Creating Cloth: twills

swatch for jacket-weight cloth

handwritten draft

Here is an 11 shaft fancy twill draft: my notes and the WeaveDesign file- I really prefer to use the "Mary Atwater" style drawdown of a top-down drawing because in my head I see it as an above view of the loom, treadles and cloth, but WeaveDesign uses bottom-up. I have had to readjust my thought process and I am still working out the kinks. This can be seen in a comparison of the handwritten and computer written drafts. The twill is going in the opposite direction- which is probably the fault of the treadling, as I keep translating parts of the patterns inversely, instead of just rotating them. I also left out the variation in yarn thickness- there are very thin tabby threads stabilizing the cloth- this does come from a swatch for jackets after all. And I also didn't mark the color variations- this is a black and white warp with blue weft. Despite all these inconsistencies, I like the draft that came out of all of this. It would create an entirely different look, but I think it could be very nice.

face of cloth

back of cloth

triangle summer & winter weave : dukagang

Here are some sketches on summer and winter weaving using Weave Draft:



I have always been partial to dukagang structure, as it creates clean blocks of color on a plainweave ground. Summer and Winter is really spectacular for its ability to construct shapes with "blocks"- threading groups- it feels like magic to draft your own patterns. I am so overjoyed to be weaving again! If I could do this all day for the rest of my life, I would consider myself a very lucky person.

shawl test warp

First weaving done! It's good to be back! Time flew while weaving- only took about an hour to weave off 1.5 yds... Note to self: buy a threading hook. I have a brass reed hook that came with the loom, but failed to remember that I would also need a heddle threading hook. Luckily there were only 30 ends that I hand threaded like needles. However, I would love one before I have to thread the 208 ends for the actual shawl.

I used WeaveDesign on my work PC to create five treadlings based on a straight draw and 1-8-1 draw. (looking into mac weaving software... quite a difficult decision, as I only have experience with Fiberworks PCW, which I love, but is only available in PC format)


I started with some leftover golden wool from Halcyon, woven tightly. It was lovely. I wish I could have made a blanket this way. I'll have to file that idea away for the future. After weaving, I washed it with woolite and let it dry. There was not much shrinkage, maybe 2%. I've decided on a threading and treadling pattern, and now just need to construct a rattle! The yarn's age (and probably dye saturation) have made parts of it VERY fragile- I had three yarns break during weaving- not from tension.. the construction of the yarn must be so compromised that the fibers just pulled apart. Common sense tells me to take a hint and use other yarn, but I insist on being stubborn and trying to make it through with a back to front warping and careful attention.