Wall of Troy

Draft for tea towel warp

One of the twill weaves I like a lot is Wall of Troy. The draft shown here combines a straight twill draw on the edges with Wall of Troy in the centre.

The towels (I'll post a photo tomorrow perhaps) are turning out really nicely. The two colours were threaded with the light grey stripes straight, the blue stripes WofT.

The treadling is only Wall of Troy although I included a run of straight at the beginning and end in the above draft just to show how it looks.

Each time I change treadling I have to learn (or re-learn) the choreography for that weave structure. One of the ways I do that is to count how many picks in a pattern repeat.

My 'standard' tie up is as shown in the draft, with plain weave on either side of the four twill treadles in the middle. Although many people like to 'walk' their treadles, I find keeping them in the standard twill tie up allows me to easily change treadling sequences from warp to warp, sometimes from item to item.

This is a fairly simple treadling sequence with just 10 picks in the repeat.

If we number the treadles left to right 1, 2, 3, 4 the treadling sequence is
Pick 1 - treadle 4
2 - 3
3 - 2
4 - 1
5 - 4
6 - 3
7 - 2
8 - 1
9 - 2
10 - 3

I start with my right foot and the shuttle in my right hand. If I run out of weft or the phone rings, etc., all I have to do is keep the pick number in my head and I know exactly where in the treadling sequence I am.

If I decide to change the weave structure, say to point twill, that is a 6 pick repeat and the count would be:
pick 1 - 4
2 - 3
3 - 2
4 - 1
5 - 2
6 - 3

A straight twill is pretty straight forward and I don't have to count that as where my foot is will tell me where in the repeat I am.

I suppose that having a background in dance I am familiar with learning new choreography, and this is how I have come to think of treadling sequences as steps in a dance.

Currently reading Snake Dreams by James D. Doss