Weave Drafting

Rose and Star Fashion Pleases Twice – By Lausanne Allen

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Introduction:
Just like chopping wood warms twice, Lausanne Allen’s woven Rose and Star Fashion potholders pleased twice: once for the weaving and once (or twice) for giving and receiving the gifts.

A year ago, in the height of not knowing what to expect from our first winter in the pandemic I warped my barn frame loom with what I affectionately called a “gratitude “ warp. It was threaded to this same single block of the Whig Rose pattern, woven to be potholder gifts for everyone on my long list of friends and acquaintances who had made 2020 a more bearable year for my husband and I. Here are some photos to share from my first (blue) warp last December 2020 and a second warp (green) that was finished in mid-January, 2021.

The calming pleasure found in my daily weaving habit grew as did my gratitude list . A second longer warp using a different color prolonged the pleasure as each pad became an opportunity to sample another pattern weft yarn. Each one became a meditation and each one different.

Giving these gifts, whether to the mailman who drove up our long slippery hill with needed packages when we didn’t dare to go out, or to long cherished friends we could now only visit with “virtually” in our winter of self isolation filled my days with a purpose that calmed me.

Weaving these every day on a sturdy barn frame loom became cherished time for me, marked by the steady shoosh of the overhead beater, the occasional squeak of the wooden pulleys and the rhythmic dance of the wooden horses at every press of the oak treadles. A few years ago my husband carved horses, treadles and pulleys for this old loom, so I could remove the shiny polished chrome pulleys that had come with it.  Weaving on this old loom brings such a feeling of contentment. A fresh snowfall provided a sense of wonderland outside my window.

Of course I wove some in each treadling fashion and as I did I tried to analyze why these two different treadling sequences yielded such different results. Your explanation here in terms of blocks makes perfect sense! All I understood then was that if I made a little clock face circle, with 1-2 at noon, 2-3 at 3, 3-4 at 6 and 4-1 at 9 that Rose treadling went clockwise around the circle, and Star treadling went counterclockwise, of course starting from a different place. The clock face made it easy to find my place when interrupted but didn’t explain why in terms of block theory,… As I write I’m feeling the urge coming on to begin a new gratitude list for the shortest days of the year that await us…. Now what shall I weave? Soon the cycle will begin again. What shall be this winter’s gratitude warp I wonder… in what will hopefully be a snowy Vermont again in little more than a month! I think the word is hygge.

(Peggy’s note)
Hygge:
a quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being (regarded as a defining characteristic of Danish culture). “why not follow the Danish example and bring more hygge into your daily life?” It is pronounced “hoo-gah”).

The warp was a soft 8/4 cotton  “Cottontale” and the weft mostly  three strands of a mercerized cabled Dk  weight knitting cotton, called “Cleo” , carefully wound on a rag shuttle so they would display their sheen,  smoothly lofting up  as pattern weft without twisting. It took a little more tweaking to keep them from twisting when being wound but it was worth it I think. 

Star and Rose Fashion: Two treadlings for the same threading – “Tromp as Writ” and “As drawn in” explained

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Introduction:
I’ve taken a workshop with Slow Fiber Studios in making paints from indigo leaves and indigo powder. Now that I’ve made the various indigo blue paints, I want to paint something. I’m thinking of painting some block designs. I began thinking about painting the same pattern in both Star and Rose versions. I always get mixed up about how to make Rose Fashion so had to look up the information yet again. My favorite books for this are “Weaves and Pattern Drafting” by John Tovey and The Weaving Book Patterns and Ideas by Helene Bress. These books go into much more detail, but here are the basic principles and that are enough for me at this point.

The two variations are made with the IDENTICAL THREADING. The variation is in the treadling only.
The treadling ORDER is as DRAWN IN. This illustration shows what is meant by “treadle as drawn in”. Another way to think of it as “Tromp as Writ” except we are talking about the order of weaving whole blocks—not thread by thread. In a sense you are copying the threading in the treadling.

First you treadle the first thing that is threaded which I’ve numbered as 1. You weave that block the same LENGTH as it is WIDE. In other words, the first thing in this illustration says to weave block A for as many rows as it takes to make it as tall as it is wide. (a tall block) Then, all the blocks that are threaded as A Block will be that tall as well.

Second, you weave (treadle) the second thing in the threading (2): Block B, for as tall as it is wide in the threading. (another tall block) Again, ALL the B Blocks will be that height or that many picks.

Third, you will weave Block A but in this draft you will weave it for only a few rows because in the threading draft in the (3) position the block isn’t very wide. Again, all the A Blocks will now be woven for only a very few picks this time.

I hope you can see from the illustration how treadled as drawn in follows the order and size of the blocks in the threading.

The 4th thing to treadle is a tall B Block, and the 5th is to treadle a tall Block A.

Star Fashion
Star Fashion is the same as treadle as drawn in which I described above.

The result when you weave Star Fashion is that a diagonal line is formed in the woven pattern.

Rose Fashion
This is the result of weaving Rose Fashion. There is no diagonal.
At first glance, it may appear that Rose Fashion is just the reverse of Star Fashion, and that one side of the cloth weaves Star Fashion while the other side weaves Rose Fashion. This is not true. The inversion of pairs of blocks produces its own, unique effect.

