would be called a “comber”. Each heald is goes through the comber board (which has one hole per heald) but then the healds will be joined to pulley threads. There are as many pulley threads as there are pattern threads in a singe width repeat of the pattern, and the relative heald in each comber (or repeat) is hooked on to the corresponding pulley thread, so that as the pulley thread is pulled up, the corresponding thread in each repeat is raised.

So let’s look at the implications of that. Let’s say that we wanted to weave a fabric 21 inches wide, using a set of 20 epi (ends to the inch). That’s 21×20 = 420 warp threads, ignoring for the moment selvage threads etc. Now let’s say that our pattern was 28 ends wide per repeat. The on the one hand, each pulley thread is attached to 15 healds (since 420/28 = 15) but on the other hand for every row I only have to manipulate 28 pulley threads. In comparison for the baltic inkle pickup, I was manipulating 8 or 9 threads per row, so this is a three fold increase in numbers of cords to manipulate, for a 21 fold increase in width. Sounds like an excellent improvement in efficiency.

Of course there are trade-offs; the warping will be a lot slower, as the set up for the pulleys will be a lot more complicated. But the pulleys can be set up once, for that pattern width, and then reused. The warp does need to be threaded through each heald individually but weaving on a 4 harness loom we’re threading the warp strings through heddles, so the time increase is not insurmountable there, either. And if we warp long lengths at a time, we can improve efficiency. After all, with the drawloom we can create any 28 thread pattern we like.

And the biggest tradeoff; finding a drawloom. Inkle looms are easy to find or build, and inkle heddles can be knotted up while watching telly. A drawloom gets more complicated. Although I did find a book with drawloom plans, available online at The New Drawloom, (part 2) hosted by the University of Arizona ((Front Page).

So now my options are to find a drawloom for sale, or convince my long-suffering hubby to build me one. Or possibly to frankenstein it on top of one of the looms I already own.

Instructions for a simple 3/1 broken twill pattern without a graph

3/1 broken twill is a type of tablet weaving that produces a very pronounced diagonal structure in the weave. This weave is particularly suitable for designs that are very diagonal, and in this case a friend requested a yellow belt with hollow green diamonds. In this article I am going to write how I set up the cards and arranged the turning sequences so that the weaving speed was maximized.

To maximize weaving speed, you need to arrange the cards so that they can be turned as a group, and are manipulated as little as possible. Here, the only manipulation of cards will occur when we flip a card around its vertical axis.

Basic Set up

The pattern area consists of 32 cards, each threaded with two dark (green), and two (yellow) threads. For the first 16 cards (counting from the left) we thread the cards as below, where the woven area extends to the left, and the warp to the right, and repeating the cycle of four cards four times (since 4×4=16).

Setting up the Cards

Note that cards 1 and 3 “mirror each other” in that they have the threads going through the same holes, and similarly cards 2 and 4 mirror one another.

For the second set of 16 cards we mirror the first 16 from the centre out, so that card 17 is threaded like 2, card 18 like 1, card 19 like 4 and card 20 like 3, and then keep repeating.

Lastly we divide the cards into two packs we call “Odd and “Even”. The “Odd cards” include all the odd numbered cards from 1 – 15, and all the even numbered cards from 18 – 32. The “Even cards” include all the even numbered cards from 2 – 16 and all the odd numbered cards from 17 – 31. Note that all the “Odd” cards should have the light in the front two holes, and all the “Even” cards should have the light in the top two holes.

Basic Setup (short version):

The cards are all threaded 2 dark, 2 light. Threading alternates in pairs (i.e. SSZZ). Separate the cards out into two packs:

The Odds include the odd numbered cards between 1 and 16 and the even numbered cards between 17 and 32.
The Evens include the even numbered cards between 1 and 16 and the odd numbered cards between 17 and 32.

Checking the Setup

If the cards were threaded correctly, all the Odds should all have the light in the front two holes (Top and bottom), the Evens should have all the light threads in the top two holes, and in each of the two packs the threading should now alternate between S and Z.

This position is called the home position. The Odds are in Vertical Front and the Evens are in Horizontal position.

Turning directions

When you first start turning, you want to use the following turning directions. This should produce a structural background consisting of diagonals meeting at a point in the center.

Pick	Oddish Pack	Even Pack
1	Forward	Forward
2	Forward	Back
3	Back	Back
4	Back	Forward

To reverse the direction of the chevrons, your options are to either flip all the cards in the Even pack when the cards are in the home position or to switch over to the alternate turning sequence, where the Oddish Pack still moves exactly as before, but the Even pack changes directions, resulting in:

Pick	Oddish Pack	Even Pack
1	Forward	Back
2	Forward	Forward
3	Back	Forward
4	Back	Back

It is important that you flip the cards, or change the turning direction, when the Even pack is in the Horizontal position. Other wise, they all suddenly switch to the foreground colour, which is known as an oops.

Adding the Pattern

After weaving the background for a while, it’s time to start adding the pattern. Colour changes happen by flipping a card on its vertical axis when it is in Vertical position. Hence if the light (yellow) thread was in the two holes closest to you, they would now be in the two holes furthest away after the flip. Also, the threading direction is reversed.

The diamond pattern is very basic. The first change is made after pick 3: the two center cards – both in the Evenish decl – are flipped. Then the next turn is made. (If the points do not make a V, undo the turn, unflip the cards, and weave picks 4 and 1.)

On the next pick, the Oddish cards are in vertical position: flip the middle 2 cards. They will be the cards just to the outside of the central cards in the Evenish deck. Weave the next pick.

On the next pick the Evenish cards are in vertical position. Flip the cards outside the 2 previously flipped cards, and unflip the previously flipped cards. Weave the next pick.

Keep repeating the flipping of the next outwards cards (and unflipping the current cards) until you reach the width you want. I’m going to assume that you kept expanding the diamond until the Evenish cards are in horizontal position and you are about to weave pick 1. Instead of flipping cards, switch from one set of turning directions to the other.

After this first pick, again flip cards as you did before, but instead of flipping the next card to the outside, flip the next card to the inside. (You’re walking the diamond back to a point.) And keep going till all the cards are unflipped again.

If you decide not to unflip cards as you go along you will get a solid coloured diamond instead.

Danskbrogd – a Norwegian Textile technique

The Norwegian Textile Letter is a free online quarterly publication that covers – as the name suggests – a wide variety of Scandinavian textile arts. Both the current issue and previous issues dating back to 1994 are available online as pdfs, and they make for fascinating reading.

The current issue is part one of a two-parter (part two publishes on Aug 22nd) that covers the Danskbrogd technique for weaving coverlets. This technique is defined both by its originating location (Vest Agder, Norway) and by the geometric patterns that are woven in widthwise. Danskbrogd, A Rich Heritage from a Small Area is the first article in part one, and includes a good overview including some lovely exemplars. The last picture they include is of a modern design featuring honeycomb and bees.

I have some warp in a warp chain. I need to get it on a loom and play with it.