Draft for Red Towels

A couple of people have commented on the draft I used for the red towel warp.

I have 16 shafts on my AVL so generally I will thread a design over all 16. There are a number of advantages for doing this such as giving me more options and spreading the threads out over a greater distance which is sometimes helpful if the yarns are set very close together or if the warp yarns are a bit grabby.

I really like the Wall of Troy threading. You only need four shafts for it, but by spreading it out over more you get more options during weaving.


Wall of Troy - four shafts:



The threading is a 10 thread repeat so it is fairly simple to thread and to treadle. As mentioned previously I tend to break treadling sequences down into a form of choreography - in this instance I begin with the shuttle going from right to left for the first pick and in my head I count '1'. With 10 picks to the repeat I count from 1 to 10 as I weave so that if I run out of weft yarn at, say, '7', I know exactly where I am in the sequence.

If you have more shafts you can extend the threading as below for 8 shafts:



Notice that the tie up for this draft is a 1/3/3/1 tie up. On my AVL I extended the Wall of Troy over all 16 shafts and used a 1/3/1/3/3/1/3/1 tie up in the pink area. In the cottolin part I used a twill block tie up. It's a subtle difference and hard to see in the photo.


In this draft I have isolated the Wall of Troy by bracketing it with straight twill.

Overall I find this threading versatile and easy to thread so I confess I come back to it in different iterations a lot. For example with 16 shafts I can make the /\/ over 4 shafts, 8 shafts, 12 shafts or 16 shafts, expanding the motif for a more dramatic look.