When the treading draft says Block A, you weave Block B instead. And the reverse. Whenever it says Block B, treadle Block A. Notice this reversal in the previous photo (repeated here). Remember, you are treadlingthe height that the block is wide in the threading draft just as before. The only difference is WHICH BLOCK you treadle. And you are following the order and size of blocks as drawn in in the treadling.

This handy chart is found in The Weaving Book by Helene Bress. Every time I wonder how to get Rose Fashion, I come back to this chart.

This is also from the Helene Bress book. I think it clearly shows the diagonal formed with weaving Star Fashion and something completely different when treadling Rose Fashion.

Twills Plain and Fancy– Recipe Books: Remember: Bubbles Rise!

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The “Davison” book, is a bible to many weavers. However, when I was teaching I never showed it to my students. That was because I was teaching them how to make their own drafts. And the “Davison book” taught recipes. Tonight I looked at the Table of Contents and saw there are 3 whole chapters devoted to twills. The entire book is for 4 shafts (harnesses).

Here is my own copy, the cover worn out and tucked inside. That tells you how much I, myself, have looked at that book.  There are times when I’ve wanted a recipe—and to know something was going to probably turn out. And following a recipe can be fun. There are hundreds of ideas in this book all the drafts are included!

However, all the drafts are meant to be read differently from the way most weavers these days and for a long time learned to read them. It tells you so on page XII, but who reads those pages usually? Her tie-up drafts tell what shafts are to be LOWERED. Even when I was learning in the 70’s we learned to read drafts that in the tie-ups, the little o’s told what shafts were to be LIFTED. The mantra was “bubbles rise”! But in this book, there are little x’s in the tie-up drafts and that those x’s represent shafts lowered. That’s because in the olden days almost all looms were counterbalance looms and you treadled to pull the shafts DOWN. (and that made the other shafts rise!) This photo shows you what to do when a draft has x’s and the instructions are that they are for lowered shafts. You treadle all the shafts that are not indicated. So if the book wants 1 and 2 and down, then you raise 3 and 4 to accomplish the same thing. In the photo I show bubbles wherever there are no x’s. That means you raise those shafts.

This is how I learned to read drafts in the 70’s and taught my students for many years. It’s the same as the Davison book except for the tie-up drafts as I explained above. Each section is read starting at the dark solid lines dividing the quadrants. It means that sometimes, you read right-to-left and sometimes, vice versa. Sometimes, you read from the top down and other times from the bottom up. You can follow the arrows and see that they work outward from the dividing lines. An example is that I read threading drafts and thread right-to-left.

The Strickler book seems to have come out in 1991 and my copy is the 17th printing. That was when I was busy teaching theory so never discovered the book. It relates to the Davison book but all the patterns are for 8 shafts. There are hundreds of wildly interesting patterns. And the drafts are all included. I counted that there are 7 chapters on twills!

I was embarrassed recently when I was teaching some not-beginner weavers some drafting. Someone finally showed me the book and that explained why they were so confused with what I was showing. I love how she says it on page 8: “…the left end of the threading [draft] is the left side of the repeat in the photos, and the bottom of the treadling is the bottom of the repeat. So to weave as shown, read the threading in the same direction as you thread (looking at the front of the loom) and follow the treadling from bottom to top. If you thread in the opposite direction, follow the treadling from top to bottom.” (my underlines) This makes a lot of sense in today’s world. I was ashamed that I didn’t realize this “new” way.

Warning! This is what I wrote at the beginning of my drafting chapter in “Weaving for Beginners”: “Knowing how to read weave drafts and write your own is enormously satisfying and is a tremendously important part of weaving and designing, but it is not the only part to know. What drafts don’t tell is anything about the yarns, colors, ends per inch (epi), the beat or the wefts per inch (ppi), for instance. When you read directions for a project in a book or magazine, you must read every word that is written about the project. All that information is crucial to reproducing what the directions are for…. Also, pay close attention to any photographs or graphics.”

A Fancy Twill

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I can’t remember where I first saw this pattern but I do remember it was called a “fancy twill” and I’ve always called it that. I wove a bit with this thick red silk weft before the pandemic. It’s a twill.

Here is the way it works. In the photo it shows what the warps are doing: 3 up, 2 down, 1 up, and 2 down for each pick. (Just like the fraction shows.) When you design a twill like this, all the numbers need to add up to the number of shafts you are using. In this case, it’s an 8-shaft    “fancy” twill.

Here in the weaving I think you can track the warps up and down by following a weft.

Here is the back side of the cloth.

I wove some of the pattern in white on white with the idea I might see how it would dye. Of course, the pattern doesn’t show up when there’s not contrasting warps and wefts. However, you can make a pattern appear if you change the warp color, say for a border; and have the center part have the warp and weft be the same. I’ve used this idea and like it a lot. It makes me think of Nellie, one of my students. She made an elaborate twill draft for a scarf but made the warp and weft the same except for one tiny inch. All her work didn’t show up except for in that one-inch section of warp. But I took her “idea” to heart.

Look what I found in the Handwoven magazine I got this week! My “Nellie idea”